Inspired by yesterday’s walk around new neighbourhoods, I went for another short drive with my wife and Scully today, so we could try walking around somewhere new again. We found Tambourine Creek, which runs through a bushland park names Warraroon Reserve.
We entered the Reserve towards the downstream end, from a path leading from nearby streets where we parked the car. We walked upstream, along the bank of the creek, passing a lot of mossy sandstone rocks, ferns, and small palms, forming undergrowth below a canopy of gum trees and others.
The water was trickling along nicely, probably helped by the rain we had for much of yesterday and overnight (although the weather had cleared by lunchtime when we went for this walk). It was also surprisingly clear for an urban creek. I wouldn’t drink it, but it looked pretty clean, with no obvious pollutants or rubbish anywhere. It was also very easy to forget that there were houses quite nearby, as the bush growth was thick enough that you couldn’t see very far. If you were dropped here and just looked around without exploring too far, you might believe you were in complete wilderness.
We walked about 750 metres along the creek, before emerging back into the streets of the adjacent suburb, then walking back along the streets to where we’d parked the car. Scully enjoyed the walk – she really likes walking in new places that she hasn’t seen before.
This afternoon I went over the lecture notes and tutorial exercises for tomorrow’s image processing lecture, so I can help the students during the tutorial part. It was a lot more about probability distributions and fitting to them using logistic regression classifiers and Bayesian classifiers, and using training data to produce likelihood functions for maximisation.
For dinner I experimented again with leftover sourdough starter, making savoury pancakes, served with fried mushrooms. This is based on a dish I had at a restaurant once – I’d never considered pancakes as a savoury meal before, but it works really well with the right toppings.
New content today:
That looks much too open for a northeastern American wilderness. Here, if you don’t remove saplings and such regularly, your land becomes a dense, impenetrable thicket fairly quickly. We’ve had several small planes crash in New England and just never be found, the trees are so thick.
Well this isn’t exactly wilderness. It’s in the middle of the city and there are maintained walking trails through it. Real wild bushland in Australia is pretty impenetrable.
Looks lovely and natural. Is that “within” Sydney, or do you live near the edge and are driving “outside” the city to find a creek like that?
It’s right in the heart of the city. Here’s a map, showing Warraroon Reserve: https://goo.gl/maps/kiqFqCYtSw1fkHpM9
We’re lucky in Sydney to have pockets of relatively untouched land within the city.