Bellarine Rail trail, Leopold

 Oddly, I've only seen this yellow lichen on the Leopold section of the walk, where for about 2-3 kilometers it is extremely prevalent.

 The flowes seemed darker in real like than the photograph, but who's to say the technology behind my eyes is working? We only saw the one of these.

Maybe the word "former" could as well appear elsewhere in this sign. farmland behind, but subdivision surely not far away.

Reedy Lake - February

 Above is the view from the entrance at Moolap Station Rd - left you can see a detail of the above foreground, with enough of the black, cracked soil to be reminded of what the whole place looked like 2 months ago. In my lawn I call the red-tendrilled things 'weeds' but here it's easy to see their value and their beauty.

In the top picture you can also see the different effect our (very early autumn) rain has had on the two different species of reed: one still brown topped, the other almost luminescent with new young foliage.

Here I've tried to capture the different zones of foliage; reinforced by history, by water level, by subsoil salt patterns, I don't know. There's quite a variation in height - maybe as much as 2-3 metres across the whole of the lake, which is enough to make  significant differences.

I think this is rainwater, captured quite a way away from the above pictures, in an areas where there hasn't ben much re-vegetation.

Sadly, it's also oil.

Hard to photograph birds with a small camera and shaky hands. I think these two are partners. Getting ready for the shooting season in three weeks.

This lot is different. I have no idea, close up the picture isn't good enough for me to tell.

The most amazing birds looked to me like swifts (based on the tail) although I didn't know we had swifts. There was a strong wind at water level and they were having a lot of fun flying into it & then allowing themselves to be blown back for another try.

But too quickly for my camera, I think.

Lake Connewarra

Lake Connewarra, looking west-south-west towards the entrance of the Barwon

 I heard a rumour that the land on the point is public, but access is through the farm. I feel I want to have more than a rumour before wandering down there. You can see the farm & home paddock gets a spot more water than the rest of the property. Possibly you can make out the swans...

The camera doesn't have the lens for this sort of photography. There is a lot of bird life on this lake. Next time we'll bring the binoculars. This spot is the perfect spot to launch a canoe from, and the lake is so shallow that there's no risk of motor boats.

More Reedy Lake

 There's not much water left in the lake now - it took me an hour to track this down, plus some serious mud walking. I had no idea there were ibis in the picture until I got home; this shot is really a tribute to my little handheld camera and its lens. I shot this at ISO 800 at 1/1200 to reduce the shake of the long lens (20x zoom, whatever that translates into in the old-fashioned measurement...not much meaningful, I don't think).

I'm pretty much in the middle of the reserve here.

 Footprints - of what though? OK, the birds are probably ibis, just on the basis of how many there are around, but's what's this other thing? Kangaroo footprints have toes; well that's what I've mainly seen.

Very windy - a pity you can't photograph the sound of the wind though. Great for walking, because it keeps the flies at home.

 It's hard to believe the above photo was taken less than 20 meters away from this one. Within a very small area the variety of vegetation patterns is amazing. The range of vegetation - the big stuff at least - isn't amazing, but its responses to invisible changes in the environment is. Presumably there are slight differences in depth of underground water and/or salt and/or soil compaction.

 More footprints.

A dog, I'm thinking.

I can't decide if this is an unexpected memorial - believe me, it's a long way from anywhere - or a signpost. Really, they both seem about equally likely. The wood is arrow-shaped.

 Old fence posts, presumably left over from the days when farmers could get grazing licences for Reedy Lake. That stopped in the 1960's, more or less.

 Surface rainwater left over from Wednesday's storm. This is actually the periphery of the lake, with farmland close by.

 Looking back across two reed barriers, then into paddock/grazing/farm land.

 It looks dry, but this is very soft. The picture illustrates the apparently arbitrary clumps of reed variety.

One section of today's walk was covered with these purple wildflowers - the strong light has rather bleached the picture, but the couple in my shadow give something of the idea. This section of the lake, again, much nearer the middle than the side, was unlike any other section, with completely different ground covers, no soil cracking - I can't say no reeds, 'cos you can see the reedlings; but anyway, very few.

Barwon River AM

Ducks of some kind. And a seagull.

This is the "lawn" outside the rowing club. We've just disembarked because a large number of power boats have mysteriously appeared in the section of the river labelled 'rowing'. It transpires that the sign does not apply from the 18th December through early January, when the waterskiers 'own' the river from 10 am. Fair enough, I guess.

I can't find the ducks in my birdbook; it's not really 'bird watching', is it, more, 'guess what was passing though the artist's brain when s/he drew this'. Like Picasso.

I am convinced that I have discovered Nessie; a bit of cropping, some blur from a Scottish fog; all reference points to the banks deleted and bingo. I'm quite pleased and disappointed with this picture - in the previous two shots there was a fish in the beak, but too blurred to see; a combination of haste and slow shutter speeds.

