Some Australian Wildlife and Sunsets and Storms ...

... well - sunsets and storms mainly - lol

but first - the "wildlife" photo I took today, while sorting out junk/boxes of fabric/whatever that I have stored under the pergola ...
(yes - boring way to spend Australia Day ... but DH was at work, and I wasn't one of the 50% of Canberra people who nick off down to the coast for the weekend, or one of the other almost 50% who either have a BBQ or go to one, and drink beer/etc while they enjoy their public holiday (actually neither of those % figures are that correct - there are probably quite a few people who don't do anything special for Australia Day - some because they are at work and others because they have stuff to do at home and/or just don't happen to be doing anything/going anywhere that day ... er ... like me ... LOL)

... anyway ... here is one of our wonderful Aussie creatures:



I took the photo after DD came out and saw it sitting there at the top of the kitchen window frame ... that is where it ended up after I found it an hour or so earlier - when it crawled out from under one of the flaps of a cardboard box of my fabric! And here is an Aussie sunset:



actually the sunset is off to the left ... almost behind me ... in this photo - this is looking NorthEast (roughly) over the Dunlop Grasslands - and the dog is in the bottom left corner (he wasn't in the origianl photo but the left hand side was just some boring house/etc beside the path so I cropped the photo) This was taken a week or 2 ago...

... and this was taken a few minutes later:



yes - the sky really WAS that colour!

... it also really was this odd greyish green colour a few days later:



This was a few days ago when we had some big thunderstorms - this was when the biggest one that we had here in Dunlop was coming - the sideways rain and wild wind gusts hit about 2 minutes after I took this photo - this was the same day that a few houses in Canberra lost their roof!
... and the next day, I noticed that my pile of boxes of dried plants, collected for making baskets/etc, had also lost it's "roof" - the sheet of plywood that I had over the top of it (the pile of boxes/etc was against the wall at the side of the house next to the fence where nobody goes except the dog and I, and I had made a sort of "lean to" to keep the rain off) the "roof" ended up a few feet away in the bush in the front yard - I am glad the bush was there to stop it - else it may have ended up in someone's front yard across the street!) ... the pile of plants were a bit wet, but the ones I still wanted dried out ok in the sun ... I have now sorted the pile out and thrown some of it out, and now the rest is in a couple of boxes under the pergola ... next to the boxes of fabric - lol

btw, I was going to do a separate blog post about the storm ... but once I decided to put those first 2 sunset photos in, and went looking for more photos of different colourd sky, I realised it kind of fits in here now - lol

So ... here is another photo of the storm coming



This was actually taken about 4 minutes before the one above - ominous green clouds above the pointy brown hills ...

... and this one was taken 1 minute before it (ie 3 minutes later)



Oh Oh! - where have the hills gone?! - LOL
about 2 minutes after this is when the rain squall hit - yes - of course I was standing out IN it! lol
(very handy thing this waterproof camera ;-)

- well - I had to stand out in it to watch the lightning and take photos/video of the storm clouds ... ... hmmm - seems the dog was watching the storm coming too:



... or maybe he was just looking to see what I was looking at - lol

There is a laneway beside the house on the left in that photo - when the rain and wind hit I suddenly realised that there might be hailstones or something and maybe I had better get a bit closer to some shelter in case the dog and I needed to dive under someones verandah or something ... so we ran down the laneway ... taking a video at the same time - lol - but it was a bit bumpy and blurry so I won't put that one here - I took another one as the dog and I walked down the street (we live several houses down from that laneway) ... as you can see - he didn't seem to care if it was raining sideways ... lol



This photo was taken 10 minutes after that first storm photo
(the camera puts some kind of time "stamp" in the image files so the software I use to look at/edit my photos knows what time they were taken ... it actually seemed longer than 10 minutes at the time - lol)



and yes - the sky really was that odd olive green colour.

It was also this colour about 24 minutes later:



- yes - after walking around in the storm I got changed into dry clothing and took the dog for the rest of his walk - LOL and took even more sunset/cloud/etc photos



(this one was about 10 minutes after the last one)

The next evening the dog and I went for another walk - and I took photos of this storm:



There is a bit of a hill where I walk the dog - has a great view of clouds/storms/whatever over the city!

In fact this one (same storm a few minutes later, with camera zoomed in) looks like it was right over the city



- the "hill" in the foreground is Black Mountain - and the tower on top of it is a prominent landmark that can be seen from a lot of places in and around Canberra.

Last but not least (well it was going to be the last one until I found another one while waiting for the video to not upload!) - sometimes we get sunsets like this!



this was tonight's sunset - with a rather smokey sky (the smoke has blown over from some bushfires down near the coast - which shows up really well on this satellite image ... if you want to have a look at what other images/etc you can get on that handy website, the home page is here ... the image I linked to is one of the "near real time subsets" (scroll about half way down the page and you should see that) ... but if that sounds like too much digging around then have a look at the "gallery" (the link is on the top of the page) - that is where they put the interesting looking ones.
btw ... downloading too many of those images is probably not recomended for those on dial up internet ... then again ... neither is looking at blogs with lots of photos and videos on them - lol

... talking about video ... I decided to try out the video uploading thingy on blogger (instead of using youtube/etc and linking, like I have done for the other videos I have put in blog posts - in fact I think the first one of 2 videos I posted - that was the only way to do it at the time)
hmmm ... the first one worked fine ... but the second one took half an hour ... er make that an hour ... and it took all that time to do ... nothing ... lol
but I found this while I was waiting, and decided to see if trying to upload it would kick start the video thingy ... photo uploaded fine ... video upload seems to be dead ... grrr ...



yes - another thunderstorm photo - taken in Feb. 2007 - I managed to catch some lightning lighting up the clouds (the yellowish colour on the clouds in the foreground is probably light reflected from the streetlights/city/whatever), and you can also see the southern cross (a constellation of stars that you can see from here in Australia, but not from the Northern Hemisphere) in the sky above the clouds! ... I was probably going to try and remember to post this photo for Australia Day last year, but I didn't ... LOL

hmmm ... if the video thingy still hasn't worked by the time I have gone and got a drink and come back (er ... it looks dead and I have not gone yet - think I might kill it now and then get my drink on the way to bed) - this blog post can get posted without it and I will try and add the video to it when I get up in the morning ... or should I say later in the morning, or even afternoon - seeing it IS morning ... in fact if I stay here much longer I could wander out to where I took those storm/sunset photos and get a photo of the sunRISE - LOL

[later edit, the next evening (was going to be earlier but someone else was using the computer at the time) ... re the video uploading problem last night (well early hours of this morning actually) methinks I will blame microstuffed windoze/internet exploder ... it turns out the video had uploaded, but some of the other stuff that was supposed to then happen in this post editor thingy didn't happen at this end, then the web browser totally froze when I hit the "publish post" button ... but thanks to blogger saving all this stuff as I write it so it is all there at that end anyway, it did publish the post ok ... minus the second video ... and when I just came in here expecting to have to upload it again I noticed it had put in the enclosure link up the top, but not the bit of html code it should have put where the video is in the post - so I had a fiddle around with the html and copy and pasted some stuff and now the video shows up where it should be ... (which is how I have learnt to do most of the little bit of html stuff I know - have a look at how it seems to work and fiddle with it to make something do what I want - lol)
anyway ... now this is fixed, off to do the other stuff I was going to do on the computer while the video uploaded ... like look up a map of where I am supposed to go for the work course I am doing tomorrow, so I know where I am going and can find the place, and read/answer e-mails and stuff ... and try not to get too "lost in cyberspace" while I am doing it ... lol]