After a couple of restful nights in the New Forest and a couple of hours looking at short and long range forecasts we took the decision to cut our losses and head for home. If the forecasts were to prove anything close to true than we wouldn’t get a chance to test out most of the things we wanted to test out anyway and we could get more done at home where the forecast was much better.

On the way home we made a slight diversion to another of our favourite places from our regular trips to the New Forest 20 years ago, the Hawk Conservancy. We could only stay for the morning display as we wanted to get home in reasonable time. It’s changed a huge amount since our last visit, in fact we could barely recognise the place. It was strangely reassuring to know that at least one of the birds of prey (Frodo, the Tawny Eagle) is still part of the display. It gave me an opportunity to test our compact camera out on some “wildlife” though – we’ve decided not to take the SLR with us to Australia, too bulky and too heavy !

The results from the small Sony compact “super zoom” were pretty impressive really although the lack of a view finder is probably going to leave us looking for an alternative. in strong sunlight it’s impossible to see the display making taking any photo a bit of a guessing game. I’d noticed this previously but it really became obvious when trying to frame shots of the birds of prey with the sun behind you. The shot I got of the Bald Eagle really turned out well and from the distance it was taken the SLR would have struggled without going out and spending a fortune on some huge lenses.

The rest of the week will be spent sorting out a few jobs around the house and hopefully fitting the engine monitoring system and finishing off building the battery monitoring system.