..of Western Australia…
Comments closedMonth: May 2022
This sequel to previous post is the fruit of summertime visits, pre-pandemic.
Warmer days offer their own particular photographic opportunities and challenges.
Heat haze and mirages can render some “long lens shots” utterly pointless.
However, they can be the making of others.
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The featured image and the one below were both taken from a boat on the Coorong-proper – Australia’s longest lagoon.
Both photos look across its waters to the Younghusband Peninsula – the dune field that separates the Coorong from the Southern Ocean.
Sand and water are the Coorong National Park’s key components.
The former arrives via wind, and Southern Ocean waves.
Most of the “fresh”-ish supply of the latter is delivered by the Murray-Darling river system.
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The featured image’s Southern Ocean waves are breaking on the Younghusband Peninsula’s narrowest, northernmost section.
The peninsula’s tip is the southern “lip” of the mouth of Australia’s biggest river system; the cormorants are on the “freshwater side”, as was yours truly at 3.35 pm on 30 March 2022.
If you have never been to this spot, you may be thinking, “it looks splendidly wild, barely touched by humans”.
Alas, you would be very wrong….
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Over the last 15 years seals have become an increasingly common/obvious presence in the Coorong-proper and on/around the Goolwa Barrage.
This has delighted some people, but infuriated/worried some others.
Some of the infuriated/worried people perceive the seals as “intruders”, as “fish thieves”, as “out of control”, “a threat to fish and bird populations”.
So, who are these seals, are they “newcomers”, and are they a threat to “the natural balance”?
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When an Australian thinks of seagulls, the relevant species is almost certainly our most common, emblematic one.
Chroicocephalus novaehollandiae – the Silver gull – has prospered mightily, post-1788.
Arguably, this highly-adaptable bird should no longer be described as a “seagull”.
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One of the pleasures of Australian life is to look up and see pelicans “surfing the thermals”, soaring, spiralling ever-higher, with so very little apparent effort.
They are also wonderful to watch as they take off from water (or land on it); then, however, a great amount of effort is spectacularly evident.
Pelicans are one of “our” world’s largest, living, flying “machines”.
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Q: How would you reach the Hallelujah Hills?
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It is worth remembering that these are the observations of a former senior Federal Government Minister, also – in Opposition – a Deputy Leader of the Liberal Party, and that he departed Parliament at a time of his own choosing, as one of its more widely-respected members.
A government that must deal with sensible independent centrists is better than a government that must rely on the support of the most eccentric ends of its party spectrum.
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