Mount Whitfield or "Climbing the stairway to Heaven"

Decided to take the children out for a walk this morning so that Tish could have some peace and quiet. One of the sites I have been wanting to visit for a while is Mount Whitfield as there are some great birds in the area. Today though was far more about finding the paths and having a walk.
We found the road that the walks start from but could not initially find the correct path as the whole area is part of the Cairns Botanic Gardens. After a couple of false starts we were off, the path was nicely surfaced if a bit steep in places....

so the occasional stop was called for..

The walk eventually goes off onto the hillside properly but we were not doing that section today. This part was very popular being a circular walk of about 1 mile but despite the number of people sharing the path there was still plenty to see ...

this Australian Bush Turkey was enjoying the sun but moved off when some-one approached
The views were great;

Cairns Esplanade

Take off time at Cairns International

Yorkeys Knob from the south

Out towards the Great Barrier Reef (if you open the image and zoom in you can see one of the Cays or Islands of the reef)

The vegetation up the hill is a mix of both Native and deliberately planted non Native (as part of the Botanic Garden collection) as a result there were a huge selection of trees and scrubs (including the stinging tree) one of the most beautiful which we have seen whilst driving is this one in flower

As you can imagine these brilliant red flowers stand out a mile against the lush greens of the forest.

On the walk up you could hear lots of things moving through the undergrowth, the majority of which were either Orange-footed Scrubfowl or Bush Turkeys but we did spot this little beauty moving through the densest bamboo thicket

There is a Red-Legged Pademelon in the middle of the picture! The thicket was so dark it was very hard to get a decent picture and these are the best I could manage.

As the saying goes though what goes up must come down and so we did

On the way down eagle-eyed Hamish spotted this Laughing Kookaburra

I think it was eying up Cameron as a small snack!

It is a great walk and by popular demand we will be returning again!

Cameron was certainly a little bit concerned when we finished lunch and I looked out the window

The Kookaburra had followed us home [on the fence just to the right of the tree] - was it safe to let him out I wondered?!
This individual was certainly very approachable as well...

Its the weekend

After a busy week we were all ready for the weekend. Unfortunately Tish is worked last night (Friday) and is on again tonight. The night shifts start quite late at 1030pm which is taking a bit of adjustment!
Despite being told not too the children were up and about before 0630 again today which was a tad frustrating!
One of the good things about the new house is that it is large enough that Tish can shut herself in our room and she does not hear anything so it will be easier for her to sleep, and as I write this mid afternoon she is still in the land of nod which is great!
I took the children out this morning to do the weekly shop and call in at a couple of birding sites on the way (well a bit of a detour way but ...)
We walked round Cattana Wetlands first. This is an old sugar cane farm that was bought by the local council to protect and area of native forest and they have been slowly restoring it to something more natural. It is now a series of lakes (very square and regular lakes on the whole) interspersed with native planting and a bit of open grassland. It will I think be a nice local patch to work, possibly not quite in the league of Knuckey but still very satisfying!
At this time of year waterfowl numbers are quite high

One of the more naturalistic lakes is drying up nicely at the moment and has wide muddy margins that are attracting a few waders. Among the more regular Black-fronted Dotterel there were three Red Kneed Dotterel

I had left my scope and digiscoping kit in the car so the pictures are a bit distant.

With all the open water and native plants it is also very attractive to various nectare feeding birds such as this male Olive-backed Sunbird

There were lots of dragonflies buzzing around but I am not up to Tish's standard when it comes to getting photos of them, this is the best that I got

a male Slender Skimmer.
There were heaps of butterflies as well buzzing all over the place but again I was not up to Tish's standards!

a male White-Banded Plane.

We then moved onto the Esplanade in Cairns itself. This is a superb site, the children love the play park and I can sit on the bench and watch one of Australias best migrant wader beaches whilst still keeping an eye on them. I was all ready with the digiscoping kit but the tide was too high, had checked when high tide was and had assumed that an hour before would be perfect for pushing the waders up close to the beach but in fact the tide was far too high and aside from a few black-tailed godwits there was nothing on view. it also turned out that this particular play park is a popular destination for childrens parties and there were two going strong today so after about 30 mins we went off and did the shopping - decided that taking pictures of my three playing whilst there were heaps of other children around would not have been sensible hence lack of family pictures!

Solar Eclipse

The alarm woke us up at 0545 this morning as today was eclipse day. Tish had been on a late last night and had not got in until gone 1130pm which meant for a short night, combined with the fact that it was clearly very cloudy meant that for a second we pondered rolling over and going back to sleep. Sanity got the better of us and we got up and dressed before going to get the children up, of course today was the first day they weren't already awake by now!
Once shoes were on we grabbed the eclipse glasses and headed off on the long commute to the beach - well the ten minute walk anyway.
On arrival we were greeted by a distinctly cloudy view..

but we settled in along with a few others to see what we could see

As it got progressively darker we got the occasional glimpse of what was going on

At 0639 ish it got dark - Hamish was I think up until that point rather underwhelmed by the whole experience but the darker it got the quieter he got!
It then started to spit with rain very gently and we wondered if this was going to be as good as it got

Then as totality was reached a gap appeared in the clouds..

....and two minutes later it was over!
For Tish and myself this was our second having seen the eclipse in Newquay in 1999 and just as magical. What a fluke that we had moved to the zone of totality for this one, the next one in Australia is Sydney in 2028 - we are packing our bags already!

Happiness is....

......

....hot running water, need I say more!!

Tomorrow morning 0649 local time is our total solar eclipse - although the forecast is not looking good - so will do a bigger update then.

New school...

It was Xanthe and Hamish's first day at school. Cameron was a bit miffed that he was not going in, hence him not appearing in any of the pixs!

We have now finished the bulk of the unpacking with just the childrens rooms to go - these will have to wait until pay day as we may need to get some more storage units for them.
At the moment we still have no hot water as we are waiting for the gas bottle to be delivered - so cold showers all round!