Today was Australia Day, and for many Australians that means enjoying steak and stubbies with your mates while you listen to Triple J’s hottest 100 around the ‘barbie.’ Of course, that’s a cliche, but I’m not going to shy away from cliches today. That’s why, despite spending the day on a beautiful beach on the Mornington Peninsula, today’s picture is a kangaroo. Australia’s most famous animal and beloved national symbol.

Now, it’s usually quite easy to find Kangaroos. They like to graze in the evening sun in open fields, but for whatever reason, it took quite some time to locate any. The light was fading fast and it began to look like my cliche picture was not going to happen, but then between Cape Schank and Flinders, I found Highfield, part of the Mornington Peninsula National Park.

As chance would have it, Highfield is actually the best location to see Kangaroos on the peninsula and it wasn’t long before I saw a few ‘roos’ in the distance. I carried on walking hoping to get a closer look and pretty soon I found myself walking among groups of them in the fading light.

In the end, only a handful of my pictures were any good. The sun had long since set and the hillside was quickly becoming dark. The picture I’ve chosen for today isn’t actually that good in terms of sharpness or overall quality, but I am actually really happy with it because, despite how it might look, it was really quite dark when I took this photograph, one of the final ones of the day.

So while I didn’t have any steak or stubbies today, and I didn’t stand around a ‘barbie’ listening to Triple J’s hottest 100, I still managed to find myself a good cliche to mark this Australia day.