Fleurieu Peninsula Archives - Page 6 of 21

September 12, 2017

Lichen

With Suzanne is away enjoying her walks and the wild flowers in the south west of Kangaroo Island I am taking the opportunity of walking Kayla and Maleko in both the morning and evening to start to return to some of old haunts along the coast that I haven’t visited for a couple of years. Have things changed along the coast? Do I see the rocks and sea differently now?

Yesterday we walked along the coastal cliff top path to Kings Beach. Instead of going along the beach and around to Kings Head, or over to the base of the Newland Cliffs, we made our way back along the coastal rocks in the direction of Rosetta Head.

It is not possible to walk all the way along the coastal rocks from Kings Beach to Rosetta Head, even when the weather is fine and the tide is low.

Continue reading “Lichen”

September 9, 2017

playtime

Suzanne has gone off to walk the Wilderness Trail on Kangaroo Island. She will be away for most of this week with her bush walking group.

While she is away Kayla, Maleko and I will have some fun, playing with light and shadows:

And I’ll try and do some local photography, start planning another Mallee Routes photo trip, read more about photobook making, continue to edit the essays for the Bowden Archives book and start getting the Adelaide Photography 1970-2000 book (with Moon Arrow Press) off the ground.
Continue reading “playtime”

September 4, 2017

still life

Suzanne returned home to Encounter Bay late today after finishing walking the Heysen Trail. It was a 3 year commitment. A major achievement. She is home for 3 days then she is off on Saturday to walk the new Kangaroo Island Wilderness Trail for several days.

Whilst she was away I have been working on this photobook project: selecting images from the archives of the digital photos that I have made on the various coastal poodle walks over the last 4 years. I noted that the photos improved in the latter years.

I guess I was becoming more confident in the type of photos that I wanted to make–details of the coastal landscape. During that time I had lots of nagging doubts about the nature of the Fleurieuscapes project, and where I wanted it to go.

My initial selection produced around 150 photos.So there is going to have to be a big cull. Or a volume 2. The next step after the cull is to have Atkins Photo Lab make 6×4 prints of the images and then sort them into a sequence. Once that is done I can then put them into a notebook with blank pages and ring binding to give me a dummy book which I can show people.

August 31, 2017

Rosetta Head in spring

Spring weather has arrived and the last few mornings have been sunny with minimal coastal wind. With Suzanne away in the Flinders Ranges finishing the last section of walking the Heysen Trail, my morning walks with Kayla and Maleko have been over and around Rosetta Head.

It has seen while since I have done this walk. Ari was no longer able to walk up, over, and down Rosetta Head. His last time was with Judith Crispin when she was staying with us in early 2017 to launch her Lumen Seed book at Atkins Photo Lab in Adelaide. The best that he could do after that was to slowly walk along the path on the western side of Rosetta Head.

Suzanne normally does this walk in the morning, and the poodles jumping up on the rocks at the top of Rosetta Head and surveying the lie of the land beneath is one of the rituals of their walks.

The spring weather has meant that I no longer need to wear a coat when walking in the morning and I have been able to have my breakfast on the balcony in the sun. I have no doubt that the rains and gale force winds will return.
Continue reading “Rosetta Head in spring”

August 27, 2017

along Tugwell Rd

We–Suzanne, Kayla, Maleko and myself–went for an afternoon walk along Tugwell Rd in Waitpinga yesterday afternoon. It was a way to move on from Ari’s recent death. His vulnerabilities in his old age had restricted where we were able to go on our walks.

We hadn’t explored this part of Waitpinga for a couple of years. The last times was when Suzanne had walked some of these back country roads in the first year of walking the Heysen Trail. We were fortunate weather wise as the cold wind had dropped, and though rain from the south west was threatening, there was some late afternoon sunshine. It was a very pleasant and enjoyable hour of walking.

