Woomera, Animal Walk and Geocaching

I was joined by Christa on a morning walk around the Woomera perimeter road looking for kangaroos. In total, I saw more than 20. A few of them let us approach fairly closely (100ft), but most of them start fleeing when we were within 100-200 meters. Most of the time, they hear you approaching and will stare at you intently trying to figure out what to do. As the following pictures demonstrate, a common view of a kangaroo is of them staring back at you (or less interestingly running away from you). If you walk tangentially to them, they will often hold their ground. Walking towards them will most likely send them bounding away.
Plethora of kangaroos:

   

This was new: a couple kangaroos wrestling:

When we got back to the apartment building, there were several magpies that seemed to be trying to scare something away from under the balcony of the apartment's second floor. We couldn't see anything there except spider webs. Here is a magpie swooping up towards the balcony ceiling.

Another close up of a magpie in a eucalyptus tree next to the apartment.

On the bike back from the range yesterday, I got within 50ft of two emu. I have been looking for an opportunity to get a good shot of an emu, but photography is not allowed on the range. I was sorely tempted, but refrained from taking the photograph. Fortunately, today, there were emu across the street from the apartment and Christa and I got some good shots. Christa and I circled around them from opposite directions to make sure one of us would get close to them. Of course, she tricked me into going the wrong direction so she got the good photos...
Christa getting good photos of emus:

My "bad" photo of the emus. (I haven't seen hers, but I assume Christa got some better ones.)

Lastly, I did my first geocaching. We found a location about a quarter mile from our apartments. It was put up near the former residence of a guy who grew up in Woomera (1964-1980). To our surprise, what is now vacant desert land inside Woomera used to have a small neighborhood of houses. Knowing this, we could immediately spot where the old roads had been. I have now realized that a lot of the "undeveloped" land around Woomera was developed at some point. Right outside my apartment there used to be a road that has since been dug up:

Original photos.