It’s been a strange summer so far.
It has been cool weather with lots of rain. There has been very little in the way of the hot, dry summer days that we are used to, and that we have come to expect, on the coast. The damp conditions have meant that the wood panels and stairs that I had oiled before Xmas were very slow to dry. The oil fumes hung around for days.
The rains have been due to a sub-tropical rain depression that hung over South Australia for several days between Xmas and New Year, destroying all the ripening stone fruit. The depression bought the small flies that clung to your body, and they were really unpleasant on the early morning poodlewalks.
Despite the weather the coast is packed with people. There seemed to be more people than usual this time and they came down before Boxing Day. It was mayhem shopping at the Woolworths mall on Xmas eve and it meant that we walked the poodles before 6am, to avoid the people walking, biking and running along the coast.
Then it turned cold with the strong, south-westerly winds and more rain. I gave up trying to photograph the coastal salt ponds, and turned to scan some archival negatives for The Bowden Archives and Other Marginalia book.
There have been some fine days in between. These plus walking in the afternoon with just Maleko (Suzanne now takes Ari in the afternoon) has meant that I can clamber over the rocks and start re-exploring parts of the coast that I haven’t been to for several years. That has meant that can I continue to plug away on both the Littoral Zone images and the coastal abstractions.