Hiking hazards

Our plan was to walk the whole way around Macritchie Reservoir with the girls - a distance of 11km. Actually it was Felicity's idea. We planned to get up at 6am! on a Saturday! to avoid the heat in the middle of the day but when thunder, lightning and heavy storms rolled in a 4.30am and hung around for 2 hours we postponed the hike until the afternoon. But MacRitchie Reservoir was overflowing by then, literally litres of water pouring into the overflow drains, and it did not look at all the same from when we had gone with Rohan and Kim the previous Saturday. The original 11km seemed a big enough feat for our girls without the addition of mudslides, fallen trees, the sound of falling trees, submerged boardwalk and track that looked more like creek beds. A guy we met along the way said he'd been coming to MacRitchie for 30 years and had never seen it like this. However it did not deter the girls at all who found walking in knee deep water quite fun. We spotted lots of wildlife - monitors, lizards, turtles, eagles, kingfishers, monkeys and a flying lemur (not flying at the time) which we'd never seen before and had to google to find out what it was. We finished in 3.5 hours, slowed down by the mud and water, but very happy with our achievement.