Northern Territory, Blue Mountains, and Dragonflies and Damselflies

[lark_ascends]

A number of photos below the cut, with some commentary. In particular, my university's lake is teeming with dragonflies and damselflies at the moment, and I've been lucky to get some awesome photos.

( Kata Tjuta )

( White-browed scrub wren )

( Wentworth Falls )

( Dragonflies and Damselflies )

Blue Mountains from Echo Point, 29 Dec 2010

[lark_ascends]

I'm posting this separately, because it's a large panorama.

Late December, a friend and I had an absolutely and utterly lovely day in the Blue Mountains (Sydney, Australia)--lunch at Wentworth Falls at the old post office, then we did one of the walks at Wentworth Falls. After that we drove to Katoomba to Echo Point (where you can see the Three Sisters). The amount of tourists at Echo Point was phenomenal. And finally, after that, we went back to Leura and did the walk to Leura Cascades. It was wonderful, relaxing and although it was pretty warm and sticky, it was worth it.

There were a lot of birds about, including a white browed scrub wren which completely ignored how close we were to it, giving me a chance to get some photos. Apparently they are fearless little birds! There were also a lot of butterflies out in the Blue Mountains, when you were driving you could see them everywhere, particularly white ones. Of course, never got a chance to take any photos.

Anyway, this is part of what we got to see--the view from Echo Point. The Three Sisters are at the left and on the right is 'Scenic World' where you can go down the railway down the side of the mountain, get a cable car across a valley, or get one down the side of the mountain. Freaky!

( 800 pixel wide version )

( Large version )