I've lived within driving distance of Monarto Safari Park for most of my life, but I never visited until today.

Vanessa and I walked progressively up the hill past a whole bunch of amazing animals, and then caught the bus back the other way for a more casual viewing of other animals.

Just posted this one to make you scroll down a giraffe.

After four mornings of not getting out of bed in time to appreciate the sunrise, I forced myself to get out of bed to see the sunrise. The kids had escorted me to multiple viewpoints in the scrub behind the house that looked over the hills and I'd seen them at sunset but not dawn.

It was also a chance to get some steps in, and listen to some music, both foundational experiences having been rare so far on the trip.

I prepared all my cold stuff before bed so I could be out the door quickly and to reduce the steps required on the noisy floor. Puffy jacket, gloves, beanie, thermal.

Out the front door there were a lot of deer just up the road. It was light but no direct sun. I put on some tunes with my headphones over my beanie. I can't remember exactly what.

The deer ran ahead of me as I stepped carefully down the slope of the empty property and into the wild beyond. I followed the trail to the hunting blind, and then up onto the sloping grass that overlooks timbertop, an old farmer's outbuilding, and the fog trimmed forest.

The sun was behind me and behind the mountain ranges. I set up my tripod and tried to find a good angle. It wasn't particularly scenic, but the deer and kangaroos dotted the hill in the foreground which was nice.

At one point I adjusted my headphones, breaking the noise cancelling seal, and my ears were instantly filled with the sound of bird calls and the rustle of grass in the wind. I chided myself for listening to music when I could have immersing myself in nature.

Then I heard the boom of a big rifle, and every bird, deer and roo immediately legged it.

I started walking up the hill, hoping for a different angle, and there were two more loud booms from over the rise. I don't think there was much chance anyone was going to aim a firearm at me, but there's been new from Victoria in recent months that made me think maybe I would take a photo back from the roads.

Ironically, this was probably a nicer angle.

Several hours of driving and a massive sticky-date muffin later I was back on a plane flying towards Adelaide. The sunrise was well behind me now and home's rainy weather was coming into and over the front of the aircraft. It was a little choppy. Right before we descended the pilot announced South Australia's strict quarantine laws and I recalled I had two apples in my bag that I'd delayed eating after aforementioned muffin. So I commenced eating two apples rapidly, as the plane descended through rocky turbulence towards ground. Chewing the fruit made my ears hurt. This, I thought, was the revenge of Newton's apple.

In the mornings leading up to this weekend's autumn equinox I have noticed that around 7:30am has been good for seeing birds. In its favour, the sunrise happens around breakfast time so you can eat before going for a walk. And the light is nice, not too blue like winter. And it's not so cold that you can't feel your fingers when you use a camera. There's even plenty of greenery and flowers for the sapsuckers to consume making the birds more plentiful and not huddled away conserving their energy.

I used my Sunday morning to do a birding tour around my neighbourhood, which is actually arranged quite well. If I do a loop I pass through sections of suburbia, river, beach dunes, and lake. So there's a nice variety of different birds at each stage to keep things interesting.

Here's some birds from the 2026 Equinox:

First, a New Holland Honeyeater who does not care at all about the current price of petrol.

Then I saw this rarity, a Royal Spoonbill! It was eating straight from the water, not a thought given for all those microplastics it was ingesting.

It took a while for this Musk Lorikeet to show its face in the canopy. The pollen in that flower was too tempting. It was not concerned at all about ballistic missiles that might appear in the sky like twinkling stars and then all of a sudden get really bright.

Cousins, the Rainbow Lorikeets, were the most common of birds this morning. They squawked everywhere as they flocked from tree to tree, oblivious to the threat of AI that would soon replace them.

This Singing Honeyeater was moving south to north with me along the edge of the dunes by the beach. It did not have to worry about how the supermarkets have all stopped selling the good types of yogurt recently, or how they don't look like they're coming back.

The Pelican-ball at the lake was deeply troubled about a lot of things...

It was only 25 degrees in the pool this afternoon, despite it being over 30 degrees on the pavers next to the pool. I don’t think it has been under 25 degrees in the pool since September, which is coincidentally when I started a note titled “Things I've put in my pool” to commentate on the painful and occasionally rewarding tasks that come from being responsible for maintaining a pool.

Now it looks like pool season might be coming to a close, I need to dive back into that list and update it otherwise I might only post two entries this month instead of three.

Things I've put in my pool

Water test strips
Phosphates remover
Gordy (the pool robot)
Bricks (accidentally)
Hydrochloric acid
Cyanuric Acid
Salt
Gordy again
Myself
The wifey
Nash (once, briefly)
Diving rings
Inflatable basketball hoop and inflatable basketballs
Foam basketball
A lot more hydrochloric acid and test strips.
Myself and the wifey a few more times.
Friends
Friend’s children
Gordy (a lot)
More water
The wifey
Myself

Things I've put in my self in my pool

Beer

I rode my bike seventeen kilometres this morning down to West Beach along the coast.

Back in Spring I decided that over summer I was going to make roast chicken, feta and baby spinach salads my staple. I must have eaten that meal over sixty times since November. The addition of Lebanese Cucumber, red onion, rocket, and tomato was a great combination. I call this a success. It's amazing what you can achieve when you set your mind to it.

At the start of autumn I made a mental decision to use the cooling months for longer bike rides. Today's self fulfilling trip to the sea was the first step towards that. The ride was more about conditioning my neck, wrists and legs to handle the ride than the coffee I drank on the sand in the middle of it.

I think my goal is to try and ride all the way to Hahndorf. And then to drink a litre of German beer. I think back to 2020 when I bought my bike it was at the same time as I got a good deal on a carton of Weihenstephans and so I conditioned myself to drink German beers after a ride. Hahndorf is like fifty kilometres away up a big hill so I'm not sure if this is going to occur but if there's no Armageddon before the end of May I might make it happen just like all those salads.

After my ride I used the public holiday to fix a few more issues around the house. I found a down light in the garage that worked when I plugged it in. I thought this might be a replacement for the dead light over the pantry. This is the kind of problem you need to fix as the sun sets earlier.

I pulled out the dead light hoping that I could follow a cable back to a standard socket and not any hardwiring. Not only was the old light not hardwired, but the socket itself was mobile and I could pull it all the way to the cutout in order to replace that light easily and push everything back up into the ceiling.

I found this extremely convenient, because my last LED light replacement at my old house required an electrician to crawl around in my roof and to rig up a little clean zone due to the excessive insulation. Whoever built my current house seems to have actually had a plan to maintain it. So I had a beer in the pool in their honour.

I went to the golf this afternoon. Mainly I wanted to see what the golf course behind my house actually looked like from inside the fence. It was nothing special. Not a lot of shade.

I was there for nearly an hour and I saw one guy hit a golf ball. It went so fast that I lost track of it. I don't know where it landed.

After the golf I saw Peking Duk play a DJ set and do some singing. They were pretty good for 4:30pm on a Thursday. My favourite part was when they played Fire and during the chorus they also shot fire out of a bunch of gas cannons. It was that kind of show. A nice cross section of bangers and bass.

Hopefully I can sell the rest of our complimentary golf tickets on marketplace.