Kazza the Blank One

14.8.26

We arrived at Reflections holiday park late in the afternoon and went for a bit of a wander around the grounds.  I only my 240mm lens on, so not the greatest of photos.

There was a massive flock of gang-gang cockatoos but we only actually saw these two.

We were distracted by the gang-gangs and a car coming along the road we were on, so only managed a snap of this wonga pigeon and didn't get to actually watch it

There were *heaps* of kookaburras on the grounds, we saw maybe a dozen

Some crimson rosellas

We could hear this common bronzewing hooting a long time before Stu spotted it on the ground.  Dunno why they're called "common" .. they should be called rainbow pigeons or something - so pretty!

15.8.26

There's signs at the cabins asking not to feed the birds on the patios. So I went to the car parking space and the birds came down.  All the birds!  But mostly king parrots, sulphur crested cockatoos, three young crimson rosellas and a couple of magpies.  And a mob of kangaroos.

Late morning we headed on a meandering walk north through the grounds, then along the Hume and Hovell track to Carrolls Creek.

White-winged chough

There were lots of brown thornbills.  Every time we stopped to look at movement it'd be, oh, just another brown thornbill

White-browed scrub-wren

Either a juvenile or a female golden whistler

Male satin bowerbird

This Australasian darter was there for a while then took off which was pretty cool

Didn't get any good photos of the eastern spinebills

Pelican!

Little pied cormorant

We stopped for some lunch at Carrolls Creek, then turned around and headed back.

Yellow-faced honeyeater

Another brown thornbill

Scarlet robin

Grey shrike-thrush (we think)

This was a new bird for me - a spotted quail-thrush - and I was lucky to get a pretty decent photo of it

A great cormorant on the opposite bank of the inlet

Varied sitella, apparently

Male golden whistler

White-throated treecreeper

This appeared to be a hybrid black-backed and white-backed magpie

These were around the Carrolls Creek campsite

Female satin bowerbird

Pied currawong

Another hybrid magpie

And then we were back to the main resort campsite

Another new bird for me - a flame robin

White-browed scrubwren

16.8.26

Our second morning again saw flocks of king parrots and sulphur crested cockatoos come down to be fed

And a bronzewing!

There were a bunch of things we heard (or Merlin heard) that we never saw.  And a few things we didn't get photos of.

16.8.26

Wayy out the back of Canberra beyond Uriarra is a spot called Sherwood Forest.  We stopped in on our way home from a Burrinjuck weekend.  With all the rain recently there were spots that were very .. moist!  Didn't see a huge amount of bird life, but Stu was very excited to see a spotted quail-thrush in the ACT.

A pair of wood ducks

There were some white-winged coughs near the pond

Some fairy wrens a bit further up

I snapped this spotted quail-thrush as it darted behind a bush.  We never saw it again.

This white-eared honeyeater was wayyyyy off at the top of a tree in the distance, didn't even know what I'd taken a photo of until we downloaded the photos.

Ever-present brown thornbills

For my birthday the sweetie thought it would be nice to go away for the weekend. Actually he wanted to go birdwatching and take me along ;)  Doing this as one big entry, so be patient ;)

Day 1 - Friday 14.8.26

I was hoping to leave around lunch time but we had too much to do (and I was at work til midday) so didn't get out the door until around 13:15.  Picked up some beer to take with us.  Got random breath tested on the Barton Highway which was pretty funny (just counting to ten).  Then to KFC for a light late lunch (it's tradition!). They were super slow though. Like, I just wanted three pieces of chicken and a drink for the sweetie.  Woulda taken him ten seconds to grab them, but no, I had to wait and wait for who knows what.  Took like five or ten minutes or something.  Ridiculous.  The chicken was very nice, but the flavour was a bit.. bland.. like they'd forgotten half the spice mix.

We stopped in Yass so I could reproduce some photos of Dad's from 1964 or so.  And take a few of my own.

We also dropped into the IGA for some supplies.

Then onto Burrinjuck.  A relatively short but pleasant drive.

Arrived at the Reflections Holiday Park around 15:50.

Checked in, then headed down to our cabin.  It was lovely!  Spacious, well appointed and a stunning view!

We unpacked the car and got ourselves settled. Then we went out for a walk.  I was going to go by myself but the sweetie agreed to come.  I was just planning to walk around the campsite to see what the place had, but it ended up being more of a bird walk.  Which would have been fine, except I didn't have my big lens with me.  Oh well.

