birds

weekend walks: lake parramatta reserve

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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.

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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.

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This was the first of our weekend walks where we had to cross creeks or streams – really putting the new shoes to the test!

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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.

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Wishing everyone a happy Sunday!

Hope you have a great week ahead 🙂 

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weekend walks: coastal cronulla

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We chose a coastal walk this time because after last week’s encounters with the reptiles, we opted to stay out of any bush areas. We saw lots of different birds instead.

The walk began at  North Cronulla Surf Life Saving Club and the weather was pleasant enough. It was cloudy but certainly was not raining. As we headed south only about 10 minutes into the walk, the rain came. Summer is gone and winter is coming. The original plan was to keep walking south to the end of the Esplanade before turning back and walking towards Wanda Beach, making the walk about 9.2 km long.

Courtesy of Google Maps - Thank you for helping us calculate the walk
Courtesy of Google Maps – Thank you for helping us calculate the walk

We had even fuelled up on a big breakfast beforehand.

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But the rain was relentless and we ended up walking only 2.2 km south before turning back and getting into the car soaking wet! And as our luck would have it, the rain stopped as we drove off so we chose to drive up to Wanda Beach and spent almost 40 minutes or so at the Cronulla sand dunes. The sand dunes are often used by those looking for a tough workout (including athletes at pre-season training or personal training sessions).

Hope you enjoy our photos from the walk this week. Sorry we couldn’t showcase Sydney blue skies at their best.

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