I came down with a severe cold at the end of the July Mallee roadtrip. It has knocked me around, and this ill health coupled with the wet stormy weather, has meant minimal poodle walking and limited local photography. Suzanne has been doing most of the bigger walks with Kayla and Maleko during the wet cold weather whilst I walk Ari on short walks down to the Encounter Bay foreshore.
This picture was made whilst I was walking the poodles in Kuitpo Forest on the way back from the Mt Barker grooming parlour. This was a few days before I left to make photos for the Mallee Routes project:
Kuitpo Forest
It was school holidays in South Australia and there were a lot of people camping in Kuitpo Forest.It would be a different story now with the wild, wet winter weather that we have been experiencing this last week. The mornings start off fine and sunny on the coast, then the storm rolls in around breakfast time and the temperature plunges.
Jason Blake stayed over night at our place in Encounter Bay on his way back to his high rise apartment in Melbourne’s CBD. He was on the return leg of his road trip from Melbourne to Alice Springs and he need to get the compressor in his Ranger Rover replaced at Lonsdale.
He accompanied Maleko, Kayla and myself on a poodlewalk east along the rocks from Kings Beach Road to Depp’s Beach late yesterday afternoon and took the opportunity of the 70 minutes or so walk to make a number of photos as we slowly made away along the rocks. Whilst Jason and I photographed the colours of the various granite rock formations the two standard poodles raced around and engaged in their play fights.
The 3 or 4 days of rain that we’d experienced had just passed, and the light that afternoon around 4pm was gentle and soft. The cloud cover came in just after 5pm and the light became dull and flat. Continue reading “Jason Blake passes through Encounter Bay”
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.
Suzanne returned from Cuba and Mexico last week, and the dog walking has returned to normal, with each of us taking us taking turns in walking Ari separately and Kayla and Maleko together. Though the walking has has become easier, the weather has changed. The bright, sunny days that existed during the four weeks whilst Suzanne was overseas have gone, to be replaced by days of low rainfall and overcast conditions. However, there is still very little wind, even though we live on the southern coast.
The roadside vegetation photos that I had been scoping for a reshoot with my film cameras have yet to result in any reshooting. The problem has been the lack of early morning sunlight around 8am. I am waiting for some clear, sunny mornings to reappear.
grass tree+ wattle, Waitpinga
There is a sense that these humble photos refer to inhabiting this place on the southern coast of the Fleurieu Peninsula in South Australia. How can this ‘inhabiting a place’ be unpacked?
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”
I am fortunate that Madeline, our temporary next door neighbour at Encounter Bay, has kindly offered to walk Ari on the late afternoon poodlewalk several times a week. That frees me up to venture along the coastal rocks on the late afternoon poodlewalks with Kayla and Maleko. I have even been able to use the opportunity to make a couple of photos of the coastal rocks with my Rolleiflex SL66 film camera.
machinery, Encounter Bay
This does make for a welcome change from the routine of walking along the back country roads on the morning walk and the Heysen Trail for the afternoon walk. That routine grinds me down. Continue reading “a helping hand”
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.
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”
Suzanne’s return from walking the Heysen Trail freed me up to walk Ari on his in the morning, and then walk with Maleko and Kayla amongst the coastal foreshore on the afternoon poodle walk. I am able to reconnect to what I was doing with the Littoral Zone.
Unfortunately, Suzanne is not at home in Encounter Bay long enough for me to do a road trip to the Mallee to continue to work on the Mallee Routes The week or so that Suzanne is at home before she goes to Cuba and Mexico is a brief interlude.
Whilst Suzanne has been away walking the Heysen Trail in and around the Flinders Ranges with friends, I have been without internet access for 4 days. It was disconnected on Thursday. Internode , I discovered, was rebuilding the NBN gateway at Stirling because those on the NBN broadband were experiencing frequent dropout–probably due to live streaming Netflix. Whilst I was disconnected I realised just how integral the internet is to my life.
Internode advised me this morning that they had things at their end finally up and running. However, I still had no access. I was then on the mobile phone with Internode’s tech support for 3 hours to reconfigure the Fritzbox 7490 before studio’s computers could access the internet. (We finally realised that the Fritzbox’s wizard was playing up and the settings in the Fritzbox modem had to be manually configured). We are still experiencing problems connecting the Fritzbox modem and the VoIP FritzFon: a second session with tech support this afternoon failed to establish a phone connection via the Fritzbox.
After being connected this morning I quickly uploaded a couple of images into my digital gallery for the Mallee Routes project that I working on.
Whilst I was disconnected from the internet the local boat ramp car park was still being extended, mainstream newspapers continue to sack their photographers, and I continued to walk the 3 standard poodles in the morning and evening. These are autumn days on the Fleurieu Peninsula in South Australia, and the mornings can be quite spectacular:
am, Baum Rd, Waitpinga
There was heavy mist on the fields along Baum Rd on Saturday morning, and the mist hung around after sunrise. The next morning I took my film cameras with me on the early morning walk along Baum Rd hoping for a repeat, but there there wasn’t any mist at all. Unfortunately, for me, there hasn’t been any mist since. Dam.
