Natural splendour, real musics, wines, wordpower
WA’s emblematic flower may be synonymous with Springtime, but it is no slave to the calendar.
Well before Winter 2022’s alleged end, it – and not a few other “iconic”, “Spring-flowering” WA endemics – were already very evidently flowering in the quasi-natural bushland section of Perth’s Kings Park.
It is an easy walk – or an even shorter free bus trip’s distance – from the CBD.
Comments closed
The only Hollywood to have repeatedly appeared in Pelican Yoga is a small but significant piece of remnant bushland, adjacent to Perth’s Karrakatta Cemetery.
Until 19 January this year, the organism pictured above was a fine, living example of a weird, wonderful, and very rare Western Australian Acacia species.
When I photographed a few of its “leaves”, glowing in bright winter light at 2.33 pm on 01 July 2022, it and they were as dead as the many thousands of entombed persons, nearby.
Comments closed
As is often true of Tachybaptus novaehollandiae, our hero/ine was repeatedly disappearing and re-emerging.
Every time s/he resurfaced, the excellence of his/her feathers’ water-repellence was readily apparent.
Incidentally, as highly responsible parents, Australasian grebes sometimes eat their own feathers; click here to discover precisely why they do so.
Comments closed
Perth is one of very few cities, globally, where such a sight is possible: a large raptor, on patrol above a “great fen”, within a few kilometres of the CBD.
Comments closed
“Western Australia’s first carbon neutral commercial building” is also an occasional abstract artist!
These “artworks” have a shorter lifespan than any “street art” produced by Banksy, anonymous graffitists, et al.
They can be highly surprising, truly beautiful.
They are visible – indeed, there at all – only when the pedestrian passing by, the sun, the building’s aluminium tube shade screen, and the building-proper’s sun-facing exterior are all in “Goldilocks” alignment.
Comments closed
Never-sleeping rust (assisted by the Fremantle Doctor’s salty breezes & the estuarine waters of so-called Freshwater Bay), exposed timber, winter sunlight…
Comments closed
When you watch young animals at play, you are often watching a safe “rehearsal” of competitive behaviours, which will become more “serious” – much fiercer – when “cute” youngsters become adults.
Homo sapiens is an animal.
Perhaps, today’s photo offers a sneak preview of a future life as yet another “West Australian mining magnate”…
Comments closed
Did the brilliant winter sun bring out Cottesloe’s “philosopher king”?
Comments closed
Pictured above: a snake bird, perched above Cottesloe Reef’s landward edge, with surfer-dude in background.
(more formally, the “snake bird” is an Australasian darter, Anhinga novaehollandiae)
Below them: there be dragons!
(photo is copyright Doug Spencer, taken at 3.33 pm on 03 July 2022)
One CommentWhere Postcode 6011 meets the Indian Ocean is not yet nicknamed “The Rhodium Coast”, but the “cap” would fit.
Pleasingly, however, this beachfront belies the extraordinary “effluence” (as Kim would say to Kath) of the folks who live closest to it.
Beachside, “the vibe” is much more egalitarian than is usually true of suburbs so “exclusive” that some of their billboards are placed by Sotheby’s real estate division.
Comments closed
