A harbourside walk, and yet another photographer's dream day

A very blue sky, a blue and green and ludicrously clean sea. That was Sydney Harbour the other day (and Middle Harbour too). A great day for a harbourside walk.

Queen St, St Marys

Back to the movies!

I went to the movies yesterday! Yes, they're still there, and sometimes they're open again. Here's the view from my seat at the Roseville Cinemas, where I watched 'The Personal History of David Copperfield'. They'd gone to great lengths to enforce Covid-appropriate physical distancing, but with the audience numbers as they were, I don't think there was much to worry about.

Parramatta's City Square

City Square seems to be taking shape, and it's got a certain drama to it. Must say, I was a bit taken in by the name, and expected a big, grand, open civic square out of it. It's more of another corridor pedestrian mall, and an excuse for more tall buildings.

Not so rooty hill

The western Sydney suburb of Rooty Hill does indeed have a hill called Rooty Hill. I climbed it for the first time today. It's only 74m above sea level though. Not a really challenging hill.

And it's  not very rooty. In fact if we had to name it today, we'd probably call it Bald Hill.

But it's got great views all around. Here's the view to the Blue Mountains, specifically to Mt Hay and Mt Banks, the most identifiable peaks from all over Sydney.

You can just see Rooty's other famous landmark: the Rooty RSL. Or at least, its 'Western Sydney Performing Arts Centre', a $100 million theatre built mostly with the profits from the RSL's poker machines. They say it's a community arts centre, but you'll have to walk through the club, and past all those gambling machines, to get into or out of it!

Surf's up in Coogee

There's been one of those wild winter weather events this week along Sydney's coastal strip. It's involved 10m waves and closed beaches of course.

But surfers don't do closed beaches, at least not the intrepid ones. They were there again at Coogee.

On Wednesday there was one fewer than on Tuesday. One had gone out and gone missing. Even the Virgin Mary couldn't help. (She was famously seen here about 20 years ago.)

Above: there's nobody in the normally placid rock pool!

Mt Murray Anderson - do-able after all!

I had recollections of a previous attempt on Mt Murray Anderson, about 10 years previously. I remembered a particularly gruelling bush-bash, and an ignominious retreat. I also remembered vowing never to try it again.

So it was inevitable I'd sign up for a return bout the other day.

It's in the Ku-ring-gai Chase National Park, north of Duffys Forest. You start on a fire trail, but soon you're pushing through thick scrub, finding ways down the cliffs, and battling on up slippery creeks.

Towards the end, eventually approaching our mythic destination, the terrain became surprisingly easy, and we traversed large rock platforms liberally decorated with indigenous carvings.

Lunch was had overlooking Cowan Creek and Smiths Creek, and then it was time to head back. What horrors awaited us on the return journey?

Turned out there was another way out, along a very easy track! We were out in no time. I'd no idea!

Memory's a very strange thing. Looking back through my records, I've come to the conclusion that I did get to Murray Anderson after all on that previous expedition. I'd confused it with another double-barrel mountain, Mt Macleod Morgan. That one's even located in the 'Devil's Wilderness'. So it looks like I'll have to revisit it too now!

Peregrine vs pigeon

While having morning tea break the other day at Liversidge Hill in the Blue Mountains, I watched a life-and-death drama being played out. It involved a peregrine falcon (fastest bird in the world) and a very frightened rock pigeon.

Hopelessly slow and portly by comparison, and knowing it represented a very tasty meal, poor pigeon made an emergency landing under a bush very near us, and crouched in there looking every bit as terrified as it must have been. Peregrine circled and dived for quite a while. He knew it was just a matter of time.

Eventually we had to move on. We gave pigeon and his refuge a wide berth, and departed the scene. Looking back from time to time, Peregrine kept circling.

Then he dived, and we couldn't witness what eventuated. It probably wasn't pretty though.

Red-headed and lethal as........

I think I'd seen pictures of these, but the one we came across the other day on my Blue Mountains bushwalk was probably the first I'd actually met. It's a red-headed mouse spider (Missulena occatoria). It's a similar size and shape to the Sydney funnel-web. And according to the Australian Museum, its venom is potentially as dangerous.

We didn't know any of this at the time, and to check whether or not this thing was in fact a type of funnel-web, we subjected it to the gold-standard test: we waved a stick at it. If it reared up and prepared to lunge, we'd been led to believe, then it's a funnel-web. It didn't, but we kept our distance anyway.

Liversidge Hill and Birrabang Walls

My Thursday walk this month was again to the burnt-out but majestic series of ridges between the Bells Line of Road and the Grose River valley in the Blue Mountains. We explored Liversidge Hill and Birrabang Walls, both with magnificent views across the Grose to the cliffs on the other side.

Above is Liversidge Hill, our morning tea spot. Straight across from us was Baltzer Lookout and the amazing Hanging Rock.

An hour or two later, and up and down a few more bits, and we're heading south again, along the ridge out to Birrabang Walls.

Here's our lunchtime view from the edge of the Walls.

An excellent outing as ever. Easy walking after the fires, though we got rather black from all that charcoal. And there's a certain beauty to the green (and red) shoots of the regrowth.

More Sunshine greenery: Maleny Botanic Gardens

It's a fabulous location,overlooking the Glasshouse Mountains, near Maleny in the Sunshine Coast hinterland. They've a Bird World too, but we didn't quite get to that yet.

Buderim greenery 2: Maroochy Bushland Botanic Gardens