Tag: bushland

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just snaps

When Suzanne was sick and in the Victor Harbor hospital I was walking both standard poodles (Akira and Maya) on my own. It was disciplined walking as I would walk along the coastal path in the early morning to Dep’s Beach, and then we would walk in the Waitpinga bushland for the late afternoon walk. As Akira hadn’t had all his injections, we needed to stay away from other dogs.

I was primarily managing the poodles. On the morning walk there was only a brief excursion to Dep’s Beach or to the rocky littoral zone below the cliffs when I could see that there was no harmful algae bloom (HAB) present in the onshore waters or in the rockpools. It hasn’t really gone away.

This snap was on one such brief excursion along the littoral zone just east of the Whale Lookout. — a chance encounter.

There was very little photography done in this period There was no film camera on a tripod photography. No hand held film photography either. I was actually on a break from photography — a break from making images for a particular project for around 12 months.

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Kalani: in memoriam

We — Suzanne, Maya and I– scattered Kalani’s ashes around his favourite spot in the Waitpinga bushland this morning. It was around 6.30am and cool so we were able to avoid the very active and extremely venomous Eastern Brown snakes.

The eastern brown (Pseudonaja textilis) is responsible for the most snakebite fatalities in Australia, due to its potent venom causing paralysis and severe blood clotting issues (coagulopathy), leading to rapid collapse without prompt antivenom and medical care.

Kalani died 2 weeks ago from being poisoned after eating a dead fish contaminated with the toxic micro alga bloom . It happened whilst we were on an early morning poodlewalk along the local Esplanade beach at Victor Harbor. His symptoms included nausea, vomiting, and disturbances to balance, coordination and vision.

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Kalani’s ashes

He started vomiting a few hours latter, and though we were able to get him to the vet that morning, he died in the early afternoon. It was all so sudden. We suspect that the kind of poison killed him so quickly was caused by the brevertoxins (BTX) in Karenia cristata that bloomed from the marine heating and high nutrient levels in the coastal waters.

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bushland studies #2: mono no aware

The traditional or pre-modern Japanese aesthetic category of mono no aware generally refers to impermanence of things. It is often interpreted as the ‘pathos of things’–“pathos” (aware) of “things” (mono), deriving from their transience.

What could be more transient than leaves in the local bushland?

This aesthetic category centers on the acceptance of transience and imperfection and it is very appropriate for the flux of nature in the local bushland that we walk in. Mono no aware involves an understanding that transience is a natural phenomenon independently of our relationship with what has disappeared.

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A walking art: ‘in memoriam’

Cambo 5x7 monorail

These photographic fragments of a walk artwork are a memoriam to those times when Maleko, our silver standard poodle, and myself spent together walking and hanging about in the local Waitpinga bushland in South Australia’s southern Fleurieu Peninsula. It also addresses the question: ‘what are photographers for?’

Maleko had an aggressive rectal cancer tumor that spread through his body in a very short time. He was ten years old. Towards the end he turned to scavenging on the walk, started losing his sight, became disorientated, and failing to keep in touch with me.So the bushland walks had to stop. Maleko’s body eventually collapsed when we were in the Grampians (Gariwerd) in September. He was euthanised in Horsham on Saturday night, the 15th of September.

Rolleiflex SL66
entry path, Waitpinga bushland

Maleko and I had many photowalks in this bushland over the years and we would usually walk for an hour or more. We would often start on a path made by the kangaroos then just wander around. Our time on these walks were a form of immersion of a being in the bushland in the sense that we become a part of it, and it becomes a part of us. This kind of immersion is a being-in-the-world, rather than a standing outside looking at, and walking through it, as an object.

It was Maleko who lead the way for me to become at home in the bushland and he was much better at mapping it than I was. I would often become dis-orientated and would lose my sense of where I was — but Maleko never did. On those occasions I would follow him back to a familiar trail that lead back to our normal exit point.

Rolleiflex SL66
exit, Waitpinga bushland

This photowalk references, builds on, and is a continuation of, an earlier one in the local Waitpinga bushland on the southern Fleurieu Peninsula in South Australia. The idea of a walking art in the local bushland frames how Maleko and I enter into, wander around, see and exit the bushland whilst on our morning and afternoon poodlewalks. I would see possibilities. scope with a digital camera, and return the next day to photograph.

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a photowalk in the Waitpinga bushland

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This is a construction of my daily morning poodlewalk in the local Waitpinga bushland with Maya, in South Australia’s windy, southern Fleurieu Peninsula. Maya is our standard poodle and is just over a year old. The bushland, which is in Ngarrindjeri country, is paddock size; and it was probably saved from becoming grazing land through Landcare in the late twentieth century.

The construction aims to show that photography is more than the photograph, or the object represented as an image or an artwork . It aims to highlight photography as a bodily activity, experiential process or performance. Walking art presupposes an aesthetics of embodiment — a sentient lived body, rather than just a physical body. Bringing aesthetics closer to the realm of everyday life and practice means bringing the body more centrally into focus. Our sensory perception depends on how the body feels or functions and what it desires, does and suffers.

