poodleadmin, Author at Poodle Walks

December 18, 2015

Aboriginal sites Inman River

I’ve been quietly scoping the landscape near the mouth of the Inman River during our early morning poodle walks along the Encounter Bay beach. I’m looking for traditional aboriginal sites to photograph as memorial sites. The pattern of British colonisation in South Australia deprived the Ngarrindjeri of access to their food and resources when they were removed from their lands and placed in missions such as Raukkan or fringe camps on the edges of towns like Meningie and Victor Harbor. Their historical presence as traditional owners is now marked by an absence in much of the landscape around Victor Harbor.

There is a cairn erected in Kent Reserve (i.e. on the western side of the Inman River) that commemorates one of the last camping grounds of the Ramindjeri tribe of aborigines, who were a local group or clan of the Ngarrindjeri nation, who lived around Lower Murray, Lake Albert and Lake Alexandrina and the Corrong. My understanding is the Ngarrindjeri form an Aboriginal nation of eighteen language groups who inhabit the extensive coastal Kurangk region that includes the Fleurieu Peninsula. Their lands and waters extended 30 kilometres up the River Murray from Lake Alexandrina, the length of the Corrong and along the coastal area to Encounter Bay. Their caring for country has seen them develop a Sea Country plan in 2006.

Ramindjeri land is the most westerly of the Ngarrindjeri, covering the area around Encounter Bay including Victor Harbor and Port Elliot. Kent Reserve was originally a traditional camping ground of the Ramindjeri people. Apparently, there is also an Aboriginal site described as an archaeological/burial site that is situated near the mouth of the Inman River, on the eastern side of the river. I’ve never seen it.

The river mouth of the Inman River was realigned by the Victor Harbor Council to protect the BeachFront Holiday Park in 1997. This picture is of a section of the old, meandering river channel behind the beach and east of the caravan park. What is left of the channel is infill and a swamp/wetland. We are looking west to the location of last known campsite of the Ramindjeri.

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December 15, 2015

beach erosion and coastal management

The early morning poodlewalk today was along the beach between the mouth of the Inman River and Police Point near the Granite Island causeway in Encounter Bay. This is the beach east of Kent Reserve and I call it the Esplanade beach in the absence of any official name.

I wanted to have a closer look at the erosion along this section of the beach and to see how the Victor Harbor Council is planning to protect this part of the coastline from the sea eroding the foreshore and the sand dunes. I knew that sections of the foreshore along the Franklin Parade seawall is under threat from sea level rise and storm surges and that it requires upgrading.

This erosion has been going on for some years now, along with the sand depletion abutting Franklin Parade. The Council’s coastal management response to the increase in the intensity of storm damage and erosion since the 1990’s is to replenish the sand on the Esplanade beach.
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December 10, 2015

Rosetta Head, Victor Harbor

After returning from the Wellington trip the early morning poodle walks in Victor Harbor have been around Rosetta Head (The Bluff). We—Ari, Kayla and myself– have started walking on the Bluff at sunrise. This is just before 6am during the early summer months.

I’m still interested in photographing the landscape around The Bluff in the early morning light now that summer is here, and the local landscape has that dried brown look.
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November 27, 2015

off to New Zealand

This will be the last poodlewalks for a week or so as we are off to Wellington, New Zealand tomorrow for a few days. We managed to obtain some dirt cheap promotional air tickets, and we decided to use them to drive north to explore the Tongariro National Park —and, hopefully, to walk the Tongariro Alpine Crossing.

A friend–Heather Petty-— is staying at our Encounter Bay house and looking after Kayla and Ari for a week whilst Maleko is staying at the house of a dog minder in Victor Harbor. That enables Suzanne and myself to get away together, which is a change from the separate trips we have done recently.

Although I grew up in Christchurch NZ, and worked in Wellington as an economist, I haven’t been to the Tongariro National Park nor the North Island Volcanic Plateau. I did travel though the plateau by train to Auckland once. It was at night so I didn’t see much.

So I’m not sure what to expect photographic wise whilst walking the Tongariro Alpine Crossing, as many of the images that I’ve seen are from the air. From what I can see from the pictures on the internet most of the walk is on raw volcanic terrain with no vegetation.
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November 19, 2015

along Hindmarsh lagoon

This picture was made whilst I was walking with the three standard poodles around the lagoon of the Hindmarsh River at Encounter Bay, Victor Harbor, late in the afternoon:

I was scoping as usual— looking for photographic subjects whilst on the poodlewalks.

Basically I am teaching myself how to photograph the bush and, to a lesser extent, the foreshore along the southern coast of the Fleurieu Peninsula. The latter work is mostly abstractions of the rocks on the coastline.
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November 12, 2015

Xanthorrhoea

I returned to an old country road that I used to walk along in winter yesterday evening with Maleko and Ari. I was tempted because the late afternoon light was soft due to the cloud cover, and I hoped that the various grass seeds along the roadside vegetation the side of the road would be manageable with Maleko racing around. I was wondering how much of the roadside vegetation had changed during the spring.

