First stop, the Royal Botanic Gardens, one block north of the park we live next to.
We spent about 15 minutes looking at ducks and swamp hens on the lily pad pond.
Although Tim looks disengaged in the above photo, he is actually not texting his SF buddies. He is trying to determine the name of this bird, below, which is the same thing in the wild that stole Jonathan's chicken nuggets in the zoo.
We believe it is a Nankeen night heron.
Next we meandered through the fern gully.
And then we spent 15 minutes or so exploring the children's garden. Our only child, Jonathan, is a little older now than the target age group for that garden. But if I had a child between the ages of two an five, I know that hypothetical child would have loved the children's garden. It had little streams, tunnels made of trees, a bamboo forest, a lookout tower, and a giant sand pit.
This flowering gum tree was in the children's garden.
You may notice it is the same tree in which we saw the parrots a few posts ago. Those parrots were in fact rainbow lorikeets, and they live in families in the parks here in the wild. We almost become bird watchers here. When large or colorful birds fly so close or call out just outside the window, it makes us want to know what we are looking at.
In any case, astute reader Brent reported that he spent a long time looking for rainbow lorikeets in the last photo we posted of a flowering gum tree. There are no rainbow lorikeets in the photo above. However, in case you want to stare at a photo for a while, there are at least six swamp hens pictured in the lily pads below.
And here is a nice picture of lucky clover. (It was the botanic gardens. We were supposed to take pictures of plants.)
The next stop on the garden tour was the Shrine of Remembrance.
In 1914, almost exactly 100 years ago, the state of Victoria, Australia, sent about 120,000 teenagers and young twenty-somethings to fight in a small conflict developing in Europe. About one in five of those boys did not come home. They were killed on the battle fields of World War I. They died too far away for families to ever find their graves. The shrine was built for the grieving families left behind. And very soon after it was completed, war broke out in Europe again.
We spent a long time at the shrine, talking about war, answering Jonathan's questions. A building that leads children to ask hard questions is an important building.
And there are great views of the city skyline from the balcony.
In the other direction, this is the street where we live.
Visiting the Shrine of Remembrance took longer than expected. Time for picnic lunch. Next stop, Kings Domain.
This large parkland was named for the statue of George V of England which stands in its interior. Here is George himself.
You will note he is dressed for a summer afternoon in the park, although those shorts are not BYU-approved.
This fountain was in Kings Domain. We spent at least a half hour watching it. With the breeze and the spray, it was a little cool, which is why Jonathan is wearing his jacket and hood in that photo. I took a picture of a couple of birds, for your enjoyment, Reader.
These are magpie larks, which seem to have random black and white coloring, like cows, only the size of a robin. We see large groups of them in the park outside our house.
I was going to take a picture of an Australian magpie, while I was at it. Australian magpies are larger, and although black and white, they have much more white than the magpies I know from the western US. As I approached the bird to take its photo, however, Tim asked why I was trying? I could just get a picture later on the web. So no picture for you.
OK. Next park, the Queen Victoria Gardens, just across the street. Here is Queen Victoria herself.
She gets a nice view.
We found in the park this piano, part of an art exhibit placing pianos in various places around the city.
If you find and play them all, you earn a new magic spell! (Sorry, video game reference.)
From there, we walked across the Yarra River to Federation Square, across from the main central city train station. Before we began the walk, we promised Jonathan we would get ice cream at Federation Square to supplement our lunch. That was back when we thought we'd only be out for a couple of hours. Lunch was long over, but we looked at ice cream anyway.
And then chose Slurpees instead.
Yes, there are actually a lot of 7-11's here, including one prominently located just across from the main central city train station. In the photo, we are eating those Slurpees back across the river at the Birrarung Marr Park, by the way, the next park on the itinerary.
The photos thin out significantly here. Around this point in time, I looked at my watch and realized we had been out for about five hours. Five hours! And just six kilometers? We were all getting tired and grumpy with each other. It was time to walk straight home.
Instead, we lingered at the skate park, at the Pioneer Women's park, and then back through the botanic gardens, (where I snuck in a picture of an Australian magpie, only it turned its head away just as the photo was snapped):
And then finally back to our own tree-lined park.
And that's the end.
Almost.
These people were playing cricket in our park. That deserved a picture.
That is the end.
1 comment:
I can't wait to come visit!!!! Have you figured out the washing machine?
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