Most afternoons, my partner, Brad (@new.things) and I go for a walk through the bush near our house. During summer we can be guaranteed to see at least one animal (other than an ant!) every single walk. But in winter (which is now, here in Brisbane, Australia) it's much quieter on the animal front.

So today we were delighted to see at least one wallaby and one very unexpected lizard! (The mushroom was a bonus!)

First up, the first wallaby. If you've never heard of a wallaby before (which would be easy if you're not from Australia because they don't exist anywhere else, to my knowledge) they are kind of like a small kangaroo. There are several different species. I have no idea exactly what kind this is but here's what our local ones look like.

The fully grown adults, if they stood up tall on their back legs, would probably reach about my belly or my chest. So let's just say that's about 1 - 1.2 metres tall.

They have fur. They are somewhat skittish. And I always want to cuddle them when I see one. Of course, I never bother trying because they'd just hop away but I like to imagine it ;)

A few hundred metres down the same track Brad and I spotted mushrooms. Since I know much more about wallabies than mushrooms you may have guessed it: I have zero idea what kind of mushroom this is. Do you?

He went over to the tree to photograph them and I suddenly realised there was a (very well camouflaged) bearded dragon right in front of him. I firmly but calmly told him he needed to take one big step backward (as I could tell he hadn't seen it yet). This scared him a bit but at least he was now a safer distance from the lizard, which was probably better for both of them.

In reality the lizard probably would have just scurried further up the tree to get away from Brad if it felt threatened, but I didn't want it to suddenly move only inches from his face as that would have been proper scary!

But from a metre or so away we could adore him/her. Isn't it a beauty?!

Judging by the changes in colour down its tail, I'm guessing it's lost its tail more than once in the last few years. But who knows, not a bearded dragon expert either. Maybe this is normal for this species?

Our meandering continued with, dare I say, a smile on our faces and a bit more pep in our step since we both love these lizards, and around the corner we saw this gorgeous one. I'm pretty sure it's the same one we saw 10 minutes earlier because of its location and the trails we picked double back on themselves. But still, it's so pretty and it was close the the trail again, so Brad snapped another photo :)

And just as we were about to leave the bush for another day the sun had finally sunk low and deep in the sky, sharing its bright orange light with us through the many grey trunks of the scrubby bush we know and love.

Thanks for reading about our walk. All words in this story are mine. All photos were taken by @new.things, my wonderful partner in crime adventures.