'Roos on the Loose!

I've got a bunch of stories and pictures from my (amazing!) trip to Sydney last weekend which I promise I'll post soon. But now, for something completely different...

Yesterday, I went with K. and A. and some of their friends down to Tidbinbilla Nature Reserve just south of Canberra for a barbeque and some hiking. And I finally saw some Australian wildlife! To wit, kangaroos and emus:
It was about time, too. Inevitably, in conversation with Australians (and others, like the philosophy graduate students who've been here for a while even if they're transplanted from Europe or New Zealand), people always ask me whether I've seen a kangaroo yet. And they'd always be shocked when I told them that, no, I hadn't. Apparently, because of the drought, the kangaroos have been creeping in closer and closer and have started dining at night on the cricket ovals in various parts of Canberra. So I was feeling really embarrassed not to have seen one yet. Now, I can say that I have in fact seen a kangaroo.

Tidbinbilla has one of the highest concentrations of kangaroos in all of southeastern Australia, and as we were heading back to our car later in the afternoon, we were treated to a spectacle of an entire mob of kangaroos out grazing on a field:
Wildlife aside, the landscape in Tidbinbilla is generally beautiful: a sort of austere pastoral wonderland. Tidbinbilla was basically burned over during the bush fires 4-5 years ago, which left it with some great old gum-tree skeletons:
The wide-open horizons aren't too shabby, either: