Some pictures I've taken.

These are pics I took down at the local duck pond. Theres a mum and dad swan, and 6 babies. The babies are now black like the parents. Some of these were taken a few months ago, when they were still a grey colour.

When my children were young we used to walk our dog along a long and winding bush track, which eventually led to a creek at the bottom in the gully. There was an old, dead tree, laying across the creek. It had been burnt black, but I used to always want to take some sort of picture which would include the old dead tree.

So one day I dressed the kids up in 'old fashioned' clothing and took heaps of black and white pics of them, on and around the tree. The tree was the centrepiece and the inspiration!

Here is my favourite pic out of the bunch. This was taken about 16 years ago, but looks a bit old world. Well, that was the look I was going for.....

And I can't forget to post a pic of my old cat Muffin. She is now world famous cos she's been posted in forums, across the globe! lol. She's almost 15, and she's my baby now that the kids are grown.

This is her, doing what she does best. Sleeping, and looking dead!

("...I have only ever seen a black swan once, they are not seen in europe, do you have white swans there too, I wonder..." asked the goblin)

Hi Flea,

There's a japanese garden about 10 mins drive from my place. I get the feeling that's where these black swans flew over from, and decided to make their home at the duck pond, in the park. We have white swans too, in Sydney, but not at my duckpond. But the black ones are rare to have this side of Australia. They are mostly from the west coast of Australia. So I don't think the people of my suburb realise how lucky they are, to have them here, and not have to pay at the japanese gardens to see them! but they are so well fed, by the old chinese in the neighbourhood, that by the time I get round to taking my afternoon walk, they are not interested in eating my offerings!

I found the ducks I was hunting for! These two domesticated ducks live in the pond as well. They always swim together, and I think they may have flown over from the Japanese gardens as well. There must have been a mass breakout of 'jailbirds!'

("...what's the terrain like there, flat or hilly now..." asked the goblin, who confessed to knowing little about the place bar what was probably wild exaggerations of outback and jungle, couple with most creatures there thinking one as dinner)

Because of pictures like the one Babs posted at banned camp, most people think kangaroos are just walking around the city streets, and near the opera house and harbour bridge! No wonder people think these things, lol. You would need to drive for at least an hour, or more, out of the heart of the city of Sydney, before you would see any sign of a kangaroo.

I live in the western suburbs of sydney. Around the Bankstown area. Here's a pic of Bankstown. There's houses everywhere and a huge shopping centre, so we don't have much vacant land around this area. My suburb has a few ovals and the reserve where the pond is, so it's a bit of an oasis, in the suburban jungle of working class Sydney! It needs cleaning though, so I wish the council would do something about it. There are huge, weird looking fish in the pond too, so it is sort of a forgotten and neglected bit of nature.

("...amazingly flat it seems, and you\re right, quite different to the impression one gets..." mentioned the goblin, adding "...from the color of the sky I would said it's more or less sea level then, and from the trees that it your winter though not cold...")

The area where I used to live, and where my kids grew up was the 'shire'! We used to get teased about living in the shire. We were the weird hobbits. But they are a different breed of people in the shire. When people tell visitors about the different areas of sydney, they will say "Well there's the North shore, where all the rich people live. The Eastern Suburbs, where all the even richer people live! And the Western suburbs, where all the poor people live. And then there's the shire.........." That's when they go blank, because there are not the right kind of words to describe these people, but I will try. Firstly, they want to be rich, but can't afford to be. They are predominantly aussies. They are at least 80% christian. They are very tanned, because cronulla beach is the place to go hang out. They have no idea what their kids get up to, because a lot of the parents are second generation shire inhabitants themselves, so they think the shire is still an innocent place, the way it was when they were young. So the kids go wild, they drink, they have heaps of sex, and the parents are at home 'trusting' them. They are basically nice people who are a bit clueless, maybe intentionally.

We lived in the Menai area of the shire. There was a lot of hilly terrain there. It seemed no matter where I walked, I was always walking uphill, even on the way back! There was a lot of bush when I first moved there, but the land has been developed, and I am not sure how much is left to develop on. But there's still a lot of bush. It was a safe place for kids to grow up though, and we never had much crime, maybe a car theft here and there, or a marijuana bust!

I didn't take these last two pics I posted!

"...I suppose to make a comparison this, dartmoor, and the little village here is rather like some tropical rain forest minus warmth and trees ..." mentioned the goblin, explaining "...in fact, the weather here, can be described simply as a subtle combination of three factors, rain of all shapes and sizes, cloud cover in various shades to forms, to offer a break from the rain perhaps, and the sun, perhaps there by mistake, therefore the buildings are deep set against the elements, and moss grows on anything, and anyone for that matter, that stays put for too long, whereas the yocals, bless'em, do not have continental coffee, nor any WIFI hot spots in the village, probably factors designed to make escape form dartmoor prison nigh impossible now..."