19) Darkness Always Comes

On Saturday we just wanted to get out of the house - we were not looking forward to trying to heat the place with the hair drier again. I recalled a "water garden" just up the street a few k so we drove up right at dusk (which in 5 pm).

There is a new memorial to the Aussies who defended the Kokoda Trail in PNG during WWII (that event looms large in the Aussie psyche it seems.) There are many trekking companies that now cater to those looking for leech infested, mozzie riddled, jungle-slashing mud-fests. It's 96 km (61 miles) and has been run in 17:20! Anyone who wants to come on down and speed-hike it should email Nancy. I'll do support!) (you can open the cross section map below in a new window to read it. This has some vertical to it. I don't think its been mtn-biked yet....)





The waters in the "cascade garden" were not flowing - either they are off for the winter or off for good. But it is a nice strip of park along a canal and has some great trees.

It was the trees in the twilight that caught my attention. Something noisy in the trees and it was not just the ubiquitous Australian White Ibis that we see everywhere. There was too much chirping, squabbling and general mayhem to be birds. We peered into the gloaming night, we parted the tendrils of impending dark and saw that suspended high about us, inky black against the dusky sky, were foxes. Thousands of flying foxes in a "camp". These are not your typical little brown bat - these are full bore Pteropididae bats with wingspans up to a meter. As dark fell with a thump, they rousted themselves and flowed out over the canal - truly amazing. The Batman films should have used footage from this in the flick!

Speaking of dark -- many folks reminded us that we were moving to winter again. Ok fine, gets down to 50 degrees (It did snow in Sydney last night! 1000 km south). But the part we did not consider was latitude. It is past solstice and sunset is only getting marginally later - it is still setting at 5:18 with a 10:46 hour day. So when does it stay light later?

It doesn't, really. Even on the Summer solstice it sets at 6:44. But it RISES at 4:50 am!! (day is 13:53 hrs)(in contrast - Boulder Summer solstice = sunrise at 5:33; sunset at 8:32 for 14:59 hrs daylite). So we never get that long after work playtime.... means all the fun stuff has to come early, early, early. Sigh.....

Daylight savings time? Nah - QLD doesn't do it (though the rest of AU does!)

Darkness always comes.....