daily walks Archives - Page 11 of 39

August 12, 2016

moments of calm

Due to the ongoing kitchen renovations and the tradespeople turning up at 8am to start work on the kitchen and the laundry, the morning poodle walks along the cliff top or the back country roads are before dawn. As they are over just on sunrise so there has been little opportunity for photography on the morning walks.

The photos that I have taken on the poodle walks have been on the afternoon walks when the weather has not been stormy:

The afternoon walks in the odd day with the quieter winter weather have been moments of calm away from living in the chaos of the ongoing kitchen renovations.
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July 30, 2016

After the storms

The recent stormy, winter weather has meant that our poodle walks have been mostly along the back country roads since they offer some protection from the wind. We have only infrequently walked along the coastline because it is usually windswept: battered by the south-westerly winds and intense rain.

The picture below is from one of the rare occasions during July that we ventured onto Rosetta Head. We waited in the Subaru Forester for the squalls to pass through, then we went for our walk around Rosetta Head keeping an eye on the incoming squalls coming from the south.

Whilst we were waiting in the Subaru for the squalls to pass I took some photos of the landscape through the windscreen of the Forester.
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July 16, 2016

on Hall Creek Rd

Hall Creek Rd is a back country road in Waitpinga, on the southern Fleurieu Peninsula of South Australia. We have been walking along it in the late afternoon during the recent stormy weather whilst Suzanne has been away walking the Heysen Trail around Laura in the mid-north.

The road is part of the Heysen Trail, and so it is quiet. It is protected from the winds, has the afternoon sun, is reasonably dry, and the fences on both sides of the road are in good condition. The latter is crucial because there are often kangaroos in the fields:

The fences prevent the standard poodles from entering the fields to chase the kangaroos. If the kangaroos are grazing amongst the road side vegetation, which they sometimes do, they are able to jump the fences into the fields.
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July 6, 2016

winter

Winter so far has been wet, very wet, along the coast of the southern Fleurieu Peninsula. Most days it has been raining steadily throughout the day. There are moments of no rain in the morning and afternoon, and these are quickly taken advantage of for our poodle walks.

We had a couple of such moment on the cliff top walk this morning–moments between the squalls that swept in from the south whilst we were walking along Dep Beach, which is west of Petrel Cove. Although it is often very atmospheric the weather only allows for quick snaps.
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July 1, 2016

Rosetta Head

I have been minding the standard poodles whilst Suzanne has been in the Pilbara in Western Australia with Heather Petty exploring the Karijini National Park in the Hamersley Range. They camped at the Karijini Eco Retreat.

It’s been cold, stormy and wet on the south coast of the Fleurieu Peninsula with sporadic sunshine.I have been trying to walk in the morning and the evening between the squalls in areas that provide some protection from the bitter southerly winds and away from the mud. So we have been walking along back country roads in the morning and later afternoon. The only photographs that I have done whilst Suzanne has been away are a few snaps on the poodle walks. On some days I didn’t even bother to take a camera with me.

Things were looking up this morning. The wind had dropped, it wasn’t raining, and there was early morning sunshine rather than drizzle. So we walked up Rosetta Head, or The Bluff.
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June 18, 2016

on the breakwater

Our poodlewalks have been very limited in scope and duration this last week.

This was due to Kayla’s surgery to remove the bones that were struck in her small intestine and stomach. She had to walk on a lead, and in the morning we walked down to the beach at Encounter Bay, out along the breakwater near the boat ramp and then back to the house. In the evening, I walked Ari and Maleko whilst Suzanne walked Kayla.

All that I could by way of photography in the morning was to photograph the rocks of the breakwater in the early morning winter light:

We were lucky to have a couple of clear mornings between the showers and squalls that have broken the warm autumn that emerged out of the prolonged summer period in March and that continued into the start of May.I gather that El Niño is now waning into its opposite phase, La Niña. Winter has been wet but not that cold.
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May 29, 2016

winter light

Winter has come to the coast of South Australia.

The balmy autumn weather has given away to rain, cold winds, and stormy conditions. We now wear rain jackets when we are walking the poodles. The change in the seasons has been quite abrupt and sudden.

The light is much softer now and it is easier to work with in the early morning:

The digital photographers are out in force around dusk in, and around, the Petrel Cove area. They look as if they come down to the coast of the southern Fleurieu Peninsula for the day. They work their DSLR’s on tripods and stay on the coastal path along the top of the cliffs. From what I can see as we walk past them, is that they are using their zoom lenses to photograph the breaking waves below them.They don’t venture down the cliffs, or get amongst, and explore, the coastal rocks.
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May 24, 2016

moonrise over the southern ocean

Autumn has been quite warm this year with only a few days of rain that suggest winter is an approaching.

This picture was snapped on the evening before a sou’westerly cold front moved across the coast the next day. It was a mild and warm dusk and it was very still. People were out swimming, walking, fishing, playing at Petrel Cove, fishing and running even though it was dusk.

I was returning to the car park at Petrel Cove from a walk with Ari and Maleko just as the moon was rising over the southern ocean south of Rosetta Head, or the Bluff. I couldn’t resist taking handheld a snap.
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May 12, 2016

along Jagger Rd, Waitpinga

Suzanne is currently away walking the Heysen Trail around Burra and Spalding region for a week. I’m at Encounter Bay minding the standard poodles and scanning negatives from local poodlewalks and from the Coorong and previous Mallee Highway trips.

I’m also doing the curation administration for two group exhibitions in September–an abstraction one at the Light Gallery and one entitled Weltraum at Magpie Springs for the Shimmer Photographic Biennale.

This is one of the images from the local poodle walks along Jagger Rd in Waitpinga earlier this year. It’s a scoping image that I re-photographed with the 5×4 Linhof Technika the following day.

It was Easter time, as I remember a male sleeping rough nearby. He’d been tossed out of his home by his wife and he was missing his kids. He spun me a story about how he had decided to travel around Australia on the cheap cos he wanted freedom. He added that being disconnected from the digital world—a digital detox?— meant that he could reclaim a sense of self, freedom and creativity and so lead a more authentic and fulfilling life. I wished him luck in his quest.
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April 29, 2016

a hot and dry autumn

So far autumn—-that is March and April—in southern Australia has been hot and dry with very little rain. It feels unseasonably warm in the sense of the temperatures being above normal. Presumably, the current spike in warm weather is happening partly because of the El Niño that spread a pulse of warm water across the Pacific Ocean in 2015. That El Niño is now dissipating, spreading the warmer water around Australia, raising temperatures.

These warm temperatures—-there is heat in the sun at 9am in the morning—that is caused by a dissipating El Niño is happening on top of the background of global warming. What we are seeing and experiencing is a continuous process of global warming that is superimposed on to the natural variability. Long term that means longer heatwaves, greater droughts, less water and rising sea levels for southern Australia.
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