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This post’s “much closer view” was also taken from the western side of Perth’s Elizabeth Quay, not many footsteps from where ferries depart for South Perth, or return from there.
For “9A” in this series I had looked east, across the Quay’s artificial inlet.
For “9B”, I turned around 180 degrees.
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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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Long before Europeans reached Australia, what is now “Perth’s Pelican Point” was already a place of considerable significance to both humans and birds.
Given its inner urban location – as a bird flies, a couple of minutes or less from the CBD of a metropolis – it is no small achievement that the bipeds who effectively “own” Pelican Point’s actual point are avian, not human.
In the featured image: white-headed stilts, black swans, and a little pied cormorant.
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As you can see, on 18 April 2023, Perth and its big estuary – the Swan River – were bathed in bright sunlight.
It was a perfect day to enjoy good things which are not so readily available – all, within just part of a single day – to most urban humans.
Where else would convenient, uncommonly cheap public transport (free, to “seniors”, outside “rush” hours) deliver you to one of Australia’s better pub lunches, after which the nearby riverside presents you with kilometres of glorious, publicly-accessible, uncrowded foreshore?
Even if you simply zip down to-fro the nearby jetty, you will enjoy a splendid vista and – almost certainly – a close encounter of the pelican kind.
And if you bother to walk along the foreshore….
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Pictured above is one of several “flying saucers”.
Apparently, all were abandoned, shortly after landing.
They were recently discovered and photographed by Pelican Yoga’s Extra-Terrestrial Intelligence Unit.
If you believe this – let alone the endlessly-repeated but false claim that Perth is the world’s most isolated city/capital city/ substantial city – please discuss further with Father Christmas, the Easter Bunny, Donald Trump, and the Tasmanian Tiger of your choice…
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The birds pictured above were formerly known as “pied stilts”, and considered an Australasian subspecies of Himantopus himantopus, “yesterday’s heroes” – see #10 in this series.
This post’s heroes are now generally considered members of