Awesome walk

The day started much like most recent days, cold enough that you don’t want to get out of bed even when you know you should. The weather forecast was off by a few degrees for this morning as it was much colder than it was supposed to be, about 3C, based on our closest weather station. Anyway, I dragged myself out of bed eventually and got moving a bit. Ate some breakfast and washed some dishes before starting a stew meant for dinner.

I’ve been quite lax about taking the dogs out for walks lately and I needed some exercise so I packed them into the car and drove to Whiteman Park, which is a few minutes away. I started out next to the dog park and would have taken them there had there not already been some other dogs there. I wasn’t in much of a mood to deal with the mad barker today. Besides, I was rather keen to walk on one of the trails through the park as we did on our last visit. I started off on one of the paved trails and we wandered along, with a couple of stops for doggie clean up along the way, until we reached the village. We wandered around the periphery of the village, in front of Caversham Wildlife Park, and through the parking lot, until we reached the opposite side of the village. From there I went looking for one of the longer trails to walk and eventually did find it. Turns out this one was a bush trail and not paved. This didn’t bother me but I kind of thought all of the trails were now paved. The bush trail was a delight to walk on for both me and the dogs. Lots of soft ground for their little paws made them much happier, especially as our walk became more and more extended.

I had taken my good camera and found a lovely little hideaway under some trees where I wanted to take some photos. I stopped the dogs and pulled out the camera and it wouldn’t come on. Seems I’d left it on the last time I used it or it had been knocked into the on position. It wasn’t working for me so I put it back. I didn’t think my phone camera was going to work for what I wanted. It might have worked but I am still learning quite a bit of how to use it…and mostly just getting used to such a different interface. Later on I did pull out the camera to take some photos of a banksia flower but I only used it in auto mode as it seemed to be doing okay with that. We ran across a bunch of magpies at one point and the dogs got rather excited while I got a bit nervous. It’s not magpie season yet, so I probably shouldn’t have worried. Anyway, many of them flew off, disturbed by the sound of us walking along the trail. It was actually kind of a spectacular sight at that moment, with the sun starting to drop in the sky and the birds all flying together.

We carried on walking and I began to wonder if I’d gotten in a bit deep on the walk. Not so much for myself but for the dogs, who aren’t the fittest they’ve been. They did keep up pretty well although I did slow my pace a bit too. I’d seen a sign saying it was 2kms to the Mussel Pool from there, via Lookout Hill. It seemed to take an awfully long time to get to just Lookout Hill and from there it was supposed to be another 500m to go. We did stop there and climb the lookout platform where we could see the city skyline in the distance. I don’t quite know why this surprised me as we can see it from near our house and we live really close to the park with our neighborhood backing onto the edge of the official park land. From there the path was paved all the way and it surely was more than 500m long. But it was in this section of the park I had the greatest delight, seeing what I thought were wallabies several times. Now I think they might have been grey kangraroos as I think they were a bit bigger than wallabies although not the biggest kangaroos I’ve seen. I tried to take photos a couple of times but they roos had hopped away before I could get anything in a photo. We walked on and I came across more of them, about eight altogether. I tried to get a little closer but then they all bounced away too. I saw one last one in the bush by itself but it was too far away to get it in focus and was surely going to move. But what an awesome sight they were and this was in a state park where we are free to visit.

This was far more impressive than seeing the animals in the wildlife park on the same site. We’d been to the wildlife park before it resettled into Whiteman Park and it was pretty cool to see. But it was so much neater to see the creatures in the wild. The same goes for the many of the birds we’d find there. Although I’ve never been keen on caging birds as pets, I feel even more strongly about it after having seen birds like cockatoos and galahs in the wild here. I don’t even have to go to the state park to see those as many of them fly through our neighborhood and can be seen nearby.

We finally did reach the mussel pool area although it took me awhile to get my bearings there. I eventually found my way past and back to the dog park where I took he dogs for a drink of water and brief sit down before returning home. I have made a mental note to return to the park soon without dogs so I can take it all in without worrying the dogs are tiring.