Improvise, adapt and overcome is the name of the game sometimes when it comes to planned trips out bush.
I had planned to take a walk into some pretty advanced bush this weekend but as things turned out, I wasn't able to get it sorted by Saturday morning when we were leaving. Instead, I rang the national park to ask about another alternative. Unfortunately, there were scheduled burn-offs in progress, making fire and smoke a hazard to avoid there.
Plan three was to negotiate from the bottom of some cliffs into the creek below. We climbed the mountain, took the climbers track to the bottom of the cliffs on the other side and subsequently found ourselves blocked by very steep and dangerous terrain at every turn. There just seemed to be no safe way to go about it. Might have to come back to crack this one when I have more time to take it slow and safe.
Plan four came as a relief to not only me, but my two companions as we decided to turn south and head to the very summit of the granite tops in our area. Not only did this mean less effort to actually get there, but it allowed us to truly relax and take in the serenity of the mountains.
The sounds of a solitary Lyrebird echoed out of the tree-line below us. Apart from it's signature resonance giving away it's true identity, the animal expertly imitated a pink and grey galah, a Red Wattlebird, a Currawong and several others. Apart from this and a few other small birds, this weekend I was struck by the lack of wildlife. We saw a few lizards and skinks, some wrens and even some female bower-birds, but that was about it. I really was hoping for the wedge-tailed eagles I know to frequent the area but alas, no show.
As God caressed our faces with His temperate breeze, the sun slowly made it's westward descent over the smouldering fires before retreating into thick clouds. That kind of spoiled any afternoon light for the landscape side of photography, but as night blanketed the sky, the top sheets of cloud peeled back to reveal the Milky Way in all it's glory.
Time to break out the torches for a bit of light painting, complimented by Canberra's golden river of street lights blazing upward into the remaining cloud cover. One magnificent boulder on it's own looked great with the fires burning in the background and the Australian Aboriginal's dreamtime Emu stretched it's black neck and head up to look over skeleton trees desperately holding onto the rock in their last-ditch effort to stay upright even after life has left them.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eYb9uo_8dAs
