Sometimes, on rarer moments, my life doesn't revolve around climbing rocks, going to climb rocks, or training to climb rocks. This past month has been one of those times. I bought a chainsaw last and started cutting firewood for the coming winter, spent a good bit of time at the university doing research, started home-brewing beer and have a couple batches currently fermenting at various stages, and of course went climbing - a little. We went back to the Paradiso and the cool thing about this trip wasn't the climbing so much but the surf. The waves pound up against a rock shelf about 30 yards from the cliff where we climb, and the large swell created on this particular weekend created some fantastic explosions of water that on occasion reached upwards of 100 ft in the air (not exaggerating, I was at the anchors of a 120' climb and the water came up to about 20 vertical feet below me - it was impressive). I tried to take a photo but ut really doesn’t do it justice.
On that climbing trip we also went down and checked out an interesting tunnel feature that attracts tourists near where we park for accessing the climbing. From hiking around this part of the island, I think these things are quite common; this one is just noteworthy because of the easy access.
On our way to the tunnel, I was also able to get a couple nice photos of some birds. The first one is a male Fairy Wren and the second is of some swallows that I don’t know the species of.
While I'm on the subject of wildlife, I may as well share a few more images that I've take in the last few weeks showcasing some local fauna. This is a Blue Tongued skink we found in our front yard. There’re quite big (this one was about 14" long) and as the name implies have a vivid blue tongue that it unfortunately didn't feel like sharing this particular morning for a portrait.
Here are a couple species of "honeyeaters" that frequent flowers in front of our kitchen,
a windblown and flustered looking Goshawk we saw out bouldering in the midlands,
and a few Wallabies we've seen recently while visiting some national parks although they're quite common anywhere on the island.
A few weeks back we went bouldering up in the central midlands at a nice area called outlands, where there are sandstone caves along the edges of a shallow lake. I had a nice time and did shoot some video that when I get around to editing and loading onto the computer I intend to share later.
This past week, made it out to a couple national parks that we hadn't been to previously: Ben Lomond and Narawampatu. We first went up to Ben Lomond which is a substantial mountain to the southeast of Launceston with a elevation of about 5000 ft (which feels big considering Launceston is at about sea level. Still, it's in a climite that doesn't see much snow it has one of the most pitiful ski hills I've ever seen.
A couple interesting things of note on the beach were some wale vertebrae along with large areas of beach that had been excavated by crabs during the low tide. They would dig there little holes in the sand the throw out the sand in balls behind them as they went.
It really does make me appreciate the island, because all of this is within a 3 hour drive from our house. That's all I've got for the moment, but we are planning to head up to Cradle Mountain in a few days and hopefully I'll get some good images to share. Till then-
Thank you so much for sharing your island with me. Everything looks awesome...the land, the birds, the wildlife. We have a lot of creatures here in Texas that aren't very lovable, but your skink is right up there with our creepiest!
ReplyDeleteLove you!