Winter in the Adelaide Hills

Yesterday I took a drive into the Adelaide Hills. The hills have a great range of deciduous trees, and I was told that this year the colours have been fantastic. Unfortunately I left it a couple of weeks too late so did not get to see the trees at their best. I headed up to Birdwood, and then south to Mount Barker, and back up through the Basket Ranges to Adelaide. On the way I passed the Murray Bridge to Onkaparinga Pipeline that delivers a majority of Adelaide's drinking water from the River Murray. It is almost 50Km (30 Miles) long and carries up to 514 Megalitres (135,000 Gallons) per day. I also saw a gully containing about 10 curious structures built of stone. None appeared to have an entrance and I have no idea why they were built or what they are for. If anyone has any ideas I'd love to hear from them. On the bird front, the most numerous bird seen was Adelaide Rosella, a parrot endemic to South Australia which was treated as being conspecific with Crimson Rosella until fairly recently. There is a lot of water about, and every farm dam (pond) had its resident group of Maned Ducks, but more numerous on larger bodies of water were Pacific black Ducks. There were lots of groups of Australian White Ibis as well. And another favourite - Purple Swamphen