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Tag: Coorong

Coorong, autumn 2024 (#12 in series: abundance)

 

A wider view reveals what the Coorong’s north lagoon looks like in “boom time”..and a future post’s even-wider view will really show just how prodigiously abundant was birdlife in autumn 2024.

(Photo ©️ Doug Spencer, taken at 12.55 pm on 13 March 2024 – less than one minute after the previous post’s featured image)

The Coorong has long been a very dynamic ecosystem – and a fragile one.

Three months after we witnessed such abundance in the north lagoon, the Coorong’s south lagoon suffered a huge fish kill; an estimated 200 stinking tonnes of dead fish were rotting.

Locals said it was the largest such event in more than forty years.

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Coorong, autumn 2024 (#11 in series: pelicans, spoonbills)

 

My photo shows how “surprisingly” lush the vegetation can be on some parts of the Younghusband Peninsula.

On 13 March 2024 pelican numbers were within “normal” range for this part of the Coorong’s north lagoon – in my experience, at least.

Spoonbills, however, were “off the scale” – I had never before seen so many, there.

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Coorong, autumn 2024 (#9 in series: promenade/runway)

 

 

This post’s two photos were taken within thirty seconds of each other.

Promenading pelicans sometimes resemble corpulent “captains of industry” at a “prestigious”, corporate “backslapping”,”bonding” or “charitable” event…or attendees at a political party’s “pay for access”  fundraiser.

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Coorong, autumn 2024 (#6 in series: smoking)

 

 

For many thousands of years, before Europeans arrived, the Younghusband Peninsula was one of Australia’s most densely (human) populated places.

When we landed on it on the morning of 13 March 2024, we were accompanied by Ngarrindjeri elder Darryl Koolmatrie.

At Godfrey’s Landing he formally welcomed us.

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Coorong, autumn 2024 (#4 in series: Murray mouth)

 

The (constantly-shifting) mouth of the Murray-Darling river system is also the Coorong’s mouth.

If the Murray is “roaring”, its “fresh” water “flushes” the Coorong – Australia’s longest lagoon; if it is not “roaring”, the combined forces of incoming ocean water and evaporation of the lagoon’s water make the Coorong progressively more saline.

The Coorong’s southern lagoon – a long way south of the Murray – is usually hypersaline.

This post’s photos were both taken from the Coorong’s northern part, looking at the Pullen Spit, and across it to the Southern Ocean.

In effect, the Pullen Spit is the northern bank of the Murray’s mouth.

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Coorong, autumn 2024 (#2 in series, long-nosed, sated)

 

 

 

The European carp which infest and degrade the Murray-Darling River system are disdained by most Australian human eaters of fish.

For a seal at Goolwa, however, a carp is a “highly-desirable, easily-caught meal”.

The recent “flood years” have flushed and funnelled umpteen millions of European carp  through the Goolwa Barrage’s opened gates.

If long-nosed fur seals could speak English, they’d probably describe the Goolwa Barrage’s current hunting and dining “scene” as akin to “shooting fish in a barrel”.

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