Tag: flora

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a quiet moment

Last week Kayla and I were walking along a dusty, unsealed Depledge Rd in the early morning prior to wandering around in the local patch of bushland in Waitpinga in the southern Fleurieu Peninsula of South Australia.

A light, but cool, sou’ easterly wind was blowing across the field onto our bodies, the orange-brown Monarch butterflies were notable by their absence, and the yellow tailed cockatoos were watching us and sounding the alarm with their wailing calls. I could hear the laughing kookaburras in the distance.

The sun had just risen above the trees on the eastern horizon and its soft rays highlighted this grass tree (Xanthorrhoea) on the dusty roadside just as we were passing by. We stopped and I looked.

dusty Xanthorrhoea

The sun’s rays were quite weak at that moment since they were shining through the distant trees after rising above the horizon. It doesn’t stay like this for long as the rays find a gap in the trees.

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recovered archives

I have been going through my old archives from a PC that died many years ago.  The images had  been backed up on Lacie hard disc which also  crashed,  and they were eventually recovered by a  tech specialist.   The 13,000 images are all jumbled up, there are many repetitions, others are jpegs,  whilst large numbers  are corrupted and so useless.

This is one rescued image from along the coast west of Petrel Cove, and it was made around 2008 when Suzanne and I were coming down to Encounter Bay for the weekends. We  were living in Adelaide’s CBD then, and  we were both working full time.

lichen + granite

My reason for returning to these archives is to see the  images that I have made around the River Murray since 2008.  I wanted to see the relevance  of these archival images for the proposed Our Waters  project with Lars Heldmann.   Continue reading “recovered archives”

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At American River

Suzanne, the 2 standard  poodles and I,   spent several  days at American River on Kangaroo Island with Suzanne’s sister, (Barbara Heath) and her husband (Malcolm Enright) who had flown down from Brisbane.

The days on the island  were gentle,  balmy  late autumn ones.  A storm hit the island  just  as  I was leaving on the late Sealink ferry on Wednesday evening.

erosion, Redbanks

On Saturday    I arrived on the island   on Saturday   on the 10am  ferry from Cape Jervis   with the  poodles to  open up the cottage.   That early morning arrival  gave me time to go  exploring American River with the poodles.  I  started with places that I was familiar with from previous trips.  The last trip with friends was 4 years ago in 2014, whilst the last photo trip was in 2013.  Continue reading “At American River”

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back home

I am  now back home after a hectic period of travelling  during March.  There were  a couple of trips to Wellington to photograph around Wellington quickly followed by one  to attend Photobook/NZ.  After that   I made   a couple of trips  to Swan Hill in Victoria for the  Mallee Routes 2018 exhibition. 

We are  now easing  back  into  our daily routines and poodlewalks at Encounter Bay.  The Easter holidays  are a few days away. That means huge crowds in  the coastal towns and along the coastal walks.

seaweed strand, Petrel Cove

It is autumn in South Australia.   The light has softened,  there is  now  more in the way of morning cloud cover,  the winds have eased,  and the temperatures are  mild  (in the mid 20’s C) . It is still very dry, as there has been no rain.  Continue reading “back home”

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holidaying in Melbourne

Well,  the Mornington Peninsula in Melbourne, Victoria  sure was crowded with people holidaying when we stayed  there on our roadtrip.   Karen,  my sister at Safety Beach   put us up, and as that stay coincided with  a hot spell, that meant  both limited documentary photography in Melbourne    and  walking very early in the morning and late in the afternoon.

The foreshore  along the eastern  coast of Port Phillip Bay from Dromana to Sorrento was jam packed with   caravans,  tents, boats and people.   The Nepean Highway from  Rye to Portsea was crammed  with cars,  due  to people travelling down from Melbourne to Sorrento or Portsea  for a day’s outing. The Mornington Peninsula is Melbourne’s playground.

