A Zebra Finch (Taeniopygia guttata) caught on camera just as its about to leap from its branch on to the ground in search of seed

Two zebra finches (Taeniopygia guttata), and a double barred finch (Stizoptera bichenovii)

Mount Forbes, Queensland, Australia

Fitness has been quite the journey for me. I got super in to running in my late 30s, a couple of years before I came out. I'd been sedentary my whole life, and told myself I hated exercise.

But to my great surprise, I really enjoyed running. In about 18 months, I went from unfit, and inactive, to running 5km in under 20 minutes. I ran lots of half marathons, I was doing a 5km parkrun every Saturday, and at my peak, I was putting in around 80 to 100km of running a week.

I didn't know it at the time, but it was helping me control my dysphoria.

And then I got injured. I got a stress fracture. Quite a bad one, that sidelined me for many months. That period is also when I came out, and I often think that the loss of running played a part in the timing.

Eventually, it was time to try and get back in to things. But my fitness was much reduced, and on top of that, hormones were starting to do their thing. Ultimately, no matter how hard I tried, I couldn't get back to where I used to be. I couldn't get that same speed. And it was demoralising, having this muscle memory telling me that I should be able to go at a certain pace, but just not be able to do it.

I struggled for quite a while with the fact that HRT which had brought me so many things I needed, was also taking away my pace, it was impacting my running, which was also super important to me. And to be honest, I still struggle with that all these years later.

Over the years since then, I've been up and down on my fitness and running. Thankfully though, I had parkrun. Even though I wasn't running at the pace I used to, parkrun had connected me to a community. And I kept going. I got to the point where I would often walk the 5km course, rather than run it, but I kept turning up. So I never returned to being sedentary like I used to be. I wasn't as fit, but I was still moving!

I'm currently a couple of months in to an effort to reclaim my fitness. I'm training for a half marathon in July. I've tried to regain my fitness a few times over the last few years, and never quite got there, before letting it slide again, but this time, something feels different! So, here's to fitness!

This was taken in near total darkness, with a hand held, 300mm 1 second exposure. I love this camera and lens!

And thank you to the Tawny, who was happy staying perfectly still for my long exposure :)

#frogmouth #TawnyFrogmouth #brisbane #meanjin #bird #urbanbirdphotography #australianbirds

I swear the last time I was in Melbourne in 2019, the trams let me tap on and off with a credit card. But they don't now in 2025. Am I imagining things, or did it go backwards?

Well, that storm was a bit scary!

It’s a hot summer afternoon. I’m sitting down on a hot afternoon, with a burger, and a cold beer.

What I’m looking for is something to replace that cold beer with. I want it to be crisp and fresh, but also not sweet. I love tart and bitter flavours. Unfortunately, my options are either cold and sweet, cold and alcoholic or hot and non sweet.

So threadiverse, what alternatives am I missing?

Tereré is great, but it’s a bit of a pain to source in Australia. What else is there?

It's a hot summer afternoon. I'm sitting down on a hot afternoon, with a burger, and a cold beer.

What I'm looking for is something to replace that cold beer with. I want it to be crisp and fresh, but also not sweet. I love tart and bitter flavours. Unfortunately, my options are either cold and sweet, cold and alcoholic or hot and non sweet.

So threadiverse, what alternatives am I missing?

Tereré is great, but it's a bit of a pain to source in Australia. What else is there?

This video is a slideshow of a series of photos I took with my drone as a storm approached Brisbane, with a strange phenomenon that I'm unfamiliar with.

You can see a horizontal bolt of lightning slowly crawling its way across the sky from left to right. What's interesting is that each frame of the slide is an 8 second still, meaning that the bolt was visible in the sky for over a minute!