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Category: Australia (not WA)

Midwinter on the Fleurieu’s southern edge: walking up from Blowhole Beach

Published January 5, 2024 by Pelidoug

Midwinter on the Fleurieu’s southern edge: walking up from Blowhole Beach

 

 

The featured image was taken at 4.19 pm on 20 June 2023.

We were standing on a rocky headland, adjacent to (and southeast of) Blowhole Beach; the photo looks south-southwest, across Backstairs Passage to Kangaroo Island.

With sunset less than an hour away, there was not enough time to “explore” the actual Blowhole Beach, but we were able to potter around the rocky shores immediately east of it, before heading to the 4WD track – our safer uphill option, should darkness fall before we had “conquered” Cobbler Hill.

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Midwinter on the Fleurieu’s southern edge: walking down to Blowhole Beach

Published January 3, 2024 by Pelidoug

Midwinter on the Fleurieu’s southern edge: walking down to Blowhole Beach

 

When I took the featured image it was 4. 03 pm, and we had walked the greater portion of the steep track down from Cobbler Hill to Blowhole Beach.

You can see Blowhole Beach on the right hand side.

Kangaroo Island’s northern edge provided most of the photo’s horizon.

You cannot see a blowhole, because Blowhole Beach has none.

However, over umpteen thousands of years, countless humans have stood on or above this beach and witnessed the “blow” emitted by whales, breathing.

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Midwinter on the Fleurieu’s southern edge (teaser)

Published January 2, 2024 by Pelidoug

Midwinter on the Fleurieu’s southern edge (teaser)

 

The featured image looks across to the Cape Willoughby lighthouse which sits atop Kangaroo Island’s eastern edge.

We were standing on the nearest part of mainland Australia.

Mainland Oz is “our” world’s largest island; and smallest continental landmass.

Relative to the mainland, Tasmania is tiny – less than 1% as big.

Tasmania is, however, by far the biggest other Australian island; it exceeds the next ranked – Melville Island – by more than ten times.

Kangaroo Island is a little smaller than Melville, but much bigger than any other of Australia’s more than eight thousand islands.

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MacDonnell Ranges (final episode in series: Mt Sonder & surrounds)

Published October 14, 2023 by Pelidoug

MacDonnell Ranges (final episode in series: Mt Sonder & surrounds)

 

As previously noted, Mt Sonder is relatively modest in altitude and bulk, but it is particularly beautiful, especially when the sun is not too high in the sky.

What makes it even more beautiful – and this true of almost every mountain, hill, gorge and creek in and around the MacDonnell Ranges – is the fact that it sits within such beautifully-vegetated country.

Almost anywhere you look, it just gets better and better, the more closely you look.

You should never fail to look closely at all layers of whatever landscape you find yourself within – foreground through to horizon.

If you look at the watercolours painted by this region’s most famous artist, you can see that Albert Namatjira (1902-1959) understood this very well.

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MacDonnell Ranges (#15 in single image series: flowering, Ormiston Gorge)

Published October 10, 2023 by Pelidoug

MacDonnell Ranges (#15 in single image series: flowering, Ormiston Gorge)

 

 

 

After taking the photo featured in #14 in this series, my beloved and I decided to scramble our way up to the path that followed a ridge line, rather than retrace our steps along the gorge’s floor

This proved surprisingly easy.

Less than ten minutes later we were heading back to Ormiston HQ, via a well-made pathway that gave us easy access to the lookout from which I took the image featured in this series’ first chapter.

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MacDonnell Ranges (#14 in single image series: well inside Ormiston Gorge)

Published October 9, 2023 by Pelidoug

MacDonnell Ranges (#14 in single image series: well inside Ormiston Gorge)

 

 

To reach the pictured location, you need to be able-bodied, but – in stable weather, at least – it does not involve a very long walk, nor an arduous/particularly hazardous one.

It still surprises me that relatively few visitors to such a magnificent place are prepared to walk more than a very few, very easy steps away from the car/bus park.

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