16/01/2022 Plane Spotting

At the moment we live under the flight path for Sydney Airport.

Roger follows the planes on FlightRadar. At random intervals throughout the day he leaps to his feet. "Quick!" he yells.  "An A380 is coming!"

And we run out into the street to watch it roar overhead on its final approach to the runway.

A380 incoming.

He frets over the A380 that spends a couple of days doing lazy laps over Sydney, landing and taking off.  "Do they know how much it costs to run that thing?"  he asks.  

We have to gratify his urge to spot planes, and it dovetails neatly with my urge to photograph things.  Thus it was that on a warm and humid Saturday afternoon we pedaled back along the Cooks River and crossed the bridge to "The Beach", which is where fishermen/swimmers/kitesurfers go to spot planes and plane spotters go to fish/swim/kitesurf.

Along the way we discovered how the golf balls at the driving range are retrieved.

Golfers would be far too responsible to ever aim a golf ball at a car.

It's not good for birds to have poor health and an unnatural dependence on hand feeding.  It's also not good for birds to run into planes, or vice versa.

 

 

 

 

 The beach was busy with fishermen, swimmers, kite surfers, and of course planes.

When we got tired of sitting on the sea wall and watching the planes come and go we pedaled around to Brighton Le Sands where we sat above the beach, ate our fish and chips, and watched more planes come and go.

After a while we noticed that a few clouds had gathered, and the odd grumble of thunder broke through our plane-watching hypnosis.

Hmm, we thought.  That plane looks very pretty against the dark sky.

Pretty planes aside, maybe we should think about pedaling home again before we get wet.

The people swimming in the shark enclosure below us were having the same thoughts.  It should actually be called a people enclosure, because the people are inside it and the sharks (hopefully) are on the outside.

Well-fueled by fish and chips we pedaled home again in record time, because apart from the storm it was getting dark and neither of us had lights.

Under the roadway,

and back along the Cooks River.

The storm, as storms do, then went and blew over trees in other parts of Sydney, leaving us without even a splatter of rain.  In an auspicious first for this house-sit, we were met at the door by George who complained bitterly that we had been away and left her all alone.  We explained that we had been out watching planes, but George was not mollified and went to sulk under the bed.