Taking a hike...

We went walking near the Manly Dam last week...I took some pics. I can't say they are works of art or anything, but you know what, I spent the whole time playing catch up cause I kept trying to get a decent shot, so I'm going to just stick them up here! Make it worth SOMETHING, anyway!! :p

It's the middle of winter, and the middle of a drought, so the wildflower situation is a little dire. Or maybe it's just dire in general. I dunno. I don't do much bushwalking over here. Not being a natural nature girl, and living in the middle of urban/suburbia, you don't really get around to it much. And when you keep picturing a black snake or something crawling out of the underbrush at you, you can feel just a wee bit less inclined to get out there and commune, ya know. The spiders don't bother me, though. Our house is crawling with them, and as long as they stay out of my pants leg when I put it on, they are fine by me.

Anyway..so..what'd we see.




These two look like the same flower, only one has 4 petals, and one has 5. So I don't know. The five petal one is a Boronia, though. This flower identification thing is so not my specialty, lol.




A minor flannel flower? That's what he says, anyway. Looks like a flannel flower, but like a fraction of the size.


One of the only real shots of color...all the wildflowers we saw were like the size of my first knuckle or way smaller. Just not enough to light up the forest, lol.



A red and yellow pea flower. This site calls it a Bacon and Egg flower. Okay.



Okay, so this....the helpful, informative plaque along the trail said these were Aboriginal carvings, along a prominent lookout point. I'm totally willing to believe the nice, official plaque. The existence of a very similar carving nearby of some kind of coat-of-arms, and someone's name, kind of makes me wonder just what kind of Aborigines lived in this area. :P



We finished the hike, walked across the dam to get our money's worth (you can see the water just under the walkway on one side, and the tops of the gum trees on the other...no water being let out the other side, though...boo), and then bolted for home, worn out from a day of herding kids everywhere.