The Ryno Pen

(or, The Fierce Bird Of Mount Coot-Tha)

Yesterday was another airport run.

Given the possible loss of time from roadworks, traffic jams and the big possibility of another accident on the Warrego Highway, it’s always advisable to allow nearly two hours of slack.

Pic from the Toowoomba Chronicle, April 2009

The run from the western suburbs to the airport is generally okay: apart from the airport approach road, there are enough possibilities for me, an old inhabitant, to cross town fairly quickly. So I sometimes find myself with a bit of time to spare.

The Botanical Gardens are well-placed to do that: just after the highway and Western Freeway run, and before the zip through the suburbs to wait just outside the airport parking zone (which is marked on your map by a very tall pile of dollars).

The previous trip, I’d  taken the camera into the Japanese Garden (the Bot Gardens is a large complex, worthy of a full day visit) and seen some dragons. Yes, the same species of dragons (as far as I know) that run round the creek bank below my place, occasionally get garrotted in Illiterate Barry’s chicken-wire fence, and the same as the ones that hide when I walk the dog up by the road bridge.

These guys are just a little less wary, and their setting is a helluva lot more photogenic.

But first, you’ve got to get to the Japanese Garden. This is not always as easy as it may seem.

The Black Fowl of AARGH!

“That is a nice hand you’ve got there, Mister! I bet you use it for all sorts of things when you aren’t using it to hold a delicious piece of food like you’ve got there. I reckon you play guitar, type, oh all kinds of things.

It would be a shame if something was to happen to that hand while I was, shall we say, representing my keen interest in delicious pieces of food in the general vicinity of your hand (and a very nice hand it is).”

I got the point. He got the nut-bar. I shall live to make yet more typos.

And so, into the Japanese Garden…

Characteristically, one small space...

...contains many different landscapes.

A couple of steps, and a new world is seen.

There's always a game of "Spot The Dragon".

The intricate planning, construction and layout is amazing, right down to shaping individual plants.

Here is Mrs E W Dragon, of Toowong, showing How Not To Be Seen...

Another few steps, another land.

Purple lotus, with two bonus Dragons

Same pond, different again.

That same pond, those same rocks and plants, so many permutations: this is masterful garden design.

If my eyes are shut and I look calm, this is engraved on the inside of my eyelids.

And then, of course, there was the bamboo grove… next post, maybe.