Poodle Walks

February 26, 2011

near Kings Beach

One of the afternoon walks we often do when we are at Victor Harbor is a cliff top walk to King Beach. I often then cut back along the rocky foreshore to explore the rocky cliffs with my point and shoot digital camera.

The walk along the cliff-top is part of the Heysen Trail; a 1,200km long distance walking trail in South Australia that extends from Cape Jervis, on the rugged south coast of the Fleurieu Peninsula, to Parachilna Gorge, in the Flinders Ranges.

On these kind of walks I am looking for objects, landscape details and scenes that would be suitable for taking a photo with a large format camera. I did return to photograph this rock detail with a 5×7 Cambo monorail, but I have yet to have the sheet film processed at a pro-lab.

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February 24, 2011

mannequins

There are not many shops on the poodle walk to and from our inner city Sturt Street townhouse to the Adelaide Parklands. One of the few is the Salvation Army shop on Whitmore Square:

The shop is set up to make money for the Salvation Army. The goods–furniture, clothes, nick-knacks, accessories–must be in good condition and desired by consumers. To all intents and purposes it is a retro shop selling vintage gems. They are fussy about the quality of the goods that you can give them free and their window display is varied and interesting.

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February 23, 2011

floating red rose

It’s been around six days since I’ve been on a poodle walk. I’ve been in Melbourne attending a family funeral and taking photos in the Point Nepean National Park, of bathing huts along Port Philip Bay, and freeway overpasses in the CBD.

Last night was the first walk. We went shortly after I returned home.

The rose was floating in a sculpture pond in Veale Gardens. The ponds have only had running water in them this year –they have been dry during the long years of the drought in Adelaide.

February 17, 2011

beach erosion

An example of the erosion of the beach at Victor Harbor.

There is constant coming and going of coastlines as quite natural and that this has been going on for decades. It continues today. However, another discernible pattern is being overlaid on this cycle—it is noticeable that the sea is slowly eating into the sand dunes. Some of the low lying coastline where there are holiday houses are vulnerable, and some local councils are starting to take measures to defend, retreat, or block development.

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February 16, 2011

pink gum trunk

A lot of the landscape outside of the conservation parks around Victor Harbor and the Fleurieu Peninsula in general has been stripped bare, and now consists of dairy and sheep farms. The remnants of the native bush can only be found in the roadside vegetation scattered here and there.

It is a pity because the bush is interesting and it supports a biodiverse fauna and flora in its native state. As the farms give way to urban development some people do plant trees; but most of those who built their holiday houses near the coast prefer the panoramic views of the coastline.

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February 15, 2011

cacti

The poodles and I are down at Victor Harbor for a couple of days. The automatic irrigation system for the garden is not working properly and, as it is ten years old, it needs some repair work. This was meant to be done on Monday but the irrigation chap had been held up on another job.

Yesterday, after the walk along the beach, we went exploring the roadside vegetation on the road to the rubbish dump. It’s quiet and it has picturesque views both to the sea and to The Bluff or, more accurately, Rosetta Head.

We had been along the road before when we’d been exploring the landscape around rubbish dump. I’d taken a picture of this pink gum and farm dam

I was checking out the light for a large format shot of the pink gum, but the sun has shifted and it no longer shines on the tree before it goes behind the hill. So the picture will have to be done in the early morning just after dawn after returning from my Melbourne trip next week.

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February 14, 2011

fungi

The best poodle walks are down at Victor Harbor, which is on the southern Fleurieu Peninsula about an hours drive south of Adelaide. There Ari and Agtet can run and hunt freely once the short walk past the holiday houses is over and we access the field adjacent to the cliffs. We walk along the cliff tops to the various beaches or we climb Rosetta Head.

Just outside our weekender is a heavily tree’d reserve and this constitutes the start of the first section of the short walk. I noticed these fungi on the start of one of our walks. It is from the archives and it was taken in the winter of 2010.

That was a particularly wet winter as the decade long drought had just broken and all the storm water from the houses up on the hill flows through the little reserve then to the seashore.

February 13, 2011

red bag

What becomes very noticeable walking with the poodles is the amount of rubbish lying on the streets and in the parklands. Whereas I would have just walked by without a second look–rubbish is just part of the urban background for me—Ari and Agtet check it out very thoroughly. So I am forced to stop and look:

There is just so much waste.

In the parklands it is mostly the junk food scraps that people leave lying on the ground where they have been sitting. In the city it is mostly packaging and objects that are no longer deemed useful, or have broken down. They have been put on the footpath to be collected.

It was on these walks that I started to realize just how much Australian society throws away as waste. Often the waste is the leftovers from excess consumption. Or the object—including digital cameras— is so badly made that it falls apart and is tossed away. It is not cost effective to repair.

February 12, 2011

shadows

This picture was taken whilst we were mucking around the Optus Building on the corner of King William Street and South Terrace on one of those very hot summer days in Adelaide. You know the ones when the temperature is above 40 degrees C.

We were on our way back home to the inner city townhouse in Sturt Street after walking in the parklands. We were hot, and we hanging about in the alleyway’s shadows trying to cool our bodies down.

As with the earlier posts I used a digital point and shoot camera (Sony DSC R1). Digital is so much easier and more convenient to use compared to film based photography. Though digital photography has supplanted film, the same way wet collodion isn’t about anymore, film has become a niche style of photography.

This photographic moment was about exploring photography, exploring the way we communicate, not about creating pretty pictures (eg., National Geographic type photographs) that people will say, “Oh that’s nice”.

February 11, 2011

paint can

I spotted this decrepit object–it is waste– in Myers Lane on our way to the Adelaide parklands:

I found it lying against the tin wall of an old industrial site that has been sold and is earmarked for urban redevelopment. This will probably be a mixture of offices and apartments as the Adelaide City Council’s preferred model of urban renewal is one of mixed use.