Tag: Fleurieu Peninsula

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grumble, grumble

People have been having lots of fun along the southern coast of the Fleurieu Peninsula on their summer holidays. This part of the coast has remained as Adelaide’s main summer playground. However, we can’t wait for Australia Day to come and go since that means that the summer holiday crowds will start returning to Adelaide for work and school.

Since Xmas, the region has been full off people, cars, boats and the rubbish of takeaway food dumped where it is eaten. The anti-biking crowd have broken glass all over bike paths up to Rosetta Head, the wooden barriers to prevent the cars going onto nature reserves have been smashed, and there is human shit along the base of cliffs bordering the beaches west of Rosetta Head.

This was one morning when I did the cliff-top walk rather than walking the Heysen Trail. It was very humid that morning and it looked like it would rain:

storm, Petrel Cove
storm, Petrel Cove

However, the clouds quickly disappeared and the humidity, intense sun and the stillness meant that it was unpleasantly hot on the beach. The morning walk was cut short and we returned to the house and to air-conditioning.
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early summer morning walks

The Fleurieuscapes exhibition at Magpie Springs opened on Sunday 17th January.We had a picnic lunch in the grounds of Magpie Springs with friends before the exhibition opening. A good crowd was in attendance for the opening and the atmosphere was convivial and summery. However, as I don’t expect to sell much work from the exhibition, I will be paying off my photography master card for most of this year.

Kayla, Heysen Trail
Kayla, Heysen Trail

Whilst preparing for the exhibition Kayla and Ari and I walked along the Heysen Trail in the morning to avoid the crowds on the beach. Then Ari and Maleko and I walked along the beach in the afternoon. We stayed away from the Heysen trail in the late afternoon because of the prevalence of the black snakes.
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amongst the coastal rocks

Kayla, Ari and myself were returning to the Mazda after an early morning photoshoot–a rockpool— along the coast near Kings Beach Rd. A photoshoot was a break from being more or less sitting in a front of a computer working on the Fleurieuscapes exhibition at Magpie Springs. The opening is on Sunday January 17th.

The tide was low and it was overcast so I could access some of the coast that was not possible during the winter. I had explored this part of the coast whilst on a poodlewalk yesterday morning and I decided to go back this morning, if there was some cloud cover.

2 poodles
2 poodles

People are still on their holidays along the southern coast of the Fleurieu Peninsula, so there are plenty of runners, walkers, trail-bikers and dog walkers on the coastal path between Petrel Cove and Kings Beach in the early morning. It is still cool at this time of the day and, as the coastal winds have eased, it is pleasant walking. Continue reading “amongst the coastal rocks”

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Xmas/New Year holidays

It’s Xmas/New Year summer holiday time.

Apart from the odd couple of days when we had a cool change, the weather has been hot, with clear blue skies, full sun and glaring light. The land is drying out and there have been bush fires along the Victorian coast of the Great Ocean Rd—–at Wye River on Xmas Day. We had planned to stay near there in February on our way back from Melbourne.

Our poodlewalks are earlier in the morning now and further afield in the afternoon. We are trying to avoid all the runners, walkers, bikers, dog walkers, families, surfers from Adelaide who have just come down to the southern Fleurieu Peninsula coast for their summer break.

quartz + seaweed
quartz + seaweed

I am continuing to use my APSC digital camera (a Sony NEX-7) as my everyday walkabout camera, thereby continuing my slow walk from film photography to digital imaging. My everyday walkabout camera used to be a film Leica. No more.I am not a dyed-in-the-wool Leicaphile. Sony’s NEX-7, which was Sony’s flagship camera only three years ago, is a handy, friendly, high-performance compact camera. It’s very functional for the diary-style photos on poodle walks as opposed to the art photography ones on the galleries of my website.
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beach erosion and coastal management

The early morning poodlewalk today was along the beach between the  mouth of the Inman River and Police Point near the Granite Island causeway in Encounter Bay. This is the beach east of Kent Reserve and I call it the Esplanade beach in the absence of any official name.

I wanted to have a closer look at the erosion along this section of the beach and to see how the Victor Harbor Council is planning to protect this part of the coastline from the sea eroding the foreshore and the sand dunes. I knew that sections of the foreshore along the Franklin Parade seawall is under threat from sea level rise and storm surges and that it requires upgrading.

melaleuca roots, Esplanade
melaleuca roots, Esplanade

This erosion has been going on for some years now, along with the sand depletion abutting Franklin Parade. The Council’s coastal management response to the increase in the intensity of storm damage and erosion since the 1990’s is to replenish the sand on  the Esplanade beach.
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Rosetta Head, Victor Harbor

After returning from the Wellington trip the early morning poodle walks in Victor Harbor have been around Rosetta Head (The Bluff). We—Ari, Kayla and myself– have started walking on the Bluff at sunrise. This is just before 6am during the early summer months.

Encounter Bay, 6am
Encounter Bay, 6am

I’m still interested in photographing the landscape around The Bluff in the early morning light now that summer is here, and the local landscape has that dried brown look.
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off to New Zealand

This will be the last poodlewalks for a week or so as we are off to Wellington, New Zealand tomorrow for a few days. We managed to obtain some dirt cheap promotional air tickets, and we decided to use them to drive north to explore the Tongariro National Park —and, hopefully, to walk the Tongariro Alpine Crossing.

A friend–Heather Petty-— is staying at our Encounter Bay house and looking after Kayla and Ari for a week whilst Maleko is staying at the house of a dog minder in Victor Harbor. That enables Suzanne and myself to get away together, which is a change from the separate trips we have done recently.

twig + rocks
twig + rocks

Although I grew up in Christchurch NZ, and worked in Wellington as an economist, I haven’t been to the Tongariro National Park nor the North Island Volcanic Plateau. I did travel though the plateau by train to Auckland once. It was at night so I didn’t see much.

So I’m not sure what to expect photographic wise whilst walking the Tongariro Alpine Crossing, as many of the images that I’ve seen are from the air. From what I can see from the pictures on the internet most of the walk is on raw volcanic terrain with no vegetation.
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along Hindmarsh lagoon

This picture was made whilst I was walking with the three standard poodles around  the lagoon of the Hindmarsh River at Encounter Bay, Victor Harbor,  late in the afternoon:

Hindmarsh Lagoon
Hindmarsh Lagoon

I was scoping as usual— looking for photographic subjects whilst on the poodlewalks.

Basically I am teaching myself how to photograph the bush and, to a lesser extent, the foreshore along the southern coast of the Fleurieu Peninsula. The latter  work is mostly abstractions of the rocks on the coastline.
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Xanthorrhoea

I returned to an old country road that I used to walk along in winter yesterday evening with Maleko and Ari. I was tempted because the late afternoon light was soft due to the cloud cover, and I hoped that the various grass seeds along the roadside vegetation the side of the road would be manageable with Maleko racing around. I was wondering how much of the roadside vegetation had changed during the spring.

Xanthorrhoea
Xanthorrhoea

We normally walk on the beach this time of the year because of the grass seeds. The previous night’s walk along Hall Creek Rd–to see if things would be okay— was a disaster grass seed wise.

The land is drying, the temperatures are warmer than usual (starting to be in the early 30s) and the dust is forming on the roadside vegetation. Southern Australia looks to be in the grip of an El Niño that has been established in the Pacific for the last six months and it is not expected that El Nino will break down until after the start of 2016. That means below-average rainfall across eastern Australia in winter and spring, and also warmer-than-normal daytime temperatures over the southern half of the country.
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