Manly Dam

Louka loves Manly Dam. I first took her there to feed the ducks, but now she mainly wants to go in the water. She wanted to introduce Trishy and Johnny to the dam, so today we took a picnic lunch there.

Louka spent most of lunch time chasing away the crows that were interested in our picnic. Then she fed the leftover cherry tomatoes to the ducks and geese. I was surprised they liked them. One duck kept diving for all the dropped tomato seeds.

After lunch Louka had a brief play in the playground while we packed away the picnic stuff, then we all walked across the dam wall and for a brief bushwalk. In the dam we saw a large tortoise, which turned out to be dead. Sad. Among the lilies we saw a waterhen on a nest of reeds, with two tiny fluffy black chicks. Later we saw the chicks running around with their dad on the opposite bank.

Up the hill there were masses of flannel flowers, as well as plenty of other flowers to interest Trish and John.

We walked till we got to a rock plateau from which we could see across the dam to the picnic areas. It was starting to rain a little so we headed back. On the way back we saw a water dragon on a rock. It kept moving a little way along the path, until we stopped taking photos and left it in peace. We saw two more below the dam wall when we were nearly back to the picnic area.

After that it was time to head home for afternoon tea.