An Arashiyama hike

Arashiyama’s back street walkways made a great hike if you could ignore peeking into temples and being distracted by restaurants and tourist shops.

Fresh water turtle hike

Within Turtle Swamp Wetlands, there was a wide trail amongst Australia’s best vegetation. If I’d visited in the spring, the ground would have been covered in wildflowers. But when I arrived on Russell Island, it was winter, or at least that’s what the locals thought a twenty-three degree day was.

Turtle Swamp Wetlands

While trees were being bulldozed to build more houses, Russell Island’s Turtle Swamp Wetland was preserved. This was a place to soak up the beautiful squiggly bark gum trees, grass trees and paper barks.

Queen Elizabeth Park’s hiking trails

This was one of Vancouver’s best city locations for a hike. Not only were there plenty of trails away from traffic, but many were up hill.

A galah spotting hike

The Whites Hill to Carindale Bikeway started opposite Brisbane’s Carindale Shopping Centre, but I avoided that starting point because of the noise of the traffic along Creek Road.

A hidden park

Myrtle Park wooded area, opposite North Vancouver’s Strathcoma Park, lay hidden behind suburbia. If it wasn’t for two hikers walking towards the entrance I might have missed it completely.

A sight for sore eyes?

An ugly cement structure sat overlooking Indian Arm at the end of North Vancouver’s Malcolm Lowry Trail. It looked like something built during WWII, but it was dated 1916. When Robert Dollar came from California, he constructed this mill site which included homes for key employers and bunk beds for the mill workers. While this was a large operation, all that remained when I visited, was the burner foundation.