weekend walks: lake parramatta reserve
After what seemed like an extraordinarily long week, the weekend was finally here. This week’s walk was just a relatively short one compared to last week.
Lake Parramatta is about 20 minutes west of Sydney. The Lake Circuit is about 4½ km and took us about 2 hours – there were two easier, shorter walks but we opted for this one to break in our new hiking boots 🙂 It wasn’t a hard walk, it was just that we wandered off track occasionally for photo opportunities or just for the mere exploration factor.
We were graced with the presence of plenty of birds, insects and reptiles, fortunately none of the reptiles were snakes. And we saw mushrooms – lots and lots of mushrooms: from brown ones to yellow ones to bright fluoro orange ones.
This was the first of our weekend walks where we had to cross creeks or streams – really putting the new shoes to the test!
Although immersed in nature on this walk, the sounds of humankind is not far off. Competing with the trees rustling and birds squawking are the loud rumbles of planes overhead or the engines of cars passing on the main road nearby. Sadly, the sound of nature does get drowned out often. There is a spell of silence about half way in the walk where the tracks goes a little further from the main roads which made the walk much more pleasant!
Despite our ears not really feeling like we had escaped the city, our eyes were fortunate enough to enjoy the view of our surrounds.
wise monkeys abroad 
April 5, 2014 at 11:04 am
Beautiful photos! Have a great weekend! 🙂
April 5, 2014 at 11:07 am
Thank you Linda!
Hope you have a lovely weekend too!
April 3, 2014 at 4:52 pm
I really like your photos.Especially the stoned pathway and the glimpse of light. Makes me feeling like jumping in the river right now LOL!
April 3, 2014 at 5:06 pm
Yes, we felt like doing the same by that time! It was very warm!
So glad to hear you like our photos 🙂
April 3, 2014 at 8:01 am
Haven’t visited there in ages. Your photos make it sounds so enticing. What kind of background noise did you hear – was it people speaking, public transport, traffic or something else? I’m glad to hear your brand new shoes passed the test.
April 3, 2014 at 11:33 am
We could hear cars / trucks driving on the highway (constantly) and planes flying up above! It was natural surrounds without only natural sounds.
Hope you are well 🙂
April 3, 2014 at 12:32 am
Could you pick the mushrooms, for eating later? 😉
April 3, 2014 at 5:53 am
Haha! At those colours, they were probably highly poisonous! There were so many different species of mushrooms everywhere.
March 31, 2014 at 9:12 pm
It looks beautiful and peaceful, even though you can hear civilization.
March 31, 2014 at 9:26 pm
Thanks a bunch for swinging by and for following our blog! This walk was very beautiful and we became experts at blocking out “civilization” during this walk. It was the perfect way to start the weekend by “getting away” for a few hours 🙂
March 31, 2014 at 7:17 pm
Maybe not very far from the city in sounds, but the views are great! A bit jealous of that walk – think we would have loved it!
March 31, 2014 at 7:56 pm
Yes, it was a lovely walk – ever since we started doing these walks around Sydney, we’ve seen our home city in different eyes and have discovered there is so much more than what we had once thought!
Aha – you see, we are jealous of your mini getaways around Europe! 😉
March 31, 2014 at 8:03 pm
Europe for you and Australia for us… Both not really short getaways!
March 31, 2014 at 4:05 pm
Lovely pictures again, folks. For Tanzalongs’ benefit, we should perhaps point out that we don’t get the dramatic autumn colours of New England USA or South island NZ, mostly because none of the native tress are deciduous (they just shed all year!)
March 31, 2014 at 4:38 pm
Ahhh – thank you for clarifying!! Very good point 🙂 And thanks for the compliment and for visiting!
March 31, 2014 at 6:32 am
Looks like a really nice place to walk….but I am not too fond of reptiles….any reptiles! 🙂
March 31, 2014 at 7:00 am
Same… Seems like every walk, we are encountering either insects or reptiles 🙂
It was a lovely enough walk albeit the noisy main road in the background!
March 31, 2014 at 2:44 am
Lovely pics – do you get an Autumn in Sydney?
March 31, 2014 at 5:46 am
Yes we do, it currently is our autumn – so a little cooler and wetter than summer 🙂
Thanks for the compliment!!