The walk begins after I’ve parked the car at the Waitpinga Rd end of the unsealed Depledge Rd shortly after first light. We walk along Depledge Rd prior to sunrise judging the length of the walk so that we enter the messy and chaotic bushland just on sunrise. So it is a low light situation photographically speaking in a windy location.

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Maya

We start walking by making our way to, then along, some of the trails through the bush that have been made by the kangaroos:

The walking is a haphazard wandering as I keep a photographic eye out for what is changing, ephemeral, momentary or simple. This approach to photography is underpinned by Japanese aesthetics that understands reality as constant change (impermanence or mujo); that the world of flux that presents itself to our senses is the only reality; and that we live in the present moment.

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light

Being in the present moment is crucial because the early morning light that starts to shine through the trees (pink gums and grass trees) is fleeting, and it is constantly shifting as the sun rises through the trees.

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Hobbled walking

My twice-a-day poodlewalks during the six weeks that Suzanne needed to wear her moonboot to help heal her broken fibula were hobbled ones. I was walking both standard poodles, but as I’d badly damaged my back early in that six weeks period I wasn’t able to walk very far. I could only shuffle along in those areas where the two poodles could run free and more or less look after themselves.

The photography was limited during this period. I just carried a digital camera and on many of the walks I wouldn’t even make a photo. Walking 2 poodles with a damaged back wasn’t conducive to photography.

This is one of the photos I did make whilst on a hobbled walk in part of the Rosetta Head Reserve. I would drive to Petrel Cove and then hobble my way around the reserve and through its scrubland in the early morning.

I would usually start this walk 30 minutes or so before sunrise when there was no one around. The walk would be in its final stages as the early morning sunlight flickered across the grasses in the reserve.

Another of the early morning walks involved driving to the carpark on the western side of Rosetta Head, then I’d slowly shuffling my way along its northern side until I reached the eastern end where I could look over Encounter Bay:

I would do this walk on those occasions when there was early morning cloud over the sea before sunrise. I would hope that there was nobody on the top of the Bluff viewing the sunrise, flying a drone or taking photos. I was able to hobble my way back to the car park on the western side of Rosetta Head, The clouds usually dissipated after sunrise, except when the rains swept in from the wast.

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in Memoriam

We put Kayla down last Tuesday (22nd November). She was 8 years old and the ultra sound revealed that she had advanced cancer of the lymph nodes which was diffused through her body. She had stopped eating when we were in Robe several weeks ago and she hadn’t eaten for two weeks. She was losing weight and her liver had shrunken to such a degree that the vet found it was difficult to locate it on the ultrasound. Kayla was wasting away.

She was much loved and is deeply missed. This was one of the last photos that I made. It was made on our last Sunday morning Rosetta Head walk together.

Kayla, Rosetta Head

It was before we realized that she had cancer. We working on the assumption that she had an ongoing viral infection. Looking back we can see that she did did have a viral infection but the cancer had so weakened her immune system that her body couldn’t overcome it.

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rain + bushland colours

I have spent many an early morning during the late summer of 2022 wandering through the local bushland with Kayla. There are lots of smells for her (eg., foxes, rabbits, kangaroos) and there are some photographic possibilities for me.

wet bark

It had been raining during the previous day, which was very unusual for summer in the Fleurieu Peninsula. This was in early January during a cool summer. Summer is normally hot and dry with no rain for 5 or so months. The rains normally start in late April.

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walking, photography, philosophy

“This process of going astray, doubling back, regaining the path, sometimes gaining the perspective I was seeking and sometimes not, was exactly what it means to be on a philosopher’s walk; a walk that is open-ended, exploratory, and follows thoughts where they lead, even if that is not to a conclusion.” Bruce Baugh, Philosophers’ Walks, Routledge, 2021

For me the key word in this paragraph about walking is exploratory:– not in the sense of exploring oneself, but in taking myself out of my individual identity or subjectivity. When walking we have left behind commentary, refutation, recopying, we are no longer wrapped up books or looking at our computer screens. Walking allows myself to see the very simple, very ordinary things that exist in the space that I am walking in; and then to become immersed in that space.

bark, bushland, Waitpinga

Walking, it is often held, is an indispensable aid to thinking and writing. I would add walking is also indispensable to photography. Walking is a point of access to the sublimely ordinary as it is through our bodies, on the move, that we make sense of our surroundings. In this view, walking offers an embodied basis for experiencing and engaging with the world.

Philosophy is connected to explorationas the marks of philosophy are reflection and heightened self-awareness. Since reflection can deepen our understanding of our ideas and motivations,  it is going to involve historical understanding of individuals in a particular place and time.

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bush + coast

The afternoon walks through the local bush will soon be coming to an end as we came across a brown snake the other afternoon whilst we were walking along Depledge Rd in Waitpinga. I was surprised to see it on the side of the road because it was still late winter, and the day temperatures up to that date had not been that warm.

From now on the poodlewalks in the bush or scrub will need to be in early morning as its too cold for snakes. Kayla and I usually start walking around sunrise and I am looking out for the early morning light. It is changing.

Baum Rd, Waitpinga

The late afternoon walks with Maleko will, by and large, be along the coastal rocks between Petrel Cove and Kings Beach. We have to walk part of the way along the Heritage Trail to reach the rocks. As we have seen the odd brown snake along this path in the past, I keep an eye out.

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