It is really starting to feel like the beginning of spring now, the light is changing making the sunsets more interesting, the birds are pairing up and building nests and the koalas seem to be a bit more active (this is not difficult, mind you, as they would struggle to be much less active) and Monty has dragged himself away from the radiator. One koala we see fairly often put on a real show the other evening by perching herself way down her chosen tree at eye level (they are usually much higher up). She does not seem afraid of much, probably because she had to live in the koala rescue on a couple of occasions when she was very young, it is a bit worrying really because not everyone keeps their dogs on the lead in the koala reserves even though they are supposed to. However, we enjoyed seeing her close up and, to cap it all, we saw a second one at the end of our walk! We have never seen two in one go before.
We are working hard terracing our garden at the moment. We thought we lived on 
a steep slope in Rickmansworth but it was nothing compared to this, at the moment it is like trying to mow Everest so the retaining walls we are building should make it easier and stop the slight erosion that is inevitable on a sloping site like this.

It was a bit of a dark garden in winter but that all started to change a few days ago. The house next door is a deceased estate and has been empty for some time, it was very neglected and had about ten huge trees in the back garden, making ours very gloomy. Last week, however, work began as the relatives decided to spruce the place up to sell it and they took down at least six trees in the back garden and about four out the front thinning out the rest, as you can see in the before and after pictures. It is amazing to watch how the tree specialists take down these giants in a small space and it must be costing them a fortune, these guys work really hard in very dangerous conditions and whatever they are paid cannot possibly be enough. You have to have permission from the council to be able to remove a tree and must prove it was dangerous, so hopefully they did all that first. The gum trees can grow to 120ft or more and are not as strong as other big trees, branches do drop off without warning (they are known as widowmakers) so it is as well not to have them hanging over the house. It was a shame to see trees go and we can now see a few more buildings but it opened up a second vista of water views form our balcony and we now have a nice light garden, so probably increased the value of our house considerably.
The sheer size of the trees in Australia took my breath away and even Ian had forgotten how big they are. At the moment he is classifying native trees and plants for the Tilligerry Habitat website and comes home from working there armed with fascinating facts, the latest being that the Hunter Region (where we live) has more varieties of species of plants and trees than the whole of Europe!