Tag Archives: landscape

Australia, Bungendore, NSW

One Year On (Part 1)

I’m sitting here looking out of the window.  It’s nearly 8am.  The sun hasn’t yet got to the house, but it has made it to the chook house.  It has been cold again overnight.  The kind of cold you know about.  It’s white (again) outside despite the blue skies and sunshine.  It was around the -3°C to -4°C mark yet again last night.  Not as cold as Monday night (we lost the water again), but I’ve learnt to gauge the outside temperature by how far up the fields the hoar frost comes and today it has come all the way up and passed the house, but it didn’t make it all the way up to the veranda and the pond only has a very light layer of ice on it.  Still it was cold and the tap water told us about it.  Mind you so did the laundry room floor, air temp, the toilet room, the bedroom… you get the idea.  The only place lovely and snug outside of the bed, was the sitting room.

The wood burner, sorry, slow combustion stove and the chaos that is currently the sitting room!

Winter didn’t officially start until a few days ago, but Autumn finished with a series of wonderful sunsets and sunrises, a spell of foggy and then cold to very cold weather and some fantastic colours outside despite most of the place being Eucalyptus which is evergreen!  That is after a short spell of this.

Another subtle but nice sunrise

And then this…

…and then a few days of this.

Not a day to be doing the washing!
The chook house has had to have its moat redug.

Inside the chook house, the inner enclosure also needed the ‘trench’ redug.

The trench…
It’s hard sitting in the sun drinking coffee

The floor level has been dropped on the other side of the roof which handily comes without guttering.  The far end which wasn’t draining has been dug out and filled with rocks.  I did the same last winter, but it has needed to be repeated.  Hopefully this time it will last a tad longer.

We then had a spell of bright sunny days,

Morning rituals. I stand and wave goodbye… …with a mug of coffee in my hands, I’ll admit!

…cold nights, some nice sunrises, some foggy sunrises, …

Autumn colours and the first frosts

 

Foggy mornings in Autumn

some foggy sunrises and the first real frosts…

Got colder and frostier…
And some were quite spectacular
..with the colours extending way round to the north
but still foggy…

… the sunsets also started to get really nice as well…

The last of the evening light…
but both sunrises and sunsets don’t last long

along with some nice sunsets.

Looking up from sitting with the chooks, this sunset said fire. At first it was a pale wispy smoke which said bush fire, but then it went dark and serious and it said it had found something else to burn.

One sunset said fire to me very loudly and a quick check on the Fires Near Me site confirmed this.  The following day the main highway (The Kings Highway) was closed when the cold foggy morning compressed the smoke from the fire (a controlled burn that wasn’t as well controlled as hoped for) down onto the ground after way too many accidents.  Luckily because Stuart likes to get out before the main rush, he got through before the road was closed, but he said conditions were not good at all.

The Autumn colours came and went in a couple of days in our garden but I was able to photograph some on the road as well….

Autumn Colours

In our veg plot, we had this wonderful golden tree for a few days, then masses of fallen leaves.  At least the chooks are having fun now that I have moved them into their enclosure.

Whilst it is hard to make out, this tree is in the veg plot and the only angle to view it from when it is a lovely as this, is from the sunroom!

 

Autumn gold… comes and goes in a few days. Gales the next day stripped the tree of its leaves.

I took a few photographs of the maple (?) that also grows in the veg plot area.  It only went gold this year, with the odd leaf being red but the leaves on the ground were marvellous.

Autumn colours
so very beautiful
A friend once said, the best way to preserve the colours wasn’t to press and dry the leaves…
… but was to photograph them where they lay.

The days have steadily grown colder and another cold start to the day….

The view from the sunroom and it says ‘COLD’…. I woke at 3am to find out that we had already lost water. The pipes, somewhere in the garden, had frozen again.

reveals some wonderful hoar frost…

My view. My frozen view with a ‘roo.

…and a chilly morning to be without any water (or my personal hot water bottle for that matter – how does he know?  He always manages to be away from home when something like this happens).

The very sheltered thermometer on the veranda

But the views remain great.

The way out east – OK, sorry. It’s one of the calendar views but this was taken this week and as you can see, it is just as nice as before
The view from the chook enclosure.

A timely reminder to check before you charge off the veranda.  I can now finally tell the difference between a wallaby and a ‘roo.

