Weekend fun

It’s been a little while, so we promised Ani that we’d take her out for an adventure on Saturday. So we decided to head to Olympic Park. Yes, this includes the buildings they used when Sydney hosted the 2000 Olympics. But it also includes a bunch of trails/parks/wetlands, so it’s a great place to go wander around. We saw a whole bunch of new birds. And even though we’ve seen them before, I still got excited when we spotted some superb fairy wrens. They have blue heads – how can you not get excited about that!?! And they’re one of the few birds here that actually has a melodious song.


With Ani along, we didn’t go inside any of the buildings used for the Olympics. BUT, we did manage to get in trouble. Twice. I know – no big surprise coming from trouble-makers like us. So the first time it was for having Ani in an area where dogs weren’t allowed – we just thought dogs had to be on a leash. But the ranger was great – he drove by when we were looking at birds and scolded us, then adds “It’s no big deal – just head toward the exit. But take your time. What good birds have you seen? If you go look here you can see these birds ‘visiting’ from Siberia. And over here there are baby plovers. And be sure you go here.” So he was really nice. The second time, we managed to walk into a restricted area that didn’t have any signs and looked just like the other buildings we had been walking by and there were tons of other people walking around. Again, the guy was pretty nice about it, but I still don’t know how we were supposed to know it was a restricted area.

And that night, we headed over to Julie’s for dinner – she takes good care of us. We got to feed her possums – there’s a mother/baby pair and a big single male that stop by her backyard to see if there’s anything good. Sometimes she feeds them banana, which may not be the best thing to do, but it is kinda fun to get such good views of the local wildlife!


And then Julie and her mom fed us – they made this great fish au gratin. Only disappointment of the night was that the resident frogmouth wasn’t there (that’s another bird, in case you were wondering).