Because the rule on whether we’d be able to exercise outside our LGA was ambiguous (I understand it’s since been clarified), I used the last day before lockdown to walk through Plenty Gorge Park. (This is, of course, a privilege people in the towers weren’t allowed.) PHOTO THREAD

I live in an LGA with very few cases, I’ve got very good reason to believe I’m not infected, & Plenty Gorge is only 40 minutes from my house & rarely visited (I met 4 other people in a 4 hour walk), so I figured it’d be low-risk. Plus my destination, Mernda Station, is REMOTE:

So I figured as activities go, walking for a few hours in a huge bush park in not far from my home would be OK.

When you visit Mernda, you have to be ready to see all the kangaroos.

I mean AAAAALLLL the kangaroos:

But not just roos! I stopped to check out this wombat burrow and got the shock of my life! Who’s that in the red circle, enjoying the morning sunshine?

OMG!!

And who’s that on the other side of the river, hopping up the hill?

Hi swampy!!

I think there’s a push to rename them “black wallabies” now but “swamp wallaby” is so much cooler, even if it doesn’t make any sense.

There were ducks! I think this wood duck probably had two legs, it was just keeping one of them warm or something. I dunno, ducks are weird, wood ducks doubly so.

The river had more water in it than I’ve ever seen before, which was nice.

I had lunch under this tree. It was hopping with flame robins, spotted pardalotes, brown thornbills, red-browed firetails, white-plumed honeyeaters, superb fairywrens, etc. (no photos)

Beetles also like trees! They’d gone to town on this one:

Another wombat burrow. Wombats are very good at digging holes but they’re also very good at getting their holes flooded. Silly woms.

~interlude~

There was lots of mistletoe flowering. Mistletoes have such great flowers:

Lots of mushrooms, too (a friend who’s really into wild mushrooms told me it’s been the best mushroom season ever)

Then when I stopped looking down I looked up and - wait, what’s that way up there in the top of that beautiful old eucalypt?

OMFG IT’S AN EAGLE’S NEST!!!

But all good things come to an end. Plenty Gorge Park is such an incredible place. But it’ll still be there in August. I really needed that time in the bush to fill me up for the weeks ahead but it’ll be back to walking round my local patch for the next 6 weeks, just like before.

So stay safe everyone, and help each-other stay safe, and reach out to your friends and loved ones, and let’s get through this together x