A timely reminder on Tuesday morning, that I should remember to look up and around as I come charging out of the house…. The wallaby had come down to the pond for water. The pond was frozen.
The chimney now has an extension…. Tuesday morning and it is still cold out!
I just like the hoar frost and it came a long way up passed the house on Tuesday morning and when you have no running water, what else is there to do other than to wander around with the camera (until the battery complains and the card is full). Well I suppose there is the log run to do.
Our view. Aspects still remind me of Scandinavia until you spot a ‘roo or wallaby that is!
The view from the car port. I know, I am meant to be getting the wood in, but…
One of our bushes – it didn’t go as red as the other one (which is scarlet) but this one was catching the light nicely.

I was to spend the remains of the day digging holes in the garden to try to find an exposed water pipe, so that I could bury it again.  To quote my facebook entry (yeah, I know…)

I have just spent the morning digging to find an exposed pipe so that I could bury it again.

I believe I may have accidentally buried my sense of humour along with the pipe instead of my jobs list.

The irony of this situation is not lost on me, unlike my sense of humour which presumably won’t freeze overnight.

The pipe’s location is now marked with bamboo markers which will be swapped over to something more permanent shortly.  We will also be burying the pipe a touch deeper (it hasn’t frozen again, but we want to ensure that the wildlife around here doesn’t dig it back up).

Given that it is now 11:30am, I’ll continue tomorrow or Monday.  I have housework to get on with, cleaning to do, hoovering and chicks to tend to…. then a certain husband of mine should be home for lunch and hopefully with the supplies I need to carry on with the chook house repairs and renovations. Now that they have to spend much more time in the enclosure, we have had to make it more secure and also to provide them with areas for dust bathing, foraging, and ‘entertainment’.  I’m still working on the latter.  I’ll update you all on the chicks soon as well.  They have grown considerably and one or two of them definitely have personalities!

Australia, Bungendore, NSW

Holidays (Part 3)

Friday came and we decided we had to make a day of it.  It was a nice day out, blue skies and warm, so we decided to go and visit the observatory.

In the morning we went off to the Mount Stromlo Observatory just outside of Canberra.   It was badly affected by the bush fires back in 2003 but they have renovated some of the place and left other areas as it was but made safe, as a memorial to the old observatory.  They have also changed what the site is now about because Canberra has become too large and has too much light pollution for it to be a working observatory anymore.

The views from the summit were stunning because the weather was so very good.  There are multiple buildings and telescopes on the summit, so there is plenty of opportunity to walk around and have a good look all around at the views and the telescopes.

Most of the place the photos talk for it.

On a hill with a good view on a good day
From the car park it does not look that interesting!
Sometimes you just can’t get a wheelchair to the view
Off-roading is something I will leave to Stuart’s feet for the moment!
Enthusiasm…
These signs are all around a walkway around the top of the hill. They provide a wealth of information about the place.

 

No 2. Eyes on the Skies

 

No 3 An Observatory is Born

 

No 4 The Future of Mount Stromlo Observatory (after the fires of 2003 devastated the observatory)

 

 

No 5 The Director’s Residence

 

No 6 A Home on the Hill

 

No 7 The Other Lives of Mount Stromlo

 

The home of the director

 

Stuart took this picture because we were not able to get the wheelchair to quite a few locations and this was one of them.  It is a map of the Moon.
Another good view!

 

Stuart spotted this signpost as we were leaving the summit of Mount Stromlo. He decided that this means “Warning The cyclist in front has broken wind”…. I can’t take him anywhere!

Leaving Mouth Stromlo Observatory we still had several hours to spare so decided to visit the NASA Deep Space Communication Complex that wasn’t that much further down the road.

The drive there was a typical uneven road but with stunning scenery (on a good day which we had).  As you approached the area, we started to feel like we were either on Dartmoor or on the Yorkshire Moors.  It is hard not to compare places to areas you know!

The top of the hill in front looks like a tor to us

 

Our first port of call, as always was the Café.  In this case the Moon Rock Café.  David would much appreciate it because there was a dedicated area for cleaning of motorcycle helmets!

A dedicated motorcycle helmet visor cleaning area

Stuart also had a long conversation with the café owners about Dr Brian Cox, a musician (in a band called D’Ream & Dare), Physicist and Professor of Particle Physics & now a TV & Radio presenter from Oldham.  He was at the DSCC presenting a program about the Life of the Universe.  There was a signed photo on the wall with a message about the chips at the café being very good…

Information on the Space Patches

 

I love this Dreamtime. It is absolutely huge and completely fascinating with so much information about the sky and stars in it.

 

Looking around the site was actually really fascinating and we managed to spend the entire afternoon there and I know that I didn’t get chance to look around everything and would like to go back.

Oh and Mum, Stuart’s birthday card still hasn’t arrived.  What address did you put on it?