A mixture of the traditional and very very different marked the run up to Christmas. On Friday night we had a quasi-Christmas dinner at home, with me on cooking duty rustling
up some pork and roast spuds Mum will be proud of. So it was a pretty traditional dinner, but note I am wearing shorts (it was about 32 degrees or so!)Saturday found me in the Australian National Botanic Gardens, a beautiful place at the foot of Black Mountain. There’s some real lush Aussie foliage here and some great smells coming from the plants.
It was a bit of a lizard weekend to be honest, this dragon variety was seen by the café in the Botanic Gardens…
Now, it’s been pretty dry recently, but half way round the Botanic Gardens a storm surfaced and the rain came whipping in for a good half hour or so. Thankfully there was a little shelter to hide under…it was so good to see some proper rain and turning the dusty landscape temporarily lush, with the grey barks of gum trees getting a good rinse and turning a rusty red.
The rain seemed to have made little difference on Sunday, during a typically dry and warm walk up Mount Majura. Now, Mount Majura is another one of Canberra’s ‘mountains’ and I think is the highest at 888 metres. One of the great things about Canberra is that you can be getting frazzled
with Christmas shopping one minute and ten minutes later feel like you are out miles away from anywhere in the bush. You can see how little the rain had changed the landscape as we look East from Mount Majura.
It was a reasonably demanding walk, but the views at the top were good and again there were glimpses of wildlife along the way…yet more lizards and some roos.
So a pretty different Christmas Eve I’m sure you’ll agree. Christmas Day beckons, the presents are under the tree and it’s gonna be a cooler 20C to make it feel ever so slightly more like home. Not quite cold enough for mulled wine but I’m sure I’ll find appropriate substitutes to keep me watered!
It was a bit of a lizard weekend to be honest, this dragon variety was seen by the café in the Botanic Gardens…
Now, it’s been pretty dry recently, but half way round the Botanic Gardens a storm surfaced and the rain came whipping in for a good half hour or so. Thankfully there was a little shelter to hide under…it was so good to see some proper rain and turning the dusty landscape temporarily lush, with the grey barks of gum trees getting a good rinse and turning a rusty red.The rain seemed to have made little difference on Sunday, during a typically dry and warm walk up Mount Majura. Now, Mount Majura is another one of Canberra’s ‘mountains’ and I think is the highest at 888 metres. One of the great things about Canberra is that you can be getting frazzled
with Christmas shopping one minute and ten minutes later feel like you are out miles away from anywhere in the bush. You can see how little the rain had changed the landscape as we look East from Mount Majura.It was a reasonably demanding walk, but the views at the top were good and again there were glimpses of wildlife along the way…yet more lizards and some roos.
So a pretty different Christmas Eve I’m sure you’ll agree. Christmas Day beckons, the presents are under the tree and it’s gonna be a cooler 20C to make it feel ever so slightly more like home. Not quite cold enough for mulled wine but I’m sure I’ll find appropriate substitutes to keep me watered!
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