The athletics track is also nearby. See note below about extending the bike track.

This is the three bridges of Geelong; not particularly scenic, it has to be said. And there are plenty of others, just not that I could fit into this shot. If I have my bearings correct - unlikely - the third bridge in this picture is the halfway point of the Saturday morning parkrun, in the Balyang Reserve.

This one I know - an Australasian darter, preening.

Geelong is an industrial city.

Another one of those darters - again, the shutter speed was wrong for the conditions, so the neck's not very clear. This is a big bird - in fact I didn't know darters got this size, so if someone tells me it's something else (a great cormorant?) I'd be unsurprised.

Passing the golf course. Not so different to the Cooks river, really.

More waterfowl. The plant on the bank is lignum, of which there is a lot throughout the wetlands. Home to lots of small birds, which if you have extremely quick eyes, you might see. I guess if you see them often enough, you might identify them.

This was close to what I assume was once a ford (?) but now is (I think) the breakwater after which the suburb is named, crossed by Gundog Lane, which is where we put the boats in. There are excellent walking tracks on both sides of the river up to Gundog Lane. After that, nothing. I feel a mission in life coming along. A path continuing along the river here would pass within about 600 meters of our place, which would make cycling into town extremely pleasant. It would also make the distance from our house to the athletics track 3.5k along the river, which would be a nice way to get to training.

Reedy Lake - Moolap Station Road

The line of trees marks Moolap Station Road, on the North side of Reedy Lake. Previous pictures have been from the South, the Barwon River side. The flora-scape, if I may be so bold, is a little different. Although there are reeds to the right. Afraid the pictures are a bit unfocused.

It turns out to be possible to walk into the lake - two months ago this would have been continuous water. Mind you, it's not as dry as it might look at first glance. This was taken about 20 meters from the birds (I was upwind) and if the ground had been firmer I could have got closer. I guess that's an ibis, but there were a couple of different species also present. Without binoculars though, they'll remain a mystery.

More of the path in. Not easy to find on the way out! Lignum in the mid-ground. I don't know what about the soil favours the lignum over reeds; judging from the south side, reeds will out compete the lignum if they can get a toehold, but it must be something pretty specific because here the lignum is in dry soil while in the picture above with the birds you can also see lignum in thick wet mud.

On one side of the channel, lignum; on the other, reeds, albeit pretty young reeds. I don't know if the channel is natural or human. There's no sign of recent machinery, but maybe once dug it would survive for a long time. There are lots of interesting variations to the surface, which, being a lake bottom at least half the year, I would have expected to be more uniform.

The footsteps are getting deeper. This was the point from which I took the bird pictures - it's not too hard to see why I was nervous about going out further. It was, as you can see from the shadow and the sky, a beautiful afternoon.

Lignum proving its versatility.

At least two varieties of reed. Plus Moolap or Leopold in the background.













White birds, and black/brown birds, and piebald birds.

These are not mangrove roots, but they look a bit like them. I assume they're one of the reed varieties waiting to recover. I can't help thinking as I'm walking here that it would be a fantastic place to run.


The mud holds footprints pretty well - I saw a few dogs, sheep, lots and lots of birds, and what I assume was a kangaroo - sets of two narrow parallel indentations about a metre apart. No dragging tail though, and I didn't think it was particularly kangaroo country.

Aqueduct

This is really a beautiful piece of concrete architecture set in a heavily contested landscape. The foreground is infill and although nothing ever seems to be happening here, it's being prepared for building; presumably warehouses of some kind.

Weeds (I think) colonising the waste ground / service roads. This area was once contiguous with, and presumably substantially the same as the Connewarra wetlands. But being at the back of Leather and Tanner streets hasn't bought it much respect over the years. There's plenty of signs of earlier dumped waste soil; now better regulated perhaps.

It's possible some of these are actually indigenous plants (there's samphire, for example, which might exist in a local variety) - but there were at least three varieties of thistle, and plenty of  that side-of-the-road grass.

 The Barwon looking serene; cold wind though. Signs warn against bathing under the structure - pieces might fall off.

 OK, so these are indigenous plants; these are two (the foreground is sedge, the background I think lignum) of the three main plants around Lake Reedy.

Mind you, there's been a lot of engineering down river on the Barwon to keep the salt water out - so really, even Lake Reedy is not pre-European & so unless these are salt tolerant they might be considered weeds as well.

 The full length of the aqueduct itself is protected by barbed wire fences, pretty well maintained. The concrete is starting to wear off - you can see the interior rebar in quite a few places.  Worth preserving in my view.

 I can't really believe they are still pumping stuff through the pipe in that aqueduct; this is much more modern and I assume it's part of the replacement system. Whenever I see buildings like this, I'm reminded of the final scene in Angelheart - Mickey Rourke going to hell in a lift, endlessly down...

It's probably just a pump though,

 Solid

but beautiful.