Lyre Lyre

It didn't quite reach the minus four degrees that we were expecting this morning. Minus two was our minimum and I stayed in bed with the electric blanket on 'one' until after 8am!

Luckily, BGWLBH was up well before me and put the heater on, so the cabin was nice and toasty warm by the time I climbed out of bed.

We were both brave enough to wash our hair today. I blow dried mine with the very small, but effective hair dryer attached to the wall bracket in the main bedroom, while BGWLBH chose to wind her hair into a twist and hold it in place with a loose beanie.

We left the cabin well after 9.30am and drove to the main shopping mall, where we found a little bohemian style cafe to have breakfast. We then grabbed some fruit and nuts from the supermarket to take to Wollomombi Falls with us.

Last time we came to this area, we spent a couple of hours at Wollomombi Falls attempting to photograph Wedge-tailed Eagles that soared and hovered at our eye level at the lookouts above the gorge. So we were really hoping to spend more time doing the same today.

After about 45 minutes, it was obvious that there were no eagles in the vicinity, but I did see a couple of Crimson Rosellas, an Eastern Spinebill and some Robins. BGWLBH came back from her trek and urged me to follow her back up the path to see some Fairy Wrens, which I did.

Along the way, we came across a male Superb Lyrebird! BGWLBH had already met him earlier, so I followed him around for a bit and got some shots. He kept moving in the opposite direction, so I couldn't get any frontal shots, but his tail was his best feature anyway, so it didn't really matter.

I've done a lot of trekking on our road trips and we have never crossed paths with a Lyrebird before this trip. There was one scratching around in the bushes at The Drip too, but we didn't get any good shots of that one because he was much more skittish than this one.

We left him to his own devices and further along the path there was a patch of bush and trees full of different birds. There was a red robin (I haven't looked at these photos yet, so I can't correctly identify the birds), a yellow robin, pardalotes, honey eaters and finches. No fairy wrens unfortunately.

At our last visit, we had the entire lookout and the tracks to ourselves, but today there were a lot of tourists about. Noisy kids, other photographers, families, backpackers etc. We should have realised that it would be busier on a weekend.

We had a bite to eat and decided to drive back to Metz Gorge. We had been there on our last trek too and that's when I took this photo ...

It was completely different this visit. A new lookout platform had been built, a new fence and the road in was very much improved. The two alpacas were still there, along with a couple of horses and a shetland pony.

Today, there were no clouds, just bright Winter sunshine. A perfect day really.

On the drive back into Armidale, an idiot with a mini van full of kids overtook us on a bend and there was another car coming in the opposite direction. The other car had to veer off the road to miss this idiot. They were about ten feet away from a head on collision. The ridiculous part about it, was that the mini van was only about twenty seconds in front of us when we drove into Armidale. What a stupid risk to take for the sake of 20 seconds!

Tonight we had a delicious dinner at the Armidale Exies Club. Grilled chicken breast with salad and chips and gf gravy. The chef made the gravy gf especially for us. While we ate, there was a musician with a guitar, and he was singing Eagles, Creedence, Sherbet and other songs from the 70s and 80s. He was very good and we sang along and took our time over dinner.

Back to the cabin by 8pm and checking out the touring atlas to figure out what direction to drive tomorrow. We think we've decided on Kempsey as our next destination.

I wonder what tomorrow will bring? I must say that I'm having a great time on this road trip. Very relaxing, interesting and fun. I'm glad we're here .. even if it IS cold!

Nite all.