On my early morning walk on this Easter Sunday I was greeted by this vista of rising mist from the wild bush just beyond the village main strip. It held the promise of a beautiful day. My home in Mittagong is situated between two large mountains. One is an extinct volcano named Gibraltar which till the seventies was mined for its trachyte. There are several tourists tracks that leads to old quarry sites with slow rusting infrastructures a testimony to those earlier days.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mount_Gibraltar
The other mountain is wild and difficult to get access too because of its ruggedness and inhospitable terrain. However at the foot of it is a magic lake which at one stage was used to cool a steel making manufacturing enterprise which, according to its history, never really turned a profit and was discontinued after several attempts till the early fifties.
The above photo is a gentle walk around the lake which is hard to imagine was once used to cool machinery. I try and walk there daily with Bentley who stops every second step to investigate a smell. With ducks, geese, snakes, kangaroos wombats and possibly koalas it must be an olfactory paradise for him.
Happy Easter everyone.
Oosterman Treats Blog 
April 17, 2022 at 1:50 am |
You live in a beautiful part of the southern highlands.
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April 18, 2022 at 4:24 am |
Yes, we are so lucky to have found this part of the world.
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April 17, 2022 at 7:48 am |
So beautiful, Gerard!
I have a friend that says dogs stopping to sniff is them checking their p-mail! 😉 😛 HA! 😀
I know they smell every other creature that has been by, too. 🙂
Thank you! Happy Easter to you and Bentley, too!
🦋🌸🥚🙏💐🐣💜🌷🌞🐰🌼🦋
(((HUGS))) 🙂
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April 18, 2022 at 4:28 am |
Yes, Bentley loves the afternoon lake walk much more than the early morning walk along the main street which just has cars and industrial structures, petrol stations, car yards with he occasional bit of weeds sticking up from the cracked bitumen footpath to give him a bit of a relief with smells of previous dogs leaving their messages behind.
Thank you Carolyn.
Hugs to you and Cooper.
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April 17, 2022 at 7:56 am |
A very happy Easter o you, too, Gerard.
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April 18, 2022 at 4:30 am |
Thank you Catherine. It was a good Easter. Hope you had a good one too.
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April 18, 2022 at 7:42 am
Yes, happy family!
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April 17, 2022 at 10:41 am |
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April 18, 2022 at 4:31 am |
War humor at its best. Thank you.
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April 17, 2022 at 11:38 am |
My favourite time of the year is the mid seasons. Easters weather has been stunning, a nice change compared to the past seven weeks a metre of rain.
No doubt Bentley enjoys his sniffs, our two do on their dailies.
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April 18, 2022 at 4:33 am |
Yes, the weather could not have been better. People were smiling, laughing again.
Bentley still managed to get his quota of sniffs in even during the downpours.
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April 17, 2022 at 1:27 pm |
Your lake and the path around it sound tempting; it’s no wonder that it’s become part of your routine. One of the advantages of walking with a dog (or a camera!) is that it slows us down just a bit, and that’s never a bad thing.
I suddenly have two pair of Mallards showing up beneath my bird feeders, cleaning up the dropped seed. I’m close enough to the marina that it makes sense that they might wander up, but now I’m wondering if there might be a nest or two in our shrubbery. Time will tell!
Happy Easter, Gerard! I hope it’s a fine one — well, ‘was’ a fine one. You’re a bit ahead of us, after all.
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April 18, 2022 at 4:50 am |
Yes, the lake walk is Bentleys favorite. Mainly due to the richness and variety of odors and fine scents. He sometimes backs off from a particular patch only to then tilt his head back to perhaps inhale or imprint this scent securely only to, with renewed vigor, hurl himself forward, visit the same spot again.
A remarkable animal and how sad we have lost that same kind of unbridled love for nature. I am sure in time long ago we too must have been more involved and lived parallel with nature and the natural.
My Easter was fine with daughter and grandson visiting me. I made a baked tuna pasta dish with some Asian ingredients but with cheese on top. A bit unorthodox but it went down well.
I’ m sure you had a good Easter too, perhaps taking a break from tracking and recording nature at its best in your neck of the woods.
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April 18, 2022 at 9:57 am
I did have a nice Easter. I shared dinner and afternoon conversation with friends, which was lovely. As it happened, we were talking about Curt and Peggy Mekemson, wondering how things were with them, so I dug around and found Curt’s cell phone number. I called, and they answered. They’ve sold their house, and presently are in Nevada, having some work done on their van and deciding where to go next. I gave him the business about not posting any sort of update, and he promised that he’d do better. Peggy, in the background, said she’d keep encouraging him to get with the program!
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April 17, 2022 at 8:04 pm |
Sounds like your lake offers Bentley a satisfying morning edition of the newspaper to read with his nose. Too bad he can’t give you a printout of all he’s learned. Happy Easter Gerard!
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April 18, 2022 at 4:58 am |
Thank you, Beth. I am sure you enjoyed your Easter too.
I wonder if Bentley has a political nose as well in reading all he can find along the way. Does he lift his leg on newspapers whose editorial slant doesn’t agree with him?
Who knows. Bentley is very savvy.
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April 19, 2022 at 3:41 am |
I loved seeing the photo of that beautiful path that you and Bentley take. It looks quite temping walking along those beautiful trees in Fall colors. The area surely has an interesting history- volcanos and mills. Are there poisonous/ dangerous snakes where you walk?
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April 20, 2022 at 12:00 am |
Yes, it is a lovely walk and very popular with tourists who park their campervans and soak up its beauty.
The snakes that are there are poisonous but friendly if left alone and not chased or prodded with sticks . It is their territory as much as ours.
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April 20, 2022 at 2:16 pm |
The Easter holidays were lovely, for the weather was just perfect! 🙂
On Easter Sunday I enjoyed the company of my daughter Caroline and son-in-law Matthew. We had a great time together! 🙂
Daughter Monika had gone camping in Canberra with Mark over the four day Easter holidays. And Monika’s twin sons were in Canberra too. They stayed together with their wives and children Lucas and Alexander in some spacious accommodation and probably went together with Monika and Mark on some great outings! 🙂
On Good Friday I went over to my Club, and I met there some of the knitting group ladies. Also, I had a good lunch at the Club! 🙂
Unfortunately, while I was enjoying eating this excellent lunch, I broke off a bit of one of my remaining teeth! I had to wait till yesterday (Tuesday) before the rest of that tooth could be extracted by a dentist. Some strong painkillers helped me to survive the holiday period in good spirits! 🙂
Luckily, the extraction yesterday went rather smoothly – Still, today I had a good rest, sleeping a lot but also reading a very interesting suspense novel from the library in large print! 🙂
This is the novel I kept reading:
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April 24, 2022 at 6:40 am |
Yes, Uta.
Glad your tooth got repaired. Yes, getting older means that bits wear out or become less strong. I have survived a few falls without breaking anything so far, but walking an undecisive dog is fraught with danger. Bentley is at the mercy of other dogs’ messages left behind willy-nilly anywhere. All of a sudden he darts in front of me.
Getting old and walking a dog is high risk.
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April 24, 2022 at 9:50 am
My daughter had a companion dog. This dog would not stray away from her under any circumstances.
A pity, that Bentley is not trained to ignore other dogs. I mean, it should be enough, if you frequently stop for Bentley, so that
he can smell everything he likes to smell.
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April 21, 2022 at 10:31 pm |
How cool! That looks like a great way to kick of Easter.
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