A walk in the park

There's a pretty little park at the end of our road. It has a river frontage, great play spaces for kids, well maintained and shaded picnic spots, and lots of lovely shady trees. And there's a long stretch of managed sub-tropical 'rainforest' you can walk through.

...which turns out to be where the flying foxes hang out during the day.

'But then there is the noise and the smell...'

Actually, the smell isn't all that bad. 

But the noise is really something. Apologies for the clumsy link, my tech capabilities are pretty limited.

This is what the flying fox colony sounds like....

I've tried to get a decent picture of the foxes but they roost way up high, fanning themselves with their huge leathery wings and squabbling - you can just about see a few in the next picture, top right-ish.

And look who was hanging out there too...down in the nice cool shade, keeping it real...Mr Kookaburra. 

His funny 'Muttley' style chuckle is somewhere on the soundtrack, but it's a surprisingly low sound so good luck if you can pick it out. I was really close to him - them actually, as they go around in family gangs - but he just wasn't noisy enough to compete with the racket being made by every thing else. 

I like these fellas, they're sort of thuggish looking. Like a bird version of a staffy. No neck and a slightly surly 'don't even thinkaboudit' slope to the shoulders. He was fluffing himself up in what seemed like irritation; they're quite big, roughly pigeon sized, and they don't seem to scare easy either. I got the message and moved along.

To this.

As uncompromisingly urban as you like and not five minutes from the fox colony. Bonkers. More commonly known as Broadbeach. I always thought that the Gold Coast was a suburb of Brisbane, but apparently it's a city in it's own right. Who knew? Anyway (and to continue the theme of startling environmental juxtaposition), just behind that lot is this...

There's the QT building with it's lightening rod top. I'm no fan of this kind of urban sprawl - but I was more than glad of it today. I have a very poor internal compass, and without that building I might have trudged a long long way down the long long beach in entirely the wrong direction...

Not so bad you might think, but it was seriously hot and there's no shelter on the beach, so unless you're a really determined sun-worshipper (or surfer) then you don't want to be spending too much time out there, not even if you're fully armed with sunblock, wide-brimmed hat and shades.

Sorry, it really is simply too hot to knit.