Category: landscape

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Summer has arrived

Summer is here on the southern Fleurieu Peninsula coast in South Australia.

The  weather  has now settled into its normal summer pattern of  clear,  bright light; sunshine;   blue skies; and warm to hot temperatures.  Kayla and I  start  our walk  along the coastal rocks  early  in the morning in order to avoid the heat of the early morning sun.

We usually start  just after  sunrise:

Dep’s Beach landscape

On our  afternoon  walks Maleko and I  struggle with  the heat,   as the sun is still quite high  at 6pm,  and  there is little by way of open shade amongst the coastal rocks.   We   welcome the cool breeze that keeps the temperatures down and dread the hot, north-westerly wind.  Continue reading “Summer has arrived”

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winter mornings

With Suzanne now back in Encounter Bay and walking Kayla and Maleko in the mornings, I am able to slowly walk along the coastal path with Ari. He now struggles going up and down the steps to Depp’s Beach. He can no longer walk to Kings Head. I visit Kings Head on the afternoon walk with Kayla and Maleko and spend the time there mucking around scoping for photos.

This path is called the Heritage Trail and it links up with the Heysen Trail just before Kings Beach. These sections of both the Heritage Trail and the Heysen Trail are becoming extremely popular, especially on the weekends. It is impossible to walk along these paths with the three dogs off lead.

Heritage Trail

The winter mornings are still sunny and clear with little coastal wind. There were a few days of rain in the last week of June, the first rains this winter, but it has mostly been dry.

Continue reading “winter mornings”

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about the moment

I’m starting to slowly realize that the snapshot style photography that I do whilst I am on the poodle walks is about the moment. They are photos of fleeting moments that cannot be rephotographed:

Kayla, Halls Creek Rd

They are also about nothing much. Just everyday scenes that I am walking through, or walking past and that I wouldn’t pay much attention to, if I didn’t have a camera and we weren’t hanging about. It is through the ‘hanging about’ that I start to see the little things around me that I wouldn’t normally notice.
Continue reading “about the moment”

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daily routines + photography

Suzanne has left Cuba and is now staying in Oaxaca in Mexico for 12 days or so before she and Lariane return to Australia.

In the meantime the household chugs along with its daily routines in the balmy autumn weather, with its still, sunny days.We are usually up before sunrise walking along the back country roads:

dawn, Baum Rd, Waitpinga

With the walk over I have time to take some photos with the Linhof film cameras as the sun starts peeping through the trees and lightens up bits of the roadside vegetation. The images have been scoped on earlier walks and the time when the sun lightens up the trees duly noted. So it is just a matter of setting things up and waiting.

Continue reading “daily routines + photography”

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Baum Rd, Waitpinga

Suzanne is now in Cuba before going to Mexico and I’m at home in Encounter Bay looking after the three standard poodles. It is four weeks of walking along back country roads on the morning and evening walks as Ari cannot walk over the rocks along the coast. This is Baum Rd, Waitpinga, which I walk down most mornings when Suzanne is away:

Baum Rd, Waitpinga

It is a no through road that leads to a couple of farm properties that have become holiday houses. The road side vegetation lessens as we approach the entrance to these properties. The owners are hostile to walkers whilst the local farmers in the area are not very friendly. Rarely do they slow down along these roads and say hello or give a wave. Continue reading “Baum Rd, Waitpinga”

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field, sea, sky

I have started to walk along the back country roads looking for photographic subjects whilst  on  the afternoon poodle walks with Kayla and Maleko.  I have become tired of sitting in front of the computer screen working on the texts of The Bowden Archives book and I am looking for a break.

This is an example of my recent scoping,   from  an afternoon last week when we were walking along the road to the old Victor Harbor dump:

Waitpingafieldsea

After the dump shifted to Goolwa the ‘no through’ road now leads to the Kings Beach Retreats. There is not much traffic during the week so it is a good back road to walk along with the standard poodles.

Continue reading “field, sea, sky”

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After the storms

The recent stormy, winter weather has meant that our poodle walks have been mostly along the back country roads since they offer some protection from the wind. We have only infrequently walked along the coastline because it is usually windswept: battered by the south-westerly winds and intense rain.

The picture below is from one of the rare occasions during July that we ventured onto Rosetta Head. We waited in the Subaru Forester for the squalls to pass through, then we went for our walk around Rosetta Head keeping an eye on the incoming squalls coming from the south.

car park, Petrel Cove
car park, Petrel Cove

Whilst we were waiting in the Subaru for the squalls to pass I took some photos of the landscape through the windscreen of the Forester.
Continue reading “After the storms”

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Rosetta Head

I have been minding the standard poodles whilst Suzanne has been in the Pilbara in Western Australia with Heather Petty exploring the Karijini National Park in the Hamersley Range. They camped at the Karijini Eco Retreat.

It’s been cold, stormy and wet on the south coast of the Fleurieu Peninsula with sporadic sunshine.I have been trying to walk in the morning and the evening between the squalls in areas that provide some protection from the bitter southerly winds and away from the mud. So we have been walking along back country roads in the morning and later afternoon. The only photographs that I have done whilst Suzanne has been away are a few snaps on the poodle walks. On some days I didn’t even bother to take a camera with me.

early morning
early morning

Things were looking up this morning. The wind had dropped, it wasn’t raining, and there was early morning sunshine rather than drizzle. So we walked up Rosetta Head, or The Bluff.
Continue reading “Rosetta Head”

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moonrise over the southern ocean

Autumn has been quite warm this year with only a few days of rain that suggest winter is an approaching.

This picture was snapped on the evening before a sou’westerly cold front moved across the coast the next day. It was a mild and warm dusk and it was very still. People were out swimming, walking, fishing, playing at Petrel Cove, fishing and running even though it was dusk.

moonrise
moonrise

I was returning to the car park at Petrel Cove from a walk with Ari and Maleko just as the moon was rising over the southern ocean south of Rosetta Head, or the Bluff. I couldn’t resist taking handheld a snap.
Continue reading “moonrise over the southern ocean”

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Mad March 2016

If it is autumn on the southern coast of the Fleurieu Peninsula, then it is still summer in Adelaide. So I discovered when I walked the city taking in the various Magic Object visual art exhibitions in this years Adelaide Festival of Arts whilst I waited for the Subaru Outback to be serviced.

I was more than happy to return to the cooler temperatures of the coast after spending several hours walking the city in the 36 degrees heat with its high humidity, due to a low-intensity heatwave that has hovered over south-eastern Australia for the past week. We have early autumn temperatures in the mid-to-high 20s on the coast.

Rosetta Head
Rosetta Head

It’s Mad March in the Adelaide with Festival, the open access Fringe and Womadelaide.

Continue reading “Mad March 2016”