Category Archives: Travels

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Wikipedia says… “Rocklands Reservoir is a popular recreational boating location; with powered boating, water skiing and jet skiing allowed. Camping is permitted in designated areas. During the duck hunting season, duck shooting is allowed, it is also a popular fishing spot with Murray cod, Redfin, Trout and Carp taken regularly at all times of the year, Rocklands had a reputation as one of the premier carp fishing destinations in the late 90’s and early 2000’s with 10 kg+ carp taken regularly.”

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I loved watching the cormorants fish. They launched from the curved spillway wall and it was there, when the sun rose, that masses of them lined up, drying their wings.  My old Nokia Lumia camera phone couldn’t do that particular sight justice.

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For this next photo, I’m on the walkway right on top, near the castle-like part. The Glenelg River appears on the other side, getting on with it’s journey to the sea. An intricate system prevents carp, and their eggs, from going downstream.

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Work started on the Rocklands Reservoir in 1938 but construction was distrupted by WW2.  Picking up again in 1950, the ungated, gravity-fed dam wall and embankments were completed in 1953 – a few years before I was born. Nowadays, it supplies both agricultural and environmental needs as water levels permit.

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It was only about 28% full when we visited last month.

Thanks for looking.

🙂

 

Travels

The Spillway, Rocklands Reservoir

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I’m still going through my travel photos from our 4-day stay last month at Rocklands Reservoir, near Balmoral, Victoria (Australia). While we didn’t get rain, we did have a couple of frosty mornings, usually with fog lingering until the sun cleared the trees.

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Fog isn’t very conducive to bird photography, but I couldn’t resist taking some pictures of this little fellow perched on top of our camping stove lid.

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It got a few tiny scraps as I hadn’t yet cleaned up the stove from the previous night. I love this next photo of the foggy gum trees. It reminds me of Hans Heysen, who became a household name here for his watercolours – so much so that he became Sir Hans Heysen O.B.E. (1884 – 1968).

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Thanks for looking.

🙂

Birds, Other Stuff, Travels

Winter Camping: frost ‘n fog

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They say you should be consistent with your blogging, but I dont’ think consistently bad is a good thing. I haven’t been completely lazy, since I’ve put in two or more hours nearly every day on revision of my second fantasy novel.

The only days I missed were when we attended my Auntie Faye’s funeral at Balmoral, ages ago now it feels. The weather forecast looked great, lots of sunny days despite the winter cold, so we went four days early. Took the kayaks to nearby Rocklands Reservoir. Set up on a powered site and had the whole caravan park to ourselves. Since Mr R. now has his own camera, you will get pics of me!  This first one is with the spillway wall in the background. I was switching to paddling as Mr R.’s pedal unit propeller was loose, and there wasn’t an Allen key aboard – oops.

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There he is, taking a picture of me taking a picture.

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The scenery was awesome.

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Thanks for looking.

🙂

 

 

Other Stuff, Travels

Consistently Bad!

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