Ipswich & Purga

So this is Purga, a tiny national park outside of Ipswich. It has one of the only melaleuca forests given over to a nature reserve.

On my very first walk in Purga, I came across this guy, before I even started my walk. I thought, you beauty, I have reached wild native animal in it's own environment photography heaven. I have not seen any hoppies in all my visits since.



















High rise ant apartments.






























Pensive little wallaby.


















































Wallaby gone.

Road Trip NSW Queens Birthday Weekend

Friday night
Ipswich to Yamba via McKinley Highway 325K















Saturday Morning
Yamba











































































Saturday
From Yamba to Armidale 315K















Pretty close to the number 38 in the map above, we found this little road turning off, and I can't remember why, we took it. At the end of the road was the bridge shown below. I took these pictures after we'd crossed the bridge in the car. Madness!













































Back on the main road again and in the middle of nowhere, there was a Llama farm.
















You can see the crazy river we crossed on the left in the middle of the view picture below.
















Saturday Afternoon
This is not the same crazy river, this was on a 1.4 kilometre rainforest walk that we took a wrong turn on that turned out to be about 7 k long. It was great. We didn't find ANY leeches.



































After lunch at Glenn Innes, the Balancing Rocks 12k out of town. Fenced off, or no doubt people would push them over.






































































Sunday
Armidale - Narrabri 315K
But first, a trip back a bit, to the Wollomombi Falls









































































The bird in this picture is a lyre bird. We think he is a liar bird. We saw/heard him imitate a kookaburra, a crow, a whip bird, a rifle bird and a magpie. David Attenborough likes him, but. I knew you wouldn't believe me if I didn't post the YouTube link. Marvellous experience.




















Sunday afternoon

Gunnedah = Koala capital of the world. Yeah right.
No visible koalas in the wild, and not surprisingly, not much of anything else.



































Late Sunday Afternoon

A rush to get to the Warrumbungles before sunset. We never did find the breadknife, but after running (well, trotting) about a kilometre up a track with all the other visitors going in the other direction, the sun set, and suddenly put on a show for us. It was a wonderful, serendipitus moment.































































































Narrabri to home via the Australia Telescope.
535 kilometres
Total trip (not counting adventures and getting lost: 1660 kilometres

Meet the astronomers:






































(I do have pictures of them with the telescopes - just not as pretty)


































Silly sheep, chasing kangaroos. Don't the sheep know they're herbivores?