A lo fi visual diary
A car trip from Adelaide CBD to Mt Barker for the poodles to be clipped and groomed, a quick walk in Kuitpo Forest afterwards, then onto Victor Harbor for a couple of days. The evening walk with Ari and Maleko was along the beach west of Petrel Cove. A cold south westerly was blowing. It was cloudy. Rain was coming.
Despite it being the first week of the school holidays there was no one around on Dog Beach. The families were all hanging out at the Woolworth’s mall in town.
The nature of our poodlewalks has changed with the arrival of Maleko, a 8 week old blue standard poodle pup, last Friday. We cannot walk far, and we more or less hang around on the beach at Encounter Bay, in the morning.
Or rather, Suzanne walks Ari in the morning whilst I hang out on the beach with Maleko, so that he becomes at ease with, and confident in, this coastal environment.
The photography is circumscribed until Maleko can walk a greater distance. Or we carry him some of the way, which is what we did yesterday afternoon when we all went to hang out at Petrel Cove:
Ari and I went to Cape Jervis yesterday afternoon on a photoshoot for the Fleurieu Four Seasons Prize for Landscape Photography. Cape Jervis is where you catch the ferry to Kangaroo Island in South Australia.
The recent storm had given way to sunshine, light cloud and gentle winds in Victor Harbor. So we took our chance, hoping that the weather on the western Fleurieu Peninsula would be similar to that in Victor Harbor. It was, but there was little cloud.
We—Ari, Suxzanne and myself— had gone there a week before, but we’d arrived too late to walk out to the point. Hence the need for me to return.
Whilst we have been holidaying at Victor Harbor, South Australia, Ari and I have been wandering around the streets of the town on our early morning poodlewalks. The early morning light in winter lightens up the town’s architecture.
When walking around this coastal town I can see it changing from a rural/holiday town to a tourist one. It is kept very clean and tidy by the council and it wins tidy town awards.
Ari and I are at Victor Harbor whilst Suzanne is in Brisbane for a week. The southern coastline of the Fleurieu Peninsula and Adelaide has been hit by storms from the south west. It has been wet and cold.
The early morning and late afternoon walks have been between the rain squalls. We have to be quick as the fine weather (no rain) doesn’t last for very long.
We spent the 3 day Queens birthday weekend (7-9th June) at Victor Harbor trying to avoid the day tripper crowds on our poodlewalks. People are discovering that winter on the southern Fleurieu Peninsula is quite pleasant.
Kings Beach was one option as winter time means that there is no one swimming or sunning themselves on the beach.
People were mostly walking along the Heysen Trail, which meant that we could walk the beach slowly around to the rock coast of Kings Head.
The 2-3 weeks of the so called “Indian Summer” that southern Australia experienced in late Autumn has finished. The rains have come along with the storm clouds. The rain was really needed.
It rained steadily all day yesterday at Victor Harbor on the Fleurieu Peninsula. We got very wet on both the morning and evening poodle walks.
We have 6 days at American River on Kangaroo Island with friends. The time is spent relaxing, going for walks, reading, taking photos and enjoying the calm and overcast autumn conditions.
Ari and wander around the wetlands between the road and Pelican Lagoon. There is more water around the wetlands because of the very high tides.
We are at Victor Harbor for the Easter to Anzac Day break. As it’s also school holidays we have been trying to avoid the crowds by going to Kings Beach and Kings Head for our poodle walks.
These locations have had fewer people than Petrel Cove, Dog Beach or the mouth of the Hindmarsh River. We have had to be careful walking around the rocks in this area because it has been a high tide in the late afternoon, and the waves have been very big because of the full moon.
I spent a couple of days at Encounter Studio in Victor Harbor scanning a variety of negatives that had been taken earlier this year. Rolls of 35mm colour, 6×6, colour, black and white, and tranny and 5×4 colour sheet film needed to be done.
Scanning film is a slow, tedious task. I do not enjoy it. So I welcomed the break in the late afternoon to walk the poodles around the mouth of the Hindmarsh River in Encounter Bay, along the beach and through the estuary.
I’d initially checked the Hindmarsh estuary out because I wanted to do some large format studies of the melaleucas in the estuary that I’d scooped last year. But they were still flooded. There hadn’t been enough rain for the river flow cut through the sand bar and open the mouth of the river. So the water was backing up.