We walked past the kiosk (which was closed all weekend being off season and all) and connected to the wifi briefly (there's almost no Optus and very weak Telstra).

Wood bbq - reminded me of home when we used to fire up a bbq like this that my Dad built

We headed back to the cabin via the shore.  With the dam so low (56%) it was an easy walk.  Until it wasn't.  Closer to the cabin it got quite steep so it was a bit of scrambling over loose rocks.  But we made it ok.

Cracked out the bubbles!

And kievs and gems for dinner.  I brought my own baking trays because I doubted they'd have any.  I also brought my own baking paper.  Which ran out after lining one tray.  Whoops.  What would have been handy was an oven mit - it was a bit tricky to get the big tray out with only one hand with a tea towel.

Then put on The Hunt for Red October.  Annoyingly the DVD player didn't have a remote.  So we could start it, and stop it, but not pause.

Grabbed one of the spare towels from the kids room to use as a bathmat because the bathroom didn't have one (or a hand towel).

Day 2 - Saturday 15.8.26

Slept okish.  Stu wanted to leave the aircon on because he was cold, but I kept waking up hot.  We'd put it on when we arrived and it said it had a ten hour timer.  So I was thinking it'd turn off around 2:30.  Except it didn't.  It was more like 6:30.  Oh well.

It was completely white when I first got up!  This was a litte later.

Had my breakfast and did some Lego.  

Went out again to look at the fog clearing and saw king parrot on the balcony of the neighbouring cabin.  So I went and got the seed I'd brought and gave it a shake, and it flew over to the fence.  I held out my hand and it jumped right on!!

For quite a while it was just that one and it was super cool and very civilised.  Our neighbour Georgie took a heap of photos with my phone.

But then word got out.  And it was on.  A whole FLOCK of king parrots and a small flock of cockatoos all came down for breakfast.  It was mental!!  Even the kangaroos would eat the seeds, husks and all.  I gave two cockatoos a chance to be hand-fed but they both bit me, so I ingored them and just played with the king parrots (I left plenty on the ground for everyone).

Left the sweetie get ready and I drove down to the "dam lookout" which is a half-hearted attempt to appease people like me.  The turds at Water NSW have blocked it off in recent years so I couldn't reproduce Dad's photos from 1964.  And they're not bothering to keep the trees down either so you have to get up on a rock to get a crap view.

Came back and we got ready and headed out again around 11:10.

Went for a very long, very slow walk, ~3km up the inlet to Carrolls Creek.  It was actually an easy walk, almost all level along the foreshore of the dam, but it was very slow because we kept stopping to take photos of birds.

We arrived at Carrolls Creek around 13:15 and had some lunch.

Stu had been wanting to go further along the track but it was already nearly 14:00 so we decided just to head back.

The walk back was just as slow, with just as many bird stops.

Got back to the cabin around 16:15.  Our everything hurt!

Had a couple of drinks and watched some Big Bang Theory.  Our neighbours John and Louise (and Georgie) setup a fire and invited us over so we had some mulled wine in front of the fire which was very civilised. 

Then we had some tv dinners for dinner and went to bed.

Day 3 - Sunday 16.8.26

Slept a bit crap, again waking up hot here and there.  Finished the Lego I brought down.

Once the sweetie was ready I went out to find the birds.  Except the kangaroos came first.  A whole MOB of them.  They too were happy to eat out of my hand, but they were also a bit more aggressive in wanting to rip the packet of seed open.  So I went around to the other side of the fence so they couldn't get at me. Eventually the birds came down.

Georgie took this funny selfie of a king parrot on her arm

Then we packed up and went and checked out around 9:45.

Went back to the dam wall again because Stu wanted to see it.

On the way out we stopped at the Carrolls Creek Waterfall.

Then back through Yass.

Victoria Park Gate

Then the sweetie surprised me with a bridge!!!  Taemas Bridge.  This beautiful truss bridge over the Murrumbidgee River just before it becomes Lake Burrinjuck.

There was a stile near the southern end so we climbed it and went down under the bridge.

Awesome!

Then we headed back into the ACT.  It's kinda weird to be driving through farmland in the middle of nowhere and then you crest a hill and see high rise buildings of a big city!

We stopped outside Sherwood Forest to have some lunch, then went in for a bird walk.

There was heaps of this grassland sundew around which was pretty cool

And lots of these Early Nancy flowers

Possibly Walker Hill in the foreground and Black Mountain Tower in the background

We kept walking up the hill for a while

Then decided the clouds looked too ominous so decided to head back.