Martha Point, Mornington Peninsula

We found  very few places where  we could walk the poodles off lead along the coast.   There was  a small  off-lead, dog friendly   beach at Tassells  Cove and a small walking track around Martha Point that went down to  Pebble Beach.  Continue reading “holidaying in Melbourne”

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afternoon walks

We–Suzanne, Maleko, Kayla and I — did some walks together  between,  and just after,   the Xmas-New Year period. We wanted   to avoid the Xmas crowds gathering around the coastal beaches,  and I had used google maps to  look for possible ways  for us to walk along Hindmarsh River.  Most of them  turned out to be duds. There were just no walking trails. It was mostly all private property.

One of the afternoon walks that we  did early in the new year (2018) was  one  along the  trail of  the Hindmarsh River,  which  ran adjacent to the old McCracken residential development.

Hindmarsh River trail

It had been years since we walked along the upper  section of the Hindmarsh River Walk . On the day we walked the river was  low,  with  little in the way of a flow, and we noticed that  there had been some planting on the old flood plain,  which was now a park with a playground.     Continue reading “afternoon walks”

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memories

One of my memories of the  early morning walks that I used to do  in the last months of  Ari’s life in 2017 was one where I ‘d walk with him along Jetty Rd. On these occasions Suzanne  would  take   Kayla and Maleko up and over Rosetta Head,  and I would walk with Ari down to the beach, then along Jetty Rd, which runs around the foot of Rosetta Head.

Jetty Rd  runs from Whalers Convention Centre to the little jetty at the northern side of Rosetta Head,  and as it is easy walking, it was suitable for Ari.    The jetty is a favourite of the recreational fishermen and we’d alway meet someone fishing from the jetty early in the morning.

cactus leaves, Jetty Rd,

It was a slow walk to and from the jetty, and Ari and I  would often hang around an  old palm tree and cactus on our  way back. I would take a few photos with the little Olympus XZ-1 that  we had purchased for Suzanne to use on her various  walks.  Continue reading “memories”

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in Melbourne

Ari came with us on the trip to Melbourne. Malek and Kayla, our other two standard poodles, stayed in the home of a dog minder at Victor Harbor. The arrangement worked quite well.

We stayed overnight at Old Dadswell Town on the way over to Melbourne and we all wandered around exploring the place in the late afternoon and the early morning:

Ari, Old Dadswell Town
Ari, Old Dadswell Town

We stayed at Safety Beach on the Mornington Peninsula whilst we were in Melbourne. During the day Ari stayed at Safety Beach with my sister whilst I went photographing in Melbourne.

Ari and I went for our morning and evening walks together around the Martha Cove marina and around the golf course at Safety Beach:

pond, Safety Beach, Melbourne
pond, Safety Beach, Melbourne

A lot of money is being invested in house, boat and cars in this part of the Mornington Peninsula.

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a slow decay

My time recently has been spent working on the website’s various galleries Two of the earlier portfolios are now pretty much in place—Bowden and Port Adelaide. They look pretty good. The next step is to reconfigure the rest of the portfolios in this carousel style.

The daily poodle walks in both the morning and evening have been just quicker walks with little time being spent on scoping photography. The grasses are rapidly drying out on the coast and they represent a real problem as they hook onto the standard poodle’s coats, and then quickly work their way into the skin. So I am avoiding areas where there are lots of grass seeds.

Rambler, old dump, Victor Harbor
Rambler, old dump, Victor Harbor

The Rambler picture in the old Victor Harbor dump was one of the last scoping photos that I’ve done. Rambler is slowly falling apart from neglect. Rambler was built by Peter Sharp at Cruickshanks Corner, Port Adelaide in 1875 and it was possibly Australia’s oldest racing yacht.

It used to on the slips at Searle’s Boatyard–in the historic boatyards in the Central Basin of the Port River–before Port Adelaide’s oldest surviving boatyard was closed down to make way for the residential waterfront redevelopment of Port Adelaide. The redevelopment at Newport Quays failed to regenerate Port Adelaide. The development of the expensive dog boxes on the waterfront was scrapped but not before it had successfully destroyed the fabric of the history of the port.

It is sad to see Rambler just being left in the ex-dump site to rot. It needed have been so, since it just wasn’t necessary to destroy the Port Adelaide’s oldest surviving boatyard for expensive dog boxes that never eventuated.
Continue reading “a slow decay”