Umbria Hill

As I said, another post soon. I popped across the street during lunch to pick up some film I had developed recently. This is from a walk I did recently up Umbria Hill in Canberra. It's amazing that there is such wild nature so close to the city.

We took this walk two weeks back on a lovely fall day, yup, it's fall here, and all of you in the US can laugh now but I'll be the one smiling when I'm having a bbq outside on Christmas Eve before going for a swim. I actually still haven't gotten used to the backwardsness but I figure it will come with time, for now I keep checking the date and getting confused as to how it's so cold so close to summer.

Since we took the dogs with us I became responsible for chasing off the kangaroos so that the dogs wouldn't do it. Dogs seem to really enjoy chasing kangaroos, who in turn love beating up dogs that try and catch them, not a good situation. As we walked up the hill we noticed the kangaroos in what appeared to be a race, they kept running laps around a line of trees before disappearing over the side of the hill, presumably towards the finish line.

Once we got to the top of the hill I decided to walk over to the edge and see if I could spot more kangaroos, a novelty that will never wear on me. I noticed one a bit down the hill so I started towards it, about halfway down I noticed a few more heads pop up and realized that there were about 5 or 6 kangaroos right in front of me. This is the point where I wished for my long lens which I'd left at home thinking I'd go for sweeping landscapes instead of close-ups. The kangaroos didn't seem too bothered by me and soon moved on.

As we started down the hill I noticed a few right near the trail and got straight to my job of chasing them off. It didn't seem like a big deal and soon I was stalking through the bush roaring like a dinosaur at them. It was only as I got closer to them and realized two things that I became a bit worried, 1- they weren't moving or the least bit scared of me, and 2- they were much bigger than me. One even hopped towards me to see how serious I was, my little dinosaur growl wasn't doing much. Luckily after another minute they got bored with me and wandered off to race through the fields.

I keep telling myself that I'm going to be more brave around kangaroos so I can actually pet one one of these days but there is just something unnerving about them when they stare you right in the eye, even the little ones are a bit intimidating.

Enjoy the photos and hopefully I'll get another close encounter with a kangaroo soon.