We arrived back at the car at 14:30 - at the same time the rain did!

Then headed for home.

So all in all it was a lovely weekend!!

Sunday.  9th.  Stu cooked up a heap of veggies which we had with some leftover lamb. Watched Kenton's part 1 video in Peru which was fun. OMFG so many *different* birds!!!

Monday.  Somewhat broken sleep. Bit of BS at work but actually got through a lot of the training from last week which was really good to get done. Not much of it left. Leftovers for dinner, MacGyver (into season 6) then remembered I still have two episodes left of Lego Masters season 8 so I watched one of those. Also today my phone took it upon itself to upgrade itself to iOS 26.  OMFG everything is so BIG!!  The timer is particularly hilarious.  It's like it things we're getting old and can't see anymore so it's magnified everything.  What a joke.

Tuesday.  Mostly okish sleep. Awake from like 5:20 though. Finally finished off the Cisco training which was good. Then played with some of my Splunk searches and updated bookmarks.

For lunch I made some garlic bread - just a bit of unsalted butter, a large clove of garlic, a bit of salt and some herbs, spread onto bread and into the toaster oven for five minutes - delicous!

Leftover sausages from work and cabbage for dinner. MacGyver, then Lego Masters - the finale of season 8, which was the Jurassic World episode, which was a bit of fun since we'd only just seen the first movie the other night. Brickman played Malcolm and I was thinking, but what about a gratuitous chest shot, and someone else was thinking the same thing and actually asked him haha.

Wednesday.  Mostly okish sleep. Awake from 5 for a bit but got a bit more sleep. Mostly a monitoring day and playing with searches and dashboards which was fun.

Also on Wednesday I finished reading Matilda by Roald Dahl which I last read in 2009.  The first movie was very similar to it which was cool.

Thursday.  Awake from 1:30 to 4:00ish. No good reason. Just awake.  Hurray.  Planning, documenting and doing a VPN firewall upgrade. In prod. In the middle of the afternoon. Fun times! Drinks not as busy as we hoped. Mills & Grills for dinner, Kenton's Amazon video, and an early night.

Mills&Grills "smokin special" (ham, pineapple, salami, prawns and mozzarella, $15.90) and "nachos" (Bolognese base, Corn chips, Salsa, Bacon, Jalapenos & Mozzarella topped with Avocado & Sour cream, $21.90) - the nachos one definitely had nachos vibes!

Friday.  Slept mostly ok, surprisingly (after drinks and way too much pizza, felt bloated for ages). My first birthday wish was from my bathroom scales haha. More dashboarding in the morning, then we headed off at lunch time (a bit after) to Burrinjuck!  That'll appear over in my holidays blog at some point soon, once I sort out the photos.  All 900-odd of them...!  I will leave you with this though - probably the highlight of the weekend was feeding the king parrots both mornings.  So fricken cool!

On Wednesday a few of us went to some training with Cisco in the city and they took us out to the Lebanese restaurant Azima for lunch.

We got the "lunch special" which for us was a mini-banquet of shish-kebabs, salads, fries and flatbreads.

Soft flatbread and crispy fried zataa bread - that crispy stuff was awesome!

There was a salad with more fried bread

Some hummus (and another bowl of garlic sauce that I didn't get a photo of)

There were lamb mince and chicken kebabs which were yummy

Some fries

They either made too many, or someone wasn't paying attention, but there was a leftover naa naa lemon-mint mocktail that I said I'd take if noone else wanted it.. it was great!  But paper straws disintegrate when you try to use them to stir in all that slushee...

All in all it was a lovely lunch - just the right amount of food (for me). 

The only problem was that it was *very* slow, even with a basically empty restaurant, who knew we were coming.  There was no food at all for almost half an hour, and most people didn't get their drinks orders til well into food service (and I didn't get that mocktail til near the end of food service).

My AquaOne AR-620T fish tank is basically as old as this blog.  23.5 years!  Literally my third blog entry back in January 2003 was about getting the tank and the chlorine in Sydney water.  In the early days of my blog, this post got a HEAP of traffic.  

It's very sentimental (it was my first tank, and I associate it with CIA, since they paid for it).  It's a lovely looking tank.  It's glass too, not perspex, although the stand is sawdust which is not great when things leak!!

But the problem is, it's getting harder and harder to get lights for it (Tony has replaced the lights on his with LEDs).  I'm also wanting to downsize our fish tanks (we have too many and they're way too much work).  So when the last fluoro bulb died recently I decided it was time for it to go.  Tony had already offered to fit it out with LEDs, and Jesse would take the tank.

