Travelling Pathetically - Bare Minimum Edition

 I stared nervously at the plague doctor who was showing just a little too much enthusiasm in preparing a foot long syringe filled with a murky, somewhat viscous liquid.  He squeezed a few drops from the needle and I couldn't help noticing they burnt a hole in the carpet, also...

"What the hell is that smell?"

"Bear urine and burnt lizard feet," replied the plague doctor.

"You're not injecting that into me!"

"Of course not, that's my aftershave."

"Are you actually qualified to conduct this procedure?"

The plague doctor looked outraged.

"I'll have you know I studied at the Sorbonne."

"I thought you studied interpretive dance."

"Yes but I did it at the Sorbonne."

"And now you're going to stick that massive needle into my knee."

There was more than a hint of malice in the plague doctor's chuckle, 

"Oh this doesn't go into your knee, it goes in through your eyeball.  Hold him down!"

Too late I attempted to flee but was submerged under a tide of plush toys.  After the injection was completed and the restraints had been unbuckled I gathered together my gear and what little remained of my dignity and prepared for my walk.  As I prepared to leave the plague doctor stopped me.

"Just a quick word on side effects," he said.  "You may experience some slight dizziness."

"OK."

"Shortness of breath, bleeding from the ears, lesions to the frontal cortex, dry heaves, wet heaves, general heaves, liver damage, heart palpitations, explosive diarrhea and of course severe knee pain."

"Knee pain is what I was seeing you about in the first place."

"And you can't say I don't deliver.  Good luck."

After my previous walk where I wound up limping pathetically for the last couple of kilometres I decided to try out my knee on something a little less strenuous.  A nice twelve kilometre walk from Cabarita to Chiswick alongside the Parramatta River.  There would be even less bush element to my walk than on the previous occasion but I would have a river at my side and surely there would be parks and things along the way.  Indeed there were.  The day was grey and threatened rain but that was still better than the previous day when it had actually been raining so I set out to catch a ferry to Cabarita.

Cabarita is a riverside suburb of Sydney with a ferry stop and now you know as much about Cabarita as I do.  For the record it seemed quite nice and the ferry obligingly dropped me off at a park so there would at least be a few trees around for the start of my walk.

From Cabarita ferry wharf looking forlornly back at civilisation

There were indeed a few trees around at the start of my walk but it has to be admitted that this walk wouldn't be about the bush.  If anything it would be about the wetlands.  As you can see from the photo below some of the land was indeed wet.  The recent rain helped with that as well.  Despite the not particularly clement weather there were a fair few people about picnicking and strolling along the path.  I cursed the propensity of people to go out walking along paths as I walked along the path.

Definitely wet

In defiance of the generally built up nature of the area a thin fringe of vegetation clung desperately to the river's edge trying to avoid being pushed into the water by the encroaching suburbia.  To be fair surburbia had pretty much encroached as far as it could without getting its feet wet and the vegetation was reduced to huddling in a fringe that could be classified as "too wet to build on but too shallow to float a boat".  I took the occasional photograph to encourage the vegetation's efforts.

The vegetation is doing its best

It has to be admitted I was less than inspired by my surroundings but I reminded myself that this was more of a knee test than a jaunty Sunday walk and persevered.  It was good that I did so because in compensation for the absence of wide ranging bush a single tree in a park was giving shelter to a spectacular series of contenders for the Clare McIntyre Memorial Fungus.

Check out this lot

And this one

And these

With my spirits bucked by the sight (and possible consumption) of various absolutely non hallucinogenic mushrooms I continued with my walk along the river.  There were small beaches and even smaller patches of what, if they had been more numerous, would have been called mangroves.  As it was they were struggling to be even a single mangrove.  Not that this was the fault of the local council.  Signs abounded informing us of the importance of mangroves and the council's desperate efforts to preserve and encourage the growth of the two or three that are left.  Personally I doubt there was much left in the budget for mangrove preservation after they paid for all the signs but possibly I'm a little cynical.

One of the things I've noticed about walking through waterside parks is the predilection of people to leave strangely shaped pieces of metal lying about the place.  It's either art or littering on an extreme scale.  I'll show you the photographs and let you make up your own mind.

Art or possibly litter

I think I'm going to go with litter

With my mind improved or at least not appreciably degraded I moved past the art (or litter) skirting the grey waters of the Parramatta as I headed towards Chiswick still several kilometres ahead.  Chiswick isn't actually that far away as the ibis flies but the land describes an inconveniently long curve around a bay in between the two which adds a few kilometres for those of us tied to the earth.

I had to head away from the river briefly as certain selfish people had managed to build their homes pretty much down to the waters edge.  I hope they get jellyfish in their basement.  Or at least I would if anyone had a basement.  I don't think we do basements in Australia, it's more of an American thing.  It does make me wonder how local serial killers manage.

