Well a few days ago on Saturday we went to the Rydges Homestead to have a picnic. We were quite lucky because a huge flock of magpie geese were staying there at the time.

A few Magpie Geese enjoying the wetlands at the Rydges Homestead.

After lunch we went for the walk to Rydges, then walked along the beach. It was a really nice day for walking, not to hot but not too cold either.

The beach at Rydges. I love the cloud formations, they look like they’re about to unleash a heavy rain storm.

Coming up from the beach, guess what we noticed? Yes you’re right, it was a sign saying that Rydges is closed to outside guests, and that trespassers would be prosecuted! How they hope to enforce this I don’t know, because there is always a multitude of people wandering around the place and it would be very hard to find any outsiders among them.

The sign that is being so unwelcome to visitors.

So if anyone knows any more details about this I would be interested in hearing them. You know who you are .

A really pretty flower in the gardens. I think I’ve finally cracked taking photos of flowers. I’d say the basic rules would be: Put the foreground in focus and make the background blurry, get real close in on the flower and try to shoot in sunlight!

On the way back from Byfield we also dropped in at Red Rock State Forest, which we’ve camped at before. It is known for being infested with mozzies, but because of the cool weather there weren’t too many around. The creek there is really pretty, although the rangers have fenced it all off because of crocodile sightings.

The next stop before home was Cooberrie Park, which is a wildlife sanctuary (a bit like Australia Zoo on the Sunshine Coast – Bindy and Terri have actually visited Cooberrie Park BTW) so that my sisters could get some rats from the owners. They will breed them and then give Cooberrie Park some of the babies. Anyway on the way out we nearly walked past a Tawny Frog-Mouth Owl, which was just sitting on the railing.

It didn’t fly away when we approached, and a staff member said that we could pat it! I think it had been hand-reared since baby-hood. Patting the owl was like patting any bird, except if you touched the Owl’s beak it would open up it’s mouth (which is really wide and yellow inside) and gives you a very gentle bite.

Patting the Tawny Frog-Mouth owl. It has really cute little feathers sticking up from it’s head as you can see.

This time looking very alert. Maybe it had just seen the rats .

Anyway, the Alpacas were really cute, and I had a great time taking photos of them. They were also giving out food to feed the Alpacas, because otherwise they tended to shy away if you came near. Alpacas can spit, but fortunately for us they didn’t! See below for the photos, and if you want to buy an Alpaca, just give the farm a ring as they sell and breed them.

A mother alpaca with her 1 day old baby. You might notice that the mothers eyes have a strange blue colour to them. Alpacas with those type of eyes are almost always deaf, which I thought was very interesting.

Another alpaca, also featured at the top of the page, feeding out of someone’s hand.

Sorry for the bad quality, but this picture shows the baby alpaca in the second photo drinking a bit of milk.

An alpaca with character at an unusual angle

[tags]farm, alpacas, pets, animals, yeppoon[/tags]