I moved all the guppies and the surviving plants out of it to my other two foot tanks, and today I started to dismantle the tank.

I pulled everything off the top and cleaned it all off.  I still need to drain it and clean the glass.

It's pretty sad to see it go, but it'll cost me less time and money so there's that...

Sunday.  2nd.  Stu roasted a bunch of veggies which we had with some leftover lamb. MacGyver and photo stuff.

Monday.  Awake from 4:33. The morning was spent pulling mail for an incident on the weekend. The afternoon was more workgroup db tidying. Leftover lamb and salad for dinner, MacGyver and photo stuff.

I forget how nice greek yoghurt is with food..

Tuesday.  Day of all the BS. So much BS. I even lost it at lunch. Later in the afternoon Stu said I should ditch work and go birdwatching with him. So I asked Con. He said do it. So I did. It was good for my brain.

Logged back on for an hour when I got home so the hit on my flex wasn't tooo bad.  Stu cooked up pea and ham soup for dinner.

Wednesday.  Cisco training in the city. Except it wasn't really training, it was just a hands on lab. The lab was actually pretty good as labs go, and I managed to achieve the suggested work for the day (with more work that can be done in the next few days). Beer at Kingos with the sweetie then Disappointing Sushi.

Thursday.  Tried to revise the labs from yesterday but nonstop interruptions all day. Drinks was pretty epic - heaps of temp staff came up which was great.

Friday.  OMFG SOLAR EDGE IS TRASH!!!! We were scheduled for a power outage today (they were replacing a cross beam on the power pole in the neighbour's yard). So Stu told it not to discharge the battery last night. All good. They cut the power at 8:45. A second or two later the battery kicked in. Great. After the router rebooted I reconnected back to work and all was well. Until fifteen minutes later when everything went dead. Stu did a complete restart of the system but it didn't do anything. After nearly an hour I gave up and caught a bus to work (they said they were likely to be done by 13:00) as I had a heap of work I really wanted to get done. Stu fought with Solar Edge's system to try and get a support ticket in about the whole debacle (which he's still waiting to hear back from). The system is in la la land AGAIN. Every few days it just drops off the network so you can't see what it's doing. I HATE SOLAR EDGE SO MUCH!!!! I wish we'd gotten something different. So I get to work and get about an hour's worth of solid work in, then got an alert I had to spend an hour investigating. It's been a literal conspiracy to stop me getting this training done. Did managed to get some decent work done in the afternoon though.  Everything is awful. Kievs and Black Mirror.

Saturday.  Awake for a couple of hours from midnight. Had a heap of things on my todo list. Didn't do much of it. In the afternoon we headed out to Callum Brae Nature Reserve. Birds were being turds and hiding. Did get to see a heap of rainbow lorikeets though, I'd never seen them in Canberra before.  And a cool photo of a spotted pardalote.

There's three of these powder magazines 100m apart near the Mugga quarry (used for storing explosives for the quarry)

Red-necked wallaby.  Only saw one macropod, but a LOT of rabbits

Leftovers for dinner then watched Jurassic Park in honour of Sam Neill.

Sunday.  Awake from around 5.  Red in the morning.. shepherd's warning..

Weather was crap so didn't leave the house.  So it was a house/hobby/photo kind of a day. I did finish one photo project though which was good.  After several blissful weeks of windoze explorer remembering my folder settings, today it's forgotten them again (or at least one of them, another was ok). Why does windoze 11 suck so badly???

And just for fun.. last week the Riot-ACT (Region Media) posted this infographic based on AAMI insurance data for accident hotspots.  Except they used AI to generate it.  Hilarious!  #fail  It got pulled pretty quickly.

Just closing off some browser tabs..

MV Doña Paz - "Asia's Titanic" - how had I never heard of this before??? A worse tragedy than the original Titanic!

VO2 max - supposedly your VO2 max score is a good predictor of your longevity

Bert Flugelman - this would make for a cool tour of Australia - to find all Bert Flugelman's public sculptures

Lighthouse Map - another cool tour of Australia - lighthouses!

Hearing Test Online - test your hearing with this free tool

Metal Earth - I got this for my birthday a couple of years ago (last year??) but didn't get very far through it because I can't SEEEE!!

Diamond Dotz Colours - wouldn't it be cool to get them all!

Port Stephens flat - we stayed in this very flat in 1978.  I'd love to go back some time!

Learn kiragana and katakana - gamify!

