Natural splendour, real musics, wines, wordpower
The featured image looks east, across Perth’s Elizabeth Quay, at 2. 49 pm on 24 April 2024.
Its official name – bestowed in 2012 by then WA Premier Colin Barnett – honoured the then British monarch.
The name came after the monumentally-expensive development’s first sod had been turned.
More than a few Perth residents prefer to call it “Betty’s Jetty.”
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Magnificently stark as Lake Eyre generally is, its banks and surrounding terrain are a deal more vegetated – and the vegetation is more diverse – than most newcomers expect.
Some of the plants are wonderfully weird; necessarily, all are hardy, and adapted to one of the world’s more “demanding” environments.
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Not yet!
However, most (of the relatively few, still) people who have reached the pictured lake do find it decidedly “unearthly”
Moving from “landscape view” to “closer view” is highly likely to alter a first-time visitor’s initial impression/estimation of Kati-Thanda-Lake Eyre, but most visitors continue to feel that they are on “another planet”.
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At 3.50 pm on 07 June 2023 my feet were very close to where they had been when I took the “7A” image, just three minutes earlier, whilst enjoying a leisurely walk through part of Parachilna Gorge.
I was, nonetheless, effectively able to get nearly eight times closer to one of the previous photo’s four peaks – by looking through a 400mm lens, as opposed to 54mm.
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This series’ “7” posts both feature a “landscape” photograph, but “7B” will offer a much closer view of one of the “7A” landscape’s four peaks.
Both featured images show just part of what is a striking landscape through all 360 degrees; that holds true through the entire length of Parachilna Gorge.
The gorge is on the western side of the northern Flinders Ranges, and is easily accessed from the nearby “town” of Parachilna.
Parachilna is within daytripping distance of Wilpena, but a much better idea is to stay two nights at Parachilna’s truly-wonderful hotel. (the hotel pretty much is the “town”)
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Even on the greyest of days – when an Australian outback “landscape” appears to offer a rather limited “colour palette” – a closer view is almost guaranteed to confound your initial impression.
The post’s “6B” image was taken within a few minutes of the “6A” photo, and their vantage points were not very many footsteps apart.
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In June 2023 my beloved and I visited the Flinders Ranges, (plus other outback South Australian places) and the Northern Territory’s “Red Centre”.
Nearly half a century had passed since our most recent trip to Wilpena Pound and nearby places.
It was more than forty years since we had last been in the NT, together.
Both regions proved as singular and beautiful in 2023 reality as they had been in our memories of the 1970s.
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You may be surprised to know that this post’s featured image involved a considerably shorter lens than did the “5A” photo, taken 38 minutes earlier, when we were still offshore.
When I took the above photo, we had for some minutes been strolling along the rather young beach which had formed/emerged as the glacier retreated – and lost its former status as a “tidewater” glacier.
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First, please have a close look at this post’s image.
It offers a much closer view than that presented in “4A” of this series.
When I took the “5A” & “5B” images we really were much closer to the same glacier’s snout, but for the “5A” image I also deployed a telephoto rather than a wide angle lens.
Now, have another look at the “4A”image, which shows all of this glacier’s snout, rather than a small portion thereof.
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This series’ “4A” image was dominated by several square kilometres of a glacier, but also included what appeared to be a very small boat.
The very same boat is the obviously-substantial star of “4B”.
For eight nights and almost nine days my beloved and I were among the 16 people (12 passengers) who were comfortably accommodated and very well fed on MV Catalyst.
The boat also carried kayaks for us all, and towed the tender that speedily transported us to and from many of Glacier Bay’s glorious shores.
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