Some wet bits

The flood waters are still slowly rising.  By 19 July it was up to 1.54m at the official gauge.

The next few snaps are from forays along Lakeside Drive on 18 July (when the gauge was at 1.50 m).  The first was taken on our morning walk and shows the situation near the intersection of Lakeside Drive and Karbeethong Road.  (I don't have a photo, but by late afternoon on 19th it was right across the road.)

This is the entrance to the Narrows walking track.  It didn't matter as on our kayak trip (see below) it was apparent that much of the track was under water.

Most of the hire boats had been taken away.

This is the first time we have seen many of the yachts near the Karbeethong ramp shifted.

Back towards town, this was the seen just past Angophora Drive ...

... and towards the Fisheries Jetty bend.

Major excitement was caused by a Sunfish being washed up on Tip Beach.  I shall do a dedicated post about this later.  It appears to be a Hoodwinker Sunfish (Mola tecta).

The waves had been doing a number on the sandhills on the beach towards Bastion Point.  (It was worse on the morning of the 19th. (This had also washed the Sunfish corpse out to sea.  Fortunately some tissue samples were taken on the 18th.)

A pair of Whistling Kites are passing a lot of time (noisily) in the Angophoras near our house.  Hopefully they are setting up house there.

The lawns in Angophora Drive seem to be an interesting site for a range of fungi.  This is (I think ) Bolbituis titubans.

Our major activity on the 19th was a kayak trip up the Narrows.  We had been planning our next foray to the islands near the mouth of the Inlet.  However it is difficult to get to the water's edge anywhere convenient to that area.  To give some novelty, we went to the Eastern side of Top Lake this time.

This is in the mouth of the Narrows.

This was meant to be a photo of a Great Egret standing on the sloping branch.  By the time I had got the camera out of its locker and stopped the kayak wandering about in the current the bird had gone.  But the vegetation looks attractive.

An immature Whire-bellied Sea Eagle was watching us, and grabbing a feed at the inland end of the Narrows.

The only pelican on the trip.

To illustrate the strength of the current it took us 57 minutes to get to the far point and 25 to get back.  We did stop a bit more going out  but I'd say we were twice as fast coming back.