Old building in Canberra - can anyone tell me what that cross-shaped building at the bottom was?  (it's gone now)

Region Media Fail - someone thought they could use AI to generate a map of Canberra based on AAMI insurance claim data in Canberra.  They pulled it from the article pretty quickly when people LOLed, but it's still online (for now).

Contour Gauges - how cool are these?  Not that I ever do any sort of work like this, but if I did I'd love one of these!

Hammerdex - another tool that would be useful to keep in your car, just in case you happened to land your car in some water..

Lego Space 1978-1992 - I really NEED this book!

Daisy Chain ACT - a Canberra lady travels all Canberra bus routes

Deepfake Challenge - EVERYONE needs to see this. Especially older people.  

ACTmapi - ACT mapping tools

Digital Atlas of Australia - more mapping tools

List of "best" TV shows

Mosaic Mofos Map - mosaic art in Canberra

Whiskey War - crackup!

Librarian - as seen on Blogography.  I used to have Steam.. and I think I'd probably enjoy this!

John Oliver wants your erotica! - I should look at this for Instagram

Extend New York - what block do you live on?

Sunday.  26th.  Had all the leftover meat, gravy, apple sauce and peas from the club Christmas in July night last night. Yeah it was barely enough for the two of us. MacGyver and early night.

Monday.  Awake from 2:43 for like an hour and a half. There were half a dozen big bangs at one point, and another big one a while later. This morning Tony found the shell casings for the fireworks. Bits and pieces day. Had some of the frozen meals we got off Ben and Sarah for dinner, MacGyver then photo stuff.

Tuesday.  

All the frozen yoghurts I got off Ben and Sarah.

Day of way too much BS. Making me want to rage retire. Cooked Ben and Sarah's leg of lamb for dinner.  If we'd been better organised we could have had it when they were over last week.

Happy birthday Dad.  Missed you and your carving skills tonight...

MacGyver and some photo stuff. Feeling like it's all too hard.

Wednesday.  Awake from 3:43 for ages. Nothing day, didn't achieve anything much. Bought some new undies and sox hurrah. Tried to get some photos of the moon. Clouds were being annoying. Stu cooked a pretty spectacular shepherd's pie for dinner (that took him like an hour and a half to make whoops).

Then MacGyver, read a few news feeds and it's 20:15. Sigh. Then post a moon photo and it's nearly 20:30. Epic sigh.

Thursday.  Spent a bunch of time cleaning out some workgroup DBs.  Good drinks, a bunch of other people came.  Mills&Grills for dinner.  This time we got Southern Chicken - tomato base, chicken, sweet corn, bacon & southern style sauce and mozzarella.  That was quite nice.  And potata.

Friday.  Slept like crap.  More workgroup DB cleaning.  Kievs for dinner and Black Mirror.

Then continued the Arnie marathon with EB with Terminator 2.  I still prefer it over the original.  Couldn't find my DVD to start with - somehow it had gotten mixed up in the S section!

Saturday.  Somewhat crap sleep.  In the morning got some house stuff done and a few things ticked off the todo list.  Then headed into town to go to Ted's.  Except the big one is shut on Saturdays WTF???

So went to the little one but it didn't have the range of bags the big one does.

Then headed over to the National Botanical Gardens.  We spent three hours there taking lots of photos birds, and had a late lunch there as well.

We both got Korean Fried Chicken Burgers ($22.90) - crispy chicken, kimchi slaw, gochujang mayonnaise, milk bun, fries.. which were quite nice and very filling.

Dropped into the chemist and the pet store(s) on the way home (it's getting harder and harder to get fluoro bulbs, another reason to downsize/get rid of the fish...).  We were out for nearly five hours - most of the day - whoops.  I didn't feel like eating any dinner.  In the end I had a piece of cheese and a scoop of ice cream.  We watched Conclave which was surprisingly interesting.

Sunday.  Okish sleep.  House/hobby/photo stuff and some food shopping.  Stu got a rather yummy truffle toastie from Le Cheeserie ($21).

5.7.26

One Sunday afternoon we parked off Diddams Close and wandered around the peninsula.

Dusky moorhen

Some sort of paradalote...

White-plumed honeyeaters

Fairy wren

Stu's photo of a New Holland honeyeater

This was the first time I'd seen a spinebill.  We saw it in the trees, and then it flew over and landed right near us so I got to get a few quick snaps that turned out really well!

Brown-headed honeyeater

Cormorants..

Purple swamphen

Fairy wren changing plumage for spring