The houses have reached the water which means I must leave

After some uninspired street walking I managed to wangle my way back to the waters edge by walking through a riverside development which had nevertheless opened (I suspect reluctantly) its riverside path to the general public.  I think we can all agree that the public doesn't get much more general than me so I cheerfully padded along a well laid out path with handsome, well tended vegetation of the decorative rather than native kind until I reached, well I'm not sure what I reached.  It might have been a rotunda or a pergola or just a random construction but as I think you will agree from the sign above the entrance it was making claims a little beyond reality.

Cape Cabarita?  Really?  Where exactly?

Still I was please to see this little construction as it marked my reintroduction to the river which showed no signs of having noticed my absence.  As I walked along the riverside the council signs redoubled their efforts to convince me that any random plant I encountered was due to their heroic environmental efforts.  Now wetlands were the focus (possibly they'd given up on the mangroves) and signs breathlessly informed me of how vitally important the eighteen square inches of wetland I was looking was to the overall health of what little environment was left.  Or at least I would have been looking at the wetland if the sign hadn't been blocking my view.  I peered around it and did my best to take a photograph.

It does look a little wet

And on the right you can see the mangrove

Despite my snarky comments the sign and the wet patch signaled the beginning of a narrow but definite fringe of mangroves/wetlands separating me from the river.  If you wander in there you can break your ankle on a tree root before drowning in land that could probably be best described as "well irrigated".  Mangroves (the plural finally justified) presented themselves for the camera and because I had nothing better to do I obligingly took photos.

Yep, mangroves

Having finally discovered a piece of wilderness (very broadly speaking) I immediately turned my back on it so that I could photograph a golf course.  In my defence the golf course was covered with cockatoos and the occasional galah and the mangroves weren't.

Galahs and cockatoos

Once I got over the galahs I returned my attention to the riverside which, possibly insulted by my fickleness dispensed with the mangroves and presented mudflats instead.  I wasn't bothered, the presence of the mudflats enabled me to take a series of blurry, long range and not particularly good photos of birds.  Said birds were wandering over the mudflats digging out edible things from below its surface.

The birds are blurry but the mudflat is looking pretty good.  You will rarely see flatter mud.

And here is a rare opportunity to see an ibis with its beak stuck in something that isn't a garbage bin

I think these are black winged stilts

Then it was back to the mangroves for a bit.  I took a photo of something big black and shiny (a bird you sick freaks) that was hanging out on a mangrove branch looking cool.

Then the bird hurled itself off the branch directly towards my face.  Unfortunately that photo is somewhat blurry due to the fact that I was fleeing in terror as I took it.  I was circling around the bay I mentioned somewhat earlier plodding on towards Chiswick.  There were birds out on the bay but unfortunately they were too far away for a decent photograph.  The below photograph demonstrates that the bird in question was indeed too far away for a decent photograph.

It's white and, if you zoom in, somewhat blurry

I had to leave the river again at this point as a golf course had crept down to the shoreline and then a suburb had bisected the golf course leaving it as two separate segments on green pocked with sandpits rather like a severe case of acne with a neat grid pattern of houses between the two.  All of which is an overly long explanation of why I found myself again trudging down a suburban street hopefully in the direction of the river I had so recently abandoned.  I crossed a charming watercourse, its natural splendour making a pleasant counterpoint to the buildings all around.

Aforementioned charming watercourse

My return to the river was greeted by pelicans.  Well the pelicans were there and I chose to believe that they were there to greet me.  There were also ibis but I was focused on the pelicans.

"We were good enough for you when there was nothing else," sneered the ibis.  "Now you're ignoring us completely."

"Damn straight, now get out of the way, you're blocking the pelicans."

I had to elbow an ibis in the neck to get this photo

I was walking along a fringe between the road and the river designated as a park probably because the authorities couldn't think of anything else to do with it.  A rainbow lorikeet flew overhead and then landed in a branch directly above me.  I risked lorikeet crap in my eye in order to take the below photograph.

Literally directly above my head

This blog is rapidly becoming little more than an excuse to post not particularly good bird photos and strangely I am comfortable with that.  The exposed pieces of river bank allowed me to take a couple of semi good shots of birds who were sufficiently far away that identifying them was a little difficult.

I'm not really sure what this is but it looks ok

 

There was no such difficulty with the crested pigeons who got so close to me that I was afraid they were going to mug me.  I flashed my camera at them and they sidled away attempting to look innocent.  I didn't believe it and took a photo in case the police recovered the camera from my dead body and needed a clue to solve my murder.

If anything happens to me it was probably these guys

Breathing heavily from my lucky escape (and not at all because I'm hopelessly unfit) I made my way along the river.  My destination was almost forgotten as birds pranced in front of me clamouring for attention.  Getting snobby I selected only the choicest.  I think the below is white faced heron, it's certainly a white faced something.

Note the ibis trying to get in on the photo

I was now seven kilometres into my walk and whatever the plague doctor had done was definitely wearing off.  The last five kilometres were a painful hobble driven on by sheer irritation at the fact that my knee wouldn't let me do a simple twelve kilometres without whining.  It started raining too which was loads of fun but I eventually stumbled onto Chiswick wharf giving thanks to whatever deities might be listening that my leg hadn't collapsed entirely.  I am definitely going to have to do something about this before I go on holiday.