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20th Nov 2005
Namadgi
Sunday 20th November, 2005
Today we’re exploring; a reasonably early breakfast and a lot of picnic preparation on Di’s part and we were underway by about 10. Two cars split neatly into boys and girls. Stuart and I raced off in his car with Lachlan and Duncan strapped in the back. Anne and Di made their own way along to Namadgi National Park which is about 50 km south of Canberra … would we ever see them again we wondered?
We stopped off for a look at a visitor centre en route and so Anne and Di were waiting for us when we finally pulled off the main road and along the track to the car park for the Yankee Hat walk. Baking hot and bright, we set off on the six kilometre walk across grassland with occasional tors and areas of gum trees – snow gums in the slightly further areas.
Lolloping around under nearly all the gums were mobs of kangaroos – Eastern greys apparently - and it’s the first time that we’ve been in any proximity to them. They spend their time in the shadows of the trees, raising themselves off the ground and standing with quizzical expressions. They’re great animals, with expressive faces and very entertaining scratching habits.
The meadows had a surprising number of wild flowers; carpets of hairy billy butons – a sort of yellow scabious, golden lilies, a gorseey type of flower called scrambled eggs, forgetmenots, blue bells and violets.
In the creeks we heard the bobblebonk frog one of six frogs found in ACT.
The objective of the walk was a set of aboriginal rock paintings on a large granite boulder in the snow gums. The various symbols are painted in white, black or red ochre. At some point a number of camp fires have been lit at the base of the rock and the plumes of soot have obscured some of the images. When this happened is difficult to tell; perhaps passing aboriginals, perhaps more recent campers … perhaps even the accumulated leaf litter catching alight during the 2003 bush fires.
Just near the rocks with the paintings a small brown ‘something’ flushed from a nest at Stuarts feet; when it came back after a few minutes, it turned out to be a blue wren – the attendant male of which was a cracking little bird. A few other bits and bobs on the way back worth looking at … and about half a million flies.
After a drop of juice back at the car we relocated to a nearby homestead for a picnic. It lies a few miles along the road and a couple of hundred yards from the car. The venue; the shade of an apple tree, one of several, very old trees in a small unenclosed orchard at the back of the homestead. Today in the heat of the early afternoon, it had its very own mob of kangaroos who had to be reluctantly ‘adios’ed before we could partake of the shade, the view and of course our picnic. Excepting the odd shards of kangaroo poo, it’s the ideal picnic spot.
For Stuart, its mid way between a peregrine site and the general vicinity of a pair of wedge tailed eagles and by the end of lunch he’s got an eagle in his sights and back at the car we got the scope onto the adult, stomping around on the branches of a tree above its nest.
Stuart, Duncan and I went a slightly longer way home which took in and ice cream shop on the way and a good bit of extra scenery.
Back at the house I sent out an e-mail to Darrell, my Canberra re-photography contact giving him the mobile phone numb er to call so we could meet up.
The call came through within fifteen minutes and I arranged to go round at about 8.30 tomorrow.
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