Yesterday the weather was a little unsettled in the morning, and Di woke to a slightly sore foot after a couple of days back climbing. There were a few jobs that needed doing so, all things considered, we decided to take a break from climbing, do those jobs and have a visit to the Little Desert National Park.
Before we headed off Di wandered around with her camera while I was getting ready. One of the flowering gums is bursting with blooms, no doubt pushed along by the bit of rain we've had ...
One of the jobs that need doing was to fix our reading lights, which had shorted out a couple of nights before. Another job was to get a pole tube for the car organised, as Di has been getting sick of packing the awning poles away in the camper, especially when we have to pack up in wet weather. So we now have a pole tube on the roof of the car. Here's the photo I just popped out and took a moment ago so you can see what I'm talking about ...
We got that and the problem with the reading lights fixed - which needed a little mend in the cord that had got pinched - at the ARB store in Horsham. Good helpful folks who assembled our new pole tube for us after I nipped over to Tradelink to pick up a bit of 100 mm PVC tube. A bit of grocery shopping then back to camp. All set to go with reading in bed again. Well, at least that's what we thought. When we went to test the reading lights they still weren't working. At that point I thought to look inside the 12 volt plug at the inbuilt fuse. Yep, it needed replacing too. Pity I didn't think to check that before we went to town.
As we were on our way to Little Desert and had to go through Natimuk anyway, I tried at the milk bar for a replacement fuse. Nope, no fuses. Some other quirky bits of hardware, but no fuses. Goroke was just a little way past our turnoff into the Nature Lodge at Little Desert so we detoured via there and got a fuse - and a couple of spares. (When we got back to camp it was a pleasure to find all was good again and we could actually read in bed again. The joy of simple pleasures ... no TV but lots of reading. Actually, although I say no TV, we occasionally watch a gem from ABC IView as a special treat. The Janet King series has just concluded, but we were delighted to see that adaptations of Peter Temple's gritty Jack Irish novels are back on the box and made available via iView. Temple's crime fiction is about as good as it gets and very Australian in character. You might like to check out Bad Debts via iView.)
We like visiting the Little Desert as there is a pleasant walk through classic mallee desert scrub, which also goes past two waterholes where birds can sometimes be seen. It's not that far away from where we like to camp at Natimuk Lake. We've been there three times and it's interesting to see the subtle - and not so subtle - changes over the last few years. There is more evidence of rabbits unfortunately. Also, since the big wet of 2011 there has been little rain, and the boost the vegetation got during that period has now been lost. Some shrubs that grew quickly have experienced major die back.
The park was set up to try to preserve the endangered Malleefowl, and there is an extensive fenced section near the lodge to keep feral cats, foxes and other noxious pests out. (If this is starting to sound like an echo, yes we visited the park last year and made a post; so don't worry if I seem to be repeating myself - maybe I've got early onset Alzheimer's, but at least I'm aware of it!
As you enter the fenced-off area you are greeted by this little remembrance ...
Here's a close-up of the sign on the right ...
Who is Helen Handbury? I wondered myself. Turns out she was the elder sister of Rupert Murdoch and daughter of the great philanthropist Elizabeth Murdoch. By the sound of things Helen was true to her mum's example.
Anyway, back to us. Di took this picture at the first of the waterholes, known as Big M's Waterhole ...
The vegetation changes pretty quickly in quite a small area ...
In another area there are clumps of grasses that have these long spiky flower heads ...
There are Grey Kangaroos grazing around wherever you come across a bit of grass and we stopped to take a couple of portraits ...
In the next photo you can see the inner of the two fence lines which have been to protect the ground-dwelling Malleefowl ...
Here's another pair of Grey Kangaroos grazing away on the slender pickings ...
At the other waterhole, known as Whimpey's Waterhole we stopped and watched swallows swooping for insects. Di tried to get a photo of a pair perched on a little bridge that goes out to a small island but the light wasn't good enough for her lens to reproduce good detail. I took this picture of reflections of grasses growing in the waterhole ...
The highlight of the day though was the visit that this emu paid us just as we got back to the car and were getting ready to leave ...
Sorry it's not that great a photo as I didn't have my camera at hand and used the phone. I also shot a short video of it getting up close and personal, which I've loaded on to YouTube ...
... which got me wondering what other, better emu videos might be out there. Well, there are a lot, but one that really grabbed me is this highly amusing one the ABC shot in Longreach when lots of emus were coming into town looking for water during drought conditions. (Time for the customary aside: Longreach is where the Queensland And Northern Territory Air Service is said to have been born.) ...
The other one which was interesting was of emus mating: the parade of the male followed the female about for a while eventuating with the act itself. Kind of well-organised as it turns out ...
The drive home was uneventful in comparison to the antics of emus. We stopped so Di could take a photo of Mount Arapiles' backside ...
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| It just looks like a lump of rock from this side, doesn't it? |
We are already looking forward to another great autumn day in the Wimmera and at Mount Arapiles tomorrow.
As a final note, you might be interested in a little mishap that occurred at The Mount in the last 48 hours.
Back to YouTube, here's a more successful attempt on The Squeeze Test ...
Hmmm. The Games Climbers Play, eh?
Catch you later ...
