Urban Landscapes

[waitingman]

Some shots from yesterday's post-spending-spree wander through the reclaimed industrial wasteland that is Bicentennial Park ~ a place that is never quiet or peaceful, due to the proximity of a motorway & its feeder roads, as well as the industrial estates that surround it on 3 sides. Lots of birdlife though... Nature finds a way.


Mine! Mine!!




Incontrovertible evidence of a man-made lake


Reeds in colour...


Reeds in B&W... not sure which version I prefer


A Purple Swamphen. The only creature more camera-shy than me


Taken while waiting for my camera's batteries to run out. Nice trunk though...


A leftover from last week's inner-city stroll. I apparently can't help taking photos of the sky ~ one way or another

There have been more picturesque sunsets of late, so a return to regular viewing is imminent...

Comments

[velvetink.livejournal.com]

love the last one, swamphen are great, and isn't Bicentennial Park the place where they had all that radioactive waste buried before the olympics?

[waitingman.livejournal.com]

I trailed about 4 different Swamphens around the reclaimed toxic waste dump & could never catch the little bastards standing still, or with their heads up for a good photo... then they'd disappear into the reeds.

Fair enough. As noted, these are some of the techniques I use to avoid being photographed... although there's never a big clump of reeds around when I need them!

[velvetink.livejournal.com]

no seriously, were you not worried about the toxic stuff?

[thebellman.livejournal.com]

or at least notice the three-headed swamphens, with big pointy teeth and glowing red eyes?

[waitingman.livejournal.com]

Honestly... no. They papered parked over the industrial sludge 20 years ago & I'm sure any serious effects on the Great Unwashed general populace would have been noticed by now.

Doesn't mean I'd be prepared to go wading in the lake... or fishing in it ~ which is why I also wouldn't serve Swamphen on my menu.

Hell, I wouldn't even drink from the water bubbler I found!! Took a nice photo of it though, with clear-looking water coursing from it ~ no tinges of green, brown or black, but better safe than dysentery.

[thebellman.livejournal.com]

Good shots. Interesting how every city comes to the same solution when faced with a polluted, unusable and downright dangerous chunk of contaminated land: build a park on it. Then pretend that it's not a decision driven by the motive of trying to find the cheapest way to make the site less offensive, an urban equivalent of a cat vainly scratching away in the garden to cover its crap.