The MAS goes walking

The town in which the MAS lives has an excellent pathway running alongside a creek for about 2km. A walk up one side and returning along the other makes for a very pleasant start to the day. The creek environs are home to a surprising array of birds, lizards, flying foxes and the occasional hare and fox. It could be supposed that there’s much that the MAS’s eyes have not seen, too.

The MAS started walking some years ago for health reasons. But then stopped because:

1.       Recover from major surgery

2.       Magpies swooping in springtime

3.       Too cold and dark in winter

4.       Too hard

5.       More fun drinking coffee in bed

While working in an educational institution, one of the tasks the MAS undertook was to find supply teachers to replace staff members on short notice due to illness etc. This would mean being on-call from 6am. So, the morning walk would happen at 5am. And for a long time it did, but then, refer to the list above. But, this year, without any pressure of time the morning walk has recommenced.

Now the walk can begin around dawn (or later!), and even in winter, that means home by 7:30. One sees pretty much the same faces every day, and that there’s a little community of morning walkers is nice.

One of the daily crowd is a fellow with a little terrier dog. There’s a couple of interesting things about these two. Every day the man has a plastic bag containing some bread scraps, which he tosses out to the ducks and moorhens that populate the riverbank. Interestingly, they know he’s coming, and will fly, paddle or run to where he meets them each morning for their snack. He stops a number of times along the route, and a different group of birds comes to him in each spot. The little dog just trots along with him – it pays no attention to the birds, and they pay none to him. It is quite extraordinary. And yes, I know he shouldn’t be feeding wild birds, but I’m not going to tell him that. What’s even more interesting, is that in summer time significant numbers of water dragons sun themselves on the riverbank in the warmth of the early morning. They, too, know the bread man, and wait for their little treat! The MAS has seen lizards come out of hiding to get their tucker. And again, there’s no interaction with the little dog. It is an amazing thing.

Something that bothers me during the early morning walks is the amount of litter that some people leave behind. There are parts of our creek that are simply disgusting with the number of bottles, cans and plastic scraps that have been tossed into the creek. In other places, food packaging is often left behind, sometimes with a couple of metres of a rubbish bin. It would be nice if Council could organise something about this – their development of playgrounds and BBQ areas, and maintenance of the walking tracks and bridges is excellent, so a creek cleanup shouldn’t be too difficult to organise.