Wetlands

I have long believed that this blog thing is good for me. It gets me thinking and it forces me out and about when otherwise I'd be a brain-dead blob of exhaustion lying on the couch in a puddle of bleuuuurrrggghhh.  And another handy side-effect, I'm realising, is that it is helping  me discover little pockets of wonderfulness in my own little neighbourhood. Like this:

That, my exotic, foreign-land-dwelling friends, is a bona fide, albeit man-made, wetlands bang smack in the inner west, a few k's from the CBD and no more than three blocks from my very own front door! And until I was blog-obligated to take a walk today, I never knew it existed. It is the Whites Creek Wetlands, apparently constructed in 2002 to clean nitrogen and phosphorus from stormwater in the nearby Whites Creek and help prevent algal blooms in Sydney Harbour further downstream. Cool, huh? There are ducks and frogs and insects and lizards and, best of all, the peculiar and calming sound of trickling water. Lovely.