Tuesday, May 22, 2018

"I was rather worried about Jim."

Those people who are about my age and grew up in the UK will doubtless have run shrieking from that reference to "Mrs Dales Diary".  Rather than a "Jim" the person I was rather worried about was me!  I was liking Glenelg!

We went for our morning walk along the Patawolonga where a guy was having a paddle.
 I hope he was doing laps since it seemed to only take him about 10 minutes to gt back to the start of the Pat.  It was a very pleasant stroll and Tammy met a bunch of other friendly dogs.  Needless to say SA Water has an officious (and IMHO grammatically incorrect) notice on some edifice.
 My good mood got interrupted when my phone ceased to have access to the internet which annoyed me as I thought I still had lots of data to use.  I went into Glenelg to consult Telstra about this and it turned out they had a nationwide fault (again).  I guess someone has to make NBN Co look good.

Having sorted that I went for a walk to the Torrens Linear Park while Frances chatted with her sister.  On the way I called in at the Orange Spot bakery on Anzac Highway.  This provided the first pie of the trip, and a pretty good one it was .  According to the Official Pie Index it rated a 9.  I have only given it 2/3 for taste as it was a pepper pie and the pepperiness wasn't quite as strong as I like.  Possibly a bit harsh , but it wasn't a magic pie like Quincan Cafe at Yungaburra, so I couldn't rate higher than those wonderful efforts.

As soon as I got onto the main part of the Linear Park it was obvious that there were lots of lorikeets around.  They were definitely following the Bird Rules and hiding in foliage and/or blossom as soon as a camera was pointed at them.There is a rainbow lorikeet in this image somewhere!
 I could not get a Musk Lorikeet to pose even that poorly.  (My guess would be close to 100 of each species feeding in the various flowering gums.)  The photo prospects were not assisted by the weather which was cloudy and semi-dull all day, with just enough wind to keep everything bouncing around.

This is the view from Henley Beach Rd, where I crossed to the other side.  Note the well vegetated banks.
 Here is the overall route followed.
I mentioned earlier the flowering eucalypts.  Here are some low hanging flowers: I have no idea what species they are!


 I was really taken with these emerging flowers!
 There seemed to be less graffiti around than I remembered, but this sample looked quite fresh!
Here is the last section of the park, heading down towards the mouth.
 The banks are used by horse persons.  While this means the banks here are relatively barren the grass was happily grazed upon by good numbers of Coots, 'hens and ducks.  Crested Pigeons and (boo hiss ) Spotted Doves were also feeding on something on the ground.

As I walked back I was VERY surprised to find this idiot driving along a cycling/walking track.  He smiled at me as he went by, not apologising for me having to get off the track to let his fat arse by.
The main problem with this is the number of blind bends on the track.  If a cyclist doing, say, 20kph met him in a twisty bit Mr Plod would have had a new bonnet mascot.  Obviously given this effort there is no point in reporting cretinous driving to The Filth.  The champion civilian effort thus far has been a guy who treated a red traffic light on Tapleys Hill Rd as a stop and clearly drove across in front of us, who were driving towards a constant green light.  (Update:  later in the week we visited this site on foot and realised that the light concerned was a pedestrian crossing about 2m past the intersection the car emerged from.  Somehow this positioning seems daft, but what the driver did was quite legal!)

Recovering from my walk being interrupted the birds seemed to be kicking up a ruckus, with a strange buzzy noise appearing to be involved.  On looking closely  I found a Southern Boobook winning bird of the day.  So I got some Allocasuarina in focus.
Following by getting the owl in (manual) focus but hidden somewhat behind a branch.
Less hidden behind a branch was a rat with wings.  They were outnumbered by about 2:1 by Crested Pigeons but still quite a lot of Spotted Doves around.
At some point in the walk I came across this site:
 The idea is that a phone or camera is positioned on top of the post and when a photo is taken it is emailed to some folk at the Uni of SA who can then assess the revegetation of the site.  A most interesting idea,  Here is the resultant image.


In the afternoon we went for a short walk involving Jetty Road.  As tatty as ever.

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