Near my house, there is a big suburban park. Sometimes I walk there in an effort to avoid degenerating into a lazy house slug. If I walk quickly, the return trip takes about 100 minutes. I go from my house, through a bush conservation area, beside some paddocks, then around the park lake.

Last week, I brought my camera on the walk. I thought it would be good to get photos of my favourite part of (tame) Australian bush. I ended up with about 180 photos. I want to share about 40 of them with you but so that you don’t fall asleep with boredom, I will spread my photo posts out over a couple of days.

The first bunch of photos are of the section of the walk that goes from my house to the bush conservation area. It’s about 15 minutes of pavement pounding.

Look! It’s the letterbox from almost two years ago. Strangely, the block is still empty. The grass has grown and the letterbox is a shell of it’s former self. I’m afraid its days of loyal service are over.

Coming back to Australia, I was bemused at how water conscious everyone is, even more than I was when I left. My parents and relatives use buckets to capture cold shower water — you know, when you’re waiting for the water to warm up before you jump in? My parents use the water to flush toilets. I’ve heard other people using it to wash dishes and water plants. It gives me hope that huge cultural change can happen very quickly, given enough government advertising.

You may have heard that a few days ago, a man was killed by a jogger who was upset at him watering his garden. I took photos of these signs in our neighbourhood. These signs are probably a sensible defence against against water rage.

I also spotted four or five of these huge backyard satellite dishes. If my grandma didn’t have one of these, I might have thought my neighbours were spying on each other. My grandma gets satellite TV from China and Taiwan.

These are mulberry ‘multiple fruits‘. There’s nothing special about them except that they always remind me of silkworms (Bombyx mori). Isn’t it amazing that a moth can turn these leaves into something that people will wear? I can’t imagine how anyone would have figured out that the cocoons of larvae could be made into beautiful material.

Do you know what this is? It’s a leaf from a really big cactus I saw in someone’s front yard. It looked like a slide.

You can tell that my writing is rusty. I can’t express myself with any sophistication, which is why I’m using phrases like ‘really big’.

The last photo is of two fire hydrants stacked on top of each other under a tree. I wonder why they’re like that? Was it vandalism or are they waiting to be picked up by a council maintenance worker?

The next lot of photos will be from the bush conservation area, which I mentioned three years ago.