I did a bit of photographic scoping whilst on the walk. I was looking for some possible subjects to photograph with my film cameras whilst Suzanne is away walking over the next ten days or so the last leg of the Heysen Trail in the Flinders Ranges. Continue reading “along Tugwell Rd”

August 20, 2017

Rosetta Head

This is the coastal landscape that I walk with Kayla and Maleko on our afternoon poodlewalks. We weave amongst the rocks on the foreshore whilst making our way to Petrel Cove and Rosetta Head:

It is where a lot of my exploratory abstract snaps and those for the modest Littoral Zone project are done whilst I am making my slowly through the slippery rocks. Sometimes the tide is so high and the seas so wild that we are unable to walk amongst the rocks to Petrel Cove.

Suzanne’s favourite walk in the morning is going from Encounter Bay, up Rosetta Head, down to Petrel Cove, then return to Encounter Bay. This is the view of Encounter Bay from the side of Rosetta Head on one of the walks with Ari from the car park:

We live just outside the left of the frame of the picture. We are a few minutes walk to the beach. It took us a while to adjust to living the coast after a decade or more of being in Adelaide’s CBD.

August 15, 2017

between the rains

Recently we had a couple of fine days between the winter rains and the stormy conditions. I’d recovered enough from the flu to be able to take advantage of the fine weather to go exploring with Kayla and Maleko along the coastal rocks between Petrel Cove and Kings Head on the southern Fleurieu Peninsula. This was on the late afternoon walk and I was well enough to take my digital camera to take some snaps and even to do a few scoping studies.

One such snap:

This abstract is an example of what I was scoping for my film cameras when I had more strength.
Continue reading “between the rains”

August 6, 2017

at Kuitpo Forest

I came down with a severe cold at the end of the July Mallee roadtrip. It has knocked me around, and this ill health coupled with the wet stormy weather, has meant minimal poodle walking and limited local photography. Suzanne has been doing most of the bigger walks with Kayla and Maleko during the wet cold weather whilst I walk Ari on short walks down to the Encounter Bay foreshore.

This picture was made whilst I was walking the poodles in Kuitpo Forest on the way back from the Mt Barker grooming parlour. This was a few days before I left to make photos for the Mallee Routes project:

It was school holidays in South Australia and there were a lot of people camping in Kuitpo Forest.It would be a different story now with the wild, wet winter weather that we have been experiencing this last week. The mornings start off fine and sunny on the coast, then the storm rolls in around breakfast time and the temperature plunges.

Continue reading “at Kuitpo Forest”

July 10, 2017

Jason Blake passes through Encounter Bay

Jason Blake stayed over night at our place in Encounter Bay on his way back to his high rise apartment in Melbourne’s CBD. He was on the return leg of his road trip from Melbourne to Alice Springs and he need to get the compressor in his Ranger Rover replaced at Lonsdale.

He accompanied Maleko, Kayla and myself on a poodlewalk east along the rocks from Kings Beach Road to Depp’s Beach late yesterday afternoon and took the opportunity of the 70 minutes or so walk to make a number of photos as we slowly made away along the rocks. Whilst Jason and I photographed the colours of the various granite rock formations the two standard poodles raced around and engaged in their play fights.

The 3 or 4 days of rain that we’d experienced had just passed, and the light that afternoon around 4pm was gentle and soft. The cloud cover came in just after 5pm and the light became dull and flat.
Continue reading “Jason Blake passes through Encounter Bay”

July 2, 2017

winter mornings

With Suzanne now back in Encounter Bay and walking Kayla and Maleko in the mornings, I am able to slowly walk along the coastal path with Ari. He now struggles going up and down the steps to Depp’s Beach. He can no longer walk to Kings Head. I visit Kings Head on the afternoon walk with Kayla and Maleko and spend the time there mucking around scoping for photos.

This path is called the Heritage Trail and it links up with the Heysen Trail just before Kings Beach. These sections of both the Heritage Trail and the Heysen Trail are becoming extremely popular, especially on the weekends. It is impossible to walk along these paths with the three dogs off lead.

The winter mornings are still sunny and clear with little coastal wind. There were a few days of rain in the last week of June, the first rains this winter, but it has mostly been dry.

Continue reading “winter mornings”