Spring striped sensation

You just can't beat nature for shape, pattern and colour.

all legs

A new arrival to Easy Street in our neighbour's paddock.

butterfy or moth?

This little translucent and unusually coloured butterfly was found resting on the corner of our front door.

Phalacrocorax sulcirostris and Ardea novachollandiae

What unpronounceable and complicated names these common species have! We usually see Pied Cormorants fishing, preening and drying their feathers along the riverside. These preening and feather drying Little Black Cormorants were seen the other day, sharing a favoured spot on the riverbank with a White Faced Heron.

the journey home from Alstonville

I decided to take my time coming back from my visit to Ann and spent the whole day driving in to various spots along the coast between Ballina and Coffs Harbour. At Minnie Water there were some beautiful paperbark trees.





A magpie looked on as I took my paperbark photos.



There had been a bushfire through Wooli recently that had burnt the forest right down to the edge of the Wooli Wooli River. The colour of the water in the river was an glorious aqua.



The heathland on the ocean front at Wooli had also been burnt.





On the same hot windy day, the water at Wooli heads looked cool and inviting.

my trip to visit Ann at Alstonville

I visited a friend, Anne who lives in Alstonville recently. We were shopping on a windy day in Ballina when I saw this little dog waiting not so patiently in the back of a car for its owner to come out of the supermarket.



A lovely coloured little pony was grazing beside a laneway at Alstonville when we were looking around the countryside. I'm sure its colour is natural but it did look as if its owners had given it a dye job.



We bought some plants from a stall outside Whian Whian school and had lunch in its lovely grounds. The students had planted a small rainforest and there was a large bee's nest in a lower branch of one of the trees.



In search of more plants, we had a tasty and reasonably priced lunch at Windara Nursery at Casino. The nursery provides supported employment for people with disabilities. A palm in the garden there had both green and red fruit.

art class

We did a series of 'en plein air' art classes in September with Nigel Killalea around the Thora valley. Two classes were held at our place. Nigel is a Coffs Harbour artist who recently won the Bellingen Art Prize with his work 'The Promised Land'. Nigel is looking rather contemplative here. Maybe he's just keeping an eye our for snakes!