Koala spotting

Glorious spring weather literally demands you get out there and enjoy it -- you know the feeling. Winter is fine, but one day the wind changes direction (you can "tell the difference between a hawk and a handsaw" -- if the ghost of Will Shakespeare will forgive me the reinterpretation) and you just have to get outside and ... do stuff. Have to. So --

I've been wanting to get back to Belair National Park for years now. Dave and I used to hang out there all the time, back in 2005-10-ish, but we haven't had the chance in a long while. Being a full-time care-giver (or carer, as we say downunder) is ... well, it's exactly that. 24/7, and as close to 365 as the carer can get and not go completely insane. It's very tough to get out of the house when the person you're caring for is unwell and there's a never-ending stream of problems to solve.

The good news is, Mom is actually doing much better lately. She has the cough from hell, but the GP promises it's "only" bronchitis, it hasn't gotten into the lung tissue itself -- we're not talking about pneumonia or pleurisy, and the fact is, she could still be hacking at Christmas, at this rate. So Dave and I took the opportunity for a four-hour getaway, while Mike was home to babysit, and went --

Koala spotting!

In fact, we saw about six, and one ... a teddy-bear sized female sitting up in a cherry tree that's just beginning to blossom ... had a little baby:

Mama and baby koala at Belair National Park, 2016

Awwww, so cute! They really are cute -- and they can get very large, much larger that this little girl, above, who really was teddy-bear-size, even though she has a quite well-grown cub. (What is a baby koala called??) This guy, below, was a lot bigger, and ... check out those claws:

They could do a lot of damage with claws like that, but fortunately most of what koalas do is snooze. What a life. Seriously. I was zoomed way in for a closeup on one of these fellows when the camera (Fuji HS50) surprised me: on one of its specialty menus it has a "Toy" setting -- a special pre-set suite of adjustments designed for photographing ... toys. Face recognition is also turned on, and the camera recognized the koala's face as a toy, and clicked itself automatically to Toy mode!

You gotta chuckle, because the fact is, koalas do look like cuddly soft toys. The truth is, they're not. But they're soooo cute. I do believe they still call them "Qantas bears" in Japan, after they featured in an airline commercial a long, long time ago. (In point of fact, they ain't bears at all.)

Along the way ... I think I was stalked and almost set upon by a bunyip ...

...but when I turned around, of course Dave, my knight in shining armor, had chased it away. He was standing there, innocent and heroic, after chasing off this beast which everyone thinks is purely mythical. And after saving my life from the creature he kindly posed for a portrait in the Grand Manner...

Dave, having rescued me from the bunyip. I think.

LOL, anyway -- we survived. We were at the redwoods grove, which is so deep in Belair NP, you actually run into the fence where the park ends. It was gorgeous, with spring coming in and blossom everywhere. In about another two weeks the chestnut trees will be "out," and we must see if we can get back. I'd love to photograph them in flower. The calla lilies -- which grow wild here -- are just beginning their season ...

Calla lilies in the wild ... Belair NP, September 2016

...and the air was sweet with blossom and heavy with the drone of bees. I could have stayed there for a week. Or three. "Gone to hide in woods," as Dave and I like to say. You can see wallabies, emus and echidnas in the park on any ordinary day, but the only other critters we saw yesterday were the usual rabbits, and -- for the first time ever, a southern brown bandicoot ... which I did manage to photograph, but he looks like a dark brown furry bump, so there's nothing dramatic to upload. Too bad, because they're so rare these days. Never seen one in the wild before.

This was interesting:

The park was moving in a number of enormous rainwater tanks -- probably for fire water, I'd say. We watched them moving the first one in, when we were on the trail out to the redwoods, and a couple of hours later -- on another trail entirely, on the way up to Amphitheater Rocks -- we had to step off the asphalt (into somewhat boggy grass) and make way for another tank coming down from Waverly Gate. Interesting, how they move them. The work truck, which you'd assume would move the tank, just follows on. Shows you which vehicle has the oomph -- especially since these tanks are going out to a very steep fire track, from the top of which they'll provide a good supply for fire fighters, in the event (gods forbid) a fire gets into the park. Neat.

When the tank had gone by we continued on to Amphitheater Rocks: the trail has been cleared, you can actually get through now. In other years it's been fortified by bramble bushes, which provide a fantastic habitat for fairy wrens and such, but literally lock out humans. Here's the top of the gorge:

Amphitheatre Rocks at Belair National Park

Rain cascades off the top, after a shower ... and it really does look like a giant, or a troll, lives inside. Reminds me of the Giant's Cave at Morialta. (Must do a blog post about Morialta -- over on the other blog.)

So there you have it: a day's escape into the woods, making the most of this glorious weather, and a very good time indeed was had by all. Even managed to get a selfie that looks pretty decent, so here I am: enjoying the heck out of the day, and (looking at the pic) starting to wonder seriously about putting some color into my hair. I used to be a redhead. Honest! I've got the snapshots to prove it. Born that way: Scots-Irish. Mother Nature had other ideas, starting when I was about 24, and lately I've been letting her get the bit between her teeth and run. Hmmm. Redhead. Food for thought.