June 2020
Morning walk in autumn
Auburn Botanic Gardens
May 2020
This album comes via a quick detour to update Wikipedia so that I understood how school reopenings worked in New South Wales in 2020, specifically:
From 11 May [2020], students returned to school one day a week with a plan for a phased return over several weeks. From 25 May, the phased return was replaced with full-time schooling.
Wikipedia: COVID-19 pandemic in New South Wales (2020)
I had decided in advance that when school went back — it was remote for seven weeks, and two weeks of Easter holidays — that my spouse and I would then immediately take a week off work. Thus, the week of 25 May, we went somewhere each day in Sydney to explore, of which the most photogenic was Auburn Botanic Gardens in late autumn colours.
Autumn near Orange
Japanese maple
May 2020
Prime example of why I can’t declare photo bankruptcy: autumn in my mother’s garden in May of 2020.
By May, there was very little COVID in most of Australia, which had closed its borders to non-residents in late March and would not re-open them for tourists until February 2022. The weekend of 16/17 May was the first significantly unrestricted weekend, and so we went to visit my family post-haste.
Central Park after rain
October 2019
After this:
This:
And finally, after a really substantial quest the length and breadth of Manhattan in search of somewhere that does pie by the slice, this:
All photos (in progress)
Late leaves, Old Croton Aqueduct Trail
Old Croton Aqueduct Trail
October 2019
Knowing I was coming up on photos of New York really did a number on my photo processing lo these 18 months.
This one was a trudge, 6km or so from Irvington to Dobbs Ferry. I had hoped to do it on the following day but there was rain forecast (in fact the remanents of Tropical Storm Olga) which saw me taking refuge in the Musuem of Natural History, trudging through there instead.
Weekends are always when the jetlag smashes down. Someday I will have the chance to re-learn that.
It’s a pretty trudge though!
Afternoon and evening in Sunnyvale
October 2019
This was the last trip I did outside Australia, and one of the last outside New South Wales.
If you are going somewhere for the last time in a very long time, you obviously go in autumn.
All photos (in progress).
Apple picking, Mayfarm Flowers, April 22 2019
Most of the apple orchards around Orange, once the major growing region in Australia, have been converted into vineyards, or in the case of Mayfarm Flowers, a flower farm. Their crop of apples from the doomed trees was storm damaged in 2019, and so they opened them up for picking, with most of the apples being shipped to Sydney for donation, and pickers allowed to take away others for free.
