For goodness sake, don't drink the water! That's one of the things the sign says.
Mrs Speech and I have lately taken to walking around our suburb.
We started out with a walk around the (very large) block beyond our house, and not so gradually developed into gruelling hikes along grass, dirt, mud and gravel.
We live in a fairly ordinary residential area, with a ton of bushland backing on to it, behind which sits the Gateway Motorway which essentially connects Cairns with Sydney.
Combatting the local wildlife, we've looked thanksgiving dinner in the eye, and admired deadly water, while playing on the swings and sipping Powerade. In the longer, hotter months to come we may need more Powerade.
Our walks have taken us mainly in one direction in our neighbourhood. Our suburb backs on to a lot of bushland so we basically can go left or right once we leave our place.
We're going to show you what happens when we go right, and our walk takes us down a bikeway and through some of the natural beauty of our area. We do these walks around 4:30 - 5pm as the sun dips and the weather cools. It's only just turned spring and already the weather is in the high twenties (high sixties/low seventies).
When we set out, we have to walk down one street, then down another until we get to our local park: Boorabbin Picnic Ground. It's of a picnic ground really, unless you enjoy spreading out the checkered rug under enormous behemoth electrical towers. Me, I like my hair not standing spiked straight up.
I've played basketball here a few times. There's a dog off-leash area where all the pooches get to run wild for a bit and that's always popular.
A lot of Indians tend to make their way here, and some like to kick the soccer ball around or just sit on the edge of the park.
The whole thing is pretty long; you could practice your golf if you wanted to. Mrs Speech and I have played frisbee golf here before.
Bikeways were begun by council in the 90's as a way of getting people out and into some of the beautiful, typically Australian landscape that lies just behind some of Brisbane's suburbs. Obviously they're not always used for biking and can represent a good walk. Around our area they are a link in a chain of parks.
Our bikeway begins on one side of Boorabbin Picnic Ground and continues through it, leaving the park and then threading its way through undeveloped land. Most of which I anticipate will not be undeveloped for long; Brisbane's expansion will probably see a lot of turned into new housing soon.
Yesterday we caught this shot of the magpies (third picture to the left). This time of year, magpies are highly aggressive as they seek to protect their young. They swoop down on you like Messerschmidts on retreating French soldiers and try to make you look as silly as possible as you scurry away in fear. The two in the picture were stationed one on each side of the bikeway as though daring us to try our luck. They moved off and I walked backwards for a minute or two, making sure the little buggers didn't come after us.
A decent twenty or twenty five minute walk takes you through some nice greenery scenery and under Mount Gravatt-Capalaba Road, and then on to Broadwater Park.
Once you get to Broadwater Park you have options. You can amble through the upper park and head back to the main road, which takes you back to our shops, or keep going down the bikeway and possibly brave some rough tracks.
The direction we're going in this post is actually backward to when we walked this the other day.
If you keep going beyond the park, you come to a pretty little Creek (Bulimba Creek) which the local kids sometimes play near with their BMXs and iPods and what-not. I dunno. There is totally wildlife there; check the image for the scrub turkey we found. Mrs Speech's first words were to do with Thanksgiving Dinner being all taken care of. But they're flighty, even if they can't fly, and they're back in the scrub before you can say 'hey, get on our table!'
The next park in the chain is called Cresthaven Park, but if you turn left before you get there you can take what is basically a beaten track in the dirt, back down in the direction of our place. There are a myriad of options for lengthening your walk if you want to, including heading out to the main road, but the track is nice for an off-road gosh-I-need-cross-trainers kind of way. We were wearing flip flops when we did this and that was not fun. Our feet ended up filthy.
The track hugs the outer edge including the oval, of the local primary school and finishes up at what we discovered were the newly-resurfaced and equipped basketball courts at the high school. They're beautiful. Unimaginably impressive.
And with the sunset at our back and the sweat on our brow, another walk comes to an end as we traipse back home.
Today we went the other direction and pounded pavement for almost an hour and a half. But that's another post.
We started out with a walk around the (very large) block beyond our house, and not so gradually developed into gruelling hikes along grass, dirt, mud and gravel.
We live in a fairly ordinary residential area, with a ton of bushland backing on to it, behind which sits the Gateway Motorway which essentially connects Cairns with Sydney.
Combatting the local wildlife, we've looked thanksgiving dinner in the eye, and admired deadly water, while playing on the swings and sipping Powerade. In the longer, hotter months to come we may need more Powerade.
Our walks have taken us mainly in one direction in our neighbourhood. Our suburb backs on to a lot of bushland so we basically can go left or right once we leave our place.
We're going to show you what happens when we go right, and our walk takes us down a bikeway and through some of the natural beauty of our area. We do these walks around 4:30 - 5pm as the sun dips and the weather cools. It's only just turned spring and already the weather is in the high twenties (high sixties/low seventies).
I've played basketball here a few times. There's a dog off-leash area where all the pooches get to run wild for a bit and that's always popular.
A lot of Indians tend to make their way here, and some like to kick the soccer ball around or just sit on the edge of the park.
The whole thing is pretty long; you could practice your golf if you wanted to. Mrs Speech and I have played frisbee golf here before.
Bikeways were begun by council in the 90's as a way of getting people out and into some of the beautiful, typically Australian landscape that lies just behind some of Brisbane's suburbs. Obviously they're not always used for biking and can represent a good walk. Around our area they are a link in a chain of parks.
Yesterday we caught this shot of the magpies (third picture to the left). This time of year, magpies are highly aggressive as they seek to protect their young. They swoop down on you like Messerschmidts on retreating French soldiers and try to make you look as silly as possible as you scurry away in fear. The two in the picture were stationed one on each side of the bikeway as though daring us to try our luck. They moved off and I walked backwards for a minute or two, making sure the little buggers didn't come after us.
A decent twenty or twenty five minute walk takes you through some nice greenery scenery and under Mount Gravatt-Capalaba Road, and then on to Broadwater Park.
Once you get to Broadwater Park you have options. You can amble through the upper park and head back to the main road, which takes you back to our shops, or keep going down the bikeway and possibly brave some rough tracks.
If you keep going beyond the park, you come to a pretty little Creek (Bulimba Creek) which the local kids sometimes play near with their BMXs and iPods and what-not. I dunno. There is totally wildlife there; check the image for the scrub turkey we found. Mrs Speech's first words were to do with Thanksgiving Dinner being all taken care of. But they're flighty, even if they can't fly, and they're back in the scrub before you can say 'hey, get on our table!'
The next park in the chain is called Cresthaven Park, but if you turn left before you get there you can take what is basically a beaten track in the dirt, back down in the direction of our place. There are a myriad of options for lengthening your walk if you want to, including heading out to the main road, but the track is nice for an off-road gosh-I-need-cross-trainers kind of way. We were wearing flip flops when we did this and that was not fun. Our feet ended up filthy.
The track hugs the outer edge including the oval, of the local primary school and finishes up at what we discovered were the newly-resurfaced and equipped basketball courts at the high school. They're beautiful. Unimaginably impressive.
And with the sunset at our back and the sweat on our brow, another walk comes to an end as we traipse back home.
Today we went the other direction and pounded pavement for almost an hour and a half. But that's another post.
