Monday Morning Walk

This morning we decided to explore the Flora and Fauna reserve just down the road from our house.

Now I love Australia. And I'm reasonably fond of the landscape and gum trees. The reserve down the road is apparantly preserving one of the last remnants of native vegetation in the area. It's also preserving one of the most boring pieces of vegetation.
There were two main features.

Gum trees

and bull ants

The former is reasonably beautiful in form. And at times was almost worth pulling out the sketchbooks to explore the shapes. The latter made stopping anywhere to sit down pretty much impossible. Unless you fancy a bull-ant bite on the bum. Oddly enough, I don't!
It's hard to convey the size of these wee beasties. This specimen is by Jordans size 11 sneaker and is at least 2cm long. Check out the pincher things on the head... no way I'm geting my bum anywhere near them! So we walked on and on through sand and gum trees and scrub and bull ants. Eventually we found a wee sitting down spot in an area not frequented by bull ants. It was also not frequented by anything remotely appealling to draw. So we ate our picnic and walked back to our car.

Now all this sounds like a bit of a moan. And certainly "nature walks" can be terribly uneventful here. Even all my dire warnings of being in snake country and going over what you do when you come across one were in vain. I'm torn between not EVER wanting to see one in nature and thinking that at least we'd have something to sketch.

However we had a very pleasant walk in the morning sun. We watched the ants and looked at gum leaves and chatted about this and that. Next week we are going fishing off the pier for our Monday morning fun.