Month: January 2025

Grand sands (#38 in series: “looking down” from/at Belinup Hill, Cape Arid N.P.)

Published January 29, 2025 by Pelidoug

Grand sands (#38 in series: “looking down” from/at Belinup Hill, Cape Arid N.P.)

Yes, the beach really is that white, and the ocean shallows’ shades of blue are also “true”.

(the various blues’ intensity is in large part thanks to the sand’s whiteness, acting in concert with the sun, high in a clear sky)

The featured image looks down (and east, over Yokinup Bay, to Mt Arid) from Belinup Hill in Cape Arid National Park; visible, “naked” sand occupies a small portion of the photo, but millions of tons of “hidden” sand are invisibly-present through most of its field of view.

Southern WA has some of the world’s poorest soils, but what grows in and “hides” those very sands is (arguably) “our” planet’s greatest natural wildflower “show”.

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Australia Day in Mandurah (2 of 2: sans flags, mostly)

Published January 28, 2025 by Pelidoug

Australia Day in Mandurah (2 of 2: sans flags, mostly)

This post’s featured image shows two young Australians, having a lovely time on Australia Day.

It is reasonable to assume that they had zero awareness of – let alone ardent opinions about – the “rights” and “wrongs” of national flags, what we “should” or “should not” celebrate on Australia Day, and “appropriate” v “inappropriate” dates.

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Australia Day in Mandurah (1 of 2: flag-flying)

Published January 27, 2025 by Pelidoug

Australia Day in Mandurah (1 of 2: flag-flying)

For most of the 20th century, the buying, flying and waving of flags was not really a mainstream Australian “thing”.

Big crowds flocked to see and greet “Liz & Phil”, but most hands were empty, or waving streamers rather than national flags.

In photos, flag-wavers “stood out” precisely because they were the exception…and because flag-wavers liked to be at the front of the pack.

(click here for a raft of illustrative images)

In 2025-vintage Australia, “the royals” no longer loom large in our collective consciousness, but Australian flags – albeit, UK-accented ones, still – have never been “bigger”.

All photos were taken yesterday, as brightly-flat Australia Day sunshine illuminated a veritable “orgy” of flag-flying.

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Grand sands (#37 in series: “looking down” on Thomas River, Cape Arid N.P.)

Published January 25, 2025 by Pelidoug

Grand sands (#37 in series: “looking down” on Thomas River, Cape Arid N.P.)

The featured image illustrates what just a little elevation can do to one’s view…if one is in a magnificently wild location, the sun is high in a perfect Spring sky, and sand, sky, rock, vegetation and water are basking in clear, clean air.

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Grand sands (#36 in series: “looking down” at pneumatocysts on Mandalay Beach)

Published January 23, 2025 by Pelidoug

Grand sands (#36 in series: “looking down” at pneumatocysts on Mandalay Beach)

Mandalay Beach is near Walpole, in Western Australia’s “Deep South”.

I have seen many wild ocean beaches – on every continent, bar Antarctica.

Mandalay Beach – named after a ship that was wrecked there in 1911 – is one of my all time favourites.

It is really wild (do not swim there) but easy to reach; any able-bodied, sensible driver of a 2WD vehicle will easily “manage” both the track that leads off the South Coast Highway and the short walk from car park to beach.

In every direction, the vistas are splendid.

However, you should never forget, also, to keeping look down to the sand at your feet. (ditto the rocks, any clefts therein, and the rock pools)

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Grand sands (#35 in series: “looking down” on Banky Beach)

Published January 22, 2025 by Pelidoug

Grand sands (#35 in series: “looking down” on Banky Beach)

Banky Beach is just one of the many beautiful beaches and coves in and around Bremer Bay, on Western Australia’s south coast.

By road, Bremer Bay is 180 kilometres closer to the preceding post’s location – Aldinga Beach – than is Albany.

From Bremer Bay, the drive to Adelaide is a mere 2,530 kilometres!

Aldinga is 45 kilometres south of Adelaide.

Western Australia has (by far) the longest mainland coastline of any Australian state or territory.

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Grand sands (#34 in series: “looking down” on Aldinga Beach)

Published January 21, 2025 by Pelidoug

Grand sands (#34 in series: “looking down” on Aldinga Beach)

This post’s photo was taken shortly before sunset, at 8.11 pm on 21 January 2023.

Near the southernmost kink in Aldinga Beach’s Lower Esplanade, I was standing on the top of the stairs to Silver Sands – the southern section of Aldinga’s long strand.

As had been true at the same time on the previous day, a cooling breeze was blowing.

Accordingly, sandgrains were dancing; click here to see a photo, taken at beach level, with a wide-angle (24 mm) rather than a telephoto (146 mm) lens.

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Grand sands (#33 in series: large antelope, huge dunes)

Published January 19, 2025 by Pelidoug

Grand sands (#33 in series: large antelope, huge dunes)

Oryx gazella – the gemsbok, aka “African oryx”/ “South African oryx” – is the largest oryx species.

Namibia’s emblematic mammal is prodigiously well-adapted to a very demanding environment.

Gemsbok would probably handsomely defeat the “ship of the desert” in any global championship for “most efficient/ hardiest mammal in sandy places where rain hardly ever falls, and where no “permanent” rivers flow”.

The Namib Desert’s “sand sea” – most especially, around Sossusvlei – has some of “our” planet’s most astonishing landscapes.

More than a few of its dunes dwarf even the largest local inhabitants!

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Grand sands (#32 in series: wind-shifted, wind-sorted)

Published January 18, 2025 by Pelidoug

Grand sands (#32 in series: wind-shifted, wind-sorted)

The multi-hued appearance of these dunes – just a few kilometres inland from the Atlantic Ocean – shows that their composition is diverse, not overwhelmingly silica-dominant.

Silica does not rust; iron does.

Rust is clearly evident in some of the pictured sands, albeit less spectacularly so than in much of Australia’s “Red Centre”…and in the Namib too, further inland.

Most of the sands in the Namib Desert’s dunes are not of “local” origin.

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Grand sands (#31 in series: being green, where that “should” be impossible)

Published January 16, 2025 by Pelidoug

Grand sands (#31 in series: being green, where that “should” be impossible)

The Namib’s plants are as astonishing as its animals.

We were just a few kilometres from the Atlantic Ocean, near Swakopmund, when I took this post’s photos, one November mid-afternoon.

Swakopmund’s “round figure” rainfall average for the month of November: 1 mm.

November is “infinitely” wetter than October!

Average October rainfall in Swakopmund: 0 mm.

Average total for the calendar year’s entire final quarter: 2 mm.

Q: how on earth can a very shallow-rooted, Namib-endemic shrub – one that often grows on the upper part of a dune – manage to survive? (and be a useful “emergency water source” for desert animals – parched humans included)

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