Circumnavigation

It was meant to be little more than a walk around the block but I took my camera and drinks and five hours later we found we'd circumnavigated the mountain.

The profusion of Paterson's Curse is both beautiful and worrying, as it's an introduced weed that is toxic to horses.

Great swathes of purple are easy to photograph. Some of the other plants are harder to do justice to. It's worth slowing down to enjoy the details of the landscape.

I was pleased to manage to get some reasonably well focussed photos of this little guy.

It was lovely to see the dam full, and the ducks enjoying all the water.

Further around the mountain we started seeing larger wildlife. The sky even brightened up for a little while, though the wind was cold. I was wishing I'd worn my beanie.

At first we thought the bird circling high above was one of the eagles we sometimes see but we had the rare opportunity to see it land and it wasn't an eagle. By this time I was getting a low battery signal and hurrying so none of my photos were quite in focus, which is even more obvious when the photo is cropped.

A rainbow appeared and as we turned for home we felt just a few raindrops. Despite the cold and the threat of rain it had turned out to be a much more pleasant way to spend an afternoon than sitting inside complaining about the dreary greyness outside the window.