We normally walk on the beach this time of the year because of the grass seeds. The previous night’s walk along Hall Creek Rd–to see if things would be okay— was a disaster grass seed wise.

The land is drying, the temperatures are warmer than usual (starting to be in the early 30s) and the dust is forming on the roadside vegetation. Southern Australia looks to be in the grip of an El Niño that has been established in the Pacific for the last six months and it is not expected that El Nino will break down until after the start of 2016. That means below-average rainfall across eastern Australia in winter and spring, and also warmer-than-normal daytime temperatures over the southern half of the country.
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November 8, 2015

an open air studio

Suzanne is currently away walking in the Mt Remarkable National Park around the Alligator Gorge area. It’s a short walking holiday based at Alligator Lodge with some friends from the Larapinta walk that they did earlier in 2015. She will explore the Mt Remarkable area again next year when walking section 43 of the Heysen Trail. Hopefully, Suzanne will scout for some good photographic sites.

I’m at Encounter Bay minding the 3 standard poodles and looking for areas to walk in the morning and evening, which are away from people and grass seeds. In the morning that requires me to be walking on the beach at Encounter Bay before everyone else comes out, take a quick photo of objects near the sand dunes, then move on. We are generally back home by 7am.

In the evening the best option is to walk to Kings Beach in Waitpinga, then hang out around Kings Head because nobody goes there other than the odd surfer when the waves are rolling right. People prefer the beach to the rocky outcrops and so they miss the dolphins cruising by around the headland. The Heysen Trail walkers go over the top of Kings Head on their way to the Newland cliffs.
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October 31, 2015

struggling

Whilst Suzanne has been away walking the Heysen Trail around the Kapunda and Burra area in South Australia this week, I’ve been minding the standard poodle, processing and uploading some of the images from my road trips early this year, and planning the Mallee Highway silo project for next winter. I’m very limited in where I can go walking at the moment because I have to stay in, and around, areas that are from the dam grass seeds. They are everywhere.

I have been limited to walking along the coastline at such places as Kings Beach and Kings Head where there are few people. Or walking along the country roads that are part of the Heysen Trail and that don’t have that many grass seeds amongst the roadside vegetation.

I cannot do much photography when I am walking with three dogs. I have to keep an eye on the dogs rather than use the poodle walks to look for photographic opportunities:
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October 23, 2015

Yulte Conservation Park

Suzanne took us to a section of the Heysen Trail that she’d walked through. The poodles were left in the car as the section of the Heysen Trail that we walked along was Yulte Conservation Park and no dogs are allowed. Suzanne had found this section of of the Heysen Trail attractive compared to the open paddocks of the farming country.

Yulte Conservation Park traverses steep undulating hills south of the town of Myponga, offers panoramic views of the surrounding Myponga Valley and the Sellicks Hill Range country from the higher sections of the walk, and is alive with wildflowers and running creeks in spring.The land was drying out when we visited a few months latter. The creeks were barely running, the wild flowers had pretty much gone, and the scrubby landscape offered little in the way for photography.

The picture of this pile of bricks, for instance, was made outside Yulte Conservation Park. It was household rubbish lying next to the path into the park.

I was a bit disappointed. I had been looking for an area that I could explore photographically over a period of time. Yulte Conservation Park was not it, unfortunately. I also realised that I could not join Suzanne’s Heysen Trail walking group: they are about walking a section of the track, not stopping to take photos or waiting for the right light.

October 16, 2015

a slow decay

My time recently has been spent working on the website’s various galleries Two of the earlier portfolios are now pretty much in place—Bowden and Port Adelaide. They look pretty good. The next step is to reconfigure the rest of the portfolios in this carousel style.

The daily poodle walks in both the morning and evening have been just quicker walks with little time being spent on scoping photography. The grasses are rapidly drying out on the coast and they represent a real problem as they hook onto the standard poodle’s coats, and then quickly work their way into the skin. So I am avoiding areas where there are lots of grass seeds.

The Rambler picture in the old Victor Harbor dump was one of the last scoping photos that I’ve done. Rambler is slowly falling apart from neglect. Rambler was built by Peter Sharp at Cruickshanks Corner, Port Adelaide in 1875 and it was possibly Australia’s oldest racing yacht.

It used to on the slips at Searle’s Boatyard–in the historic boatyards in the Central Basin of the Port River–before Port Adelaide’s oldest surviving boatyard was closed down to make way for the residential waterfront redevelopment of Port Adelaide. The redevelopment at Newport Quays failed to regenerate Port Adelaide. The development of the expensive dog boxes on the waterfront was scrapped but not before it had successfully destroyed the fabric of the history of the port.

It is sad to see Rambler just being left in the ex-dump site to rot. It needed have been so, since it just wasn’t necessary to destroy the Port Adelaide’s oldest surviving boatyard for expensive dog boxes that never eventuated.
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