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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.
Leave a CommentMandalay 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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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.
Leave a CommentThis 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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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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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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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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Meroles anchietae – the shovel-snouted lizard – is endemic to the Namib Desert’s dunes.
Its signature behaviours – “dancing” atop the sand’s surface on a hot day, and diving into the cooler sand, below – are adaptations developed in order to survive an imminent, lethal threat.
As illustrated in #27 of this series, we were lucky enough to witness its astonishingly speedy sand-diving – a feat in which the key factor is its “shovel”.
Just inland from Swakopmund, and only a few kilometres from the Atlantic Ocean, the afternoon of 19 November 2022 was cool.
Accordingly, whilst our hero did deploy his “shovel” snout in order to escape predators/us, he did not need to dance!
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Palmatogecko rangei (aka Pachydactylus rangei) is petite – less than 7cm long.
Endemic to the Namib desert, this dune-dwelling hunter of small invertebrates is commonly known as the “Namib sand gecko”, or the (Namib) “web-footed gecko”
Its skin is almost translucent, but exquisitely coloured.
Relative to its body, its feet are very big; its eyes are HUGE.
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This post stars the very same species – and, I think, the same individual – as did the featured image in this series’ immediately-preceding chapter.
I took this post’s photo at 3.56 pm on 19 November 2022.
Q: why was this usually-stealthy snake out in the open, on a relatively rare patch of rockier/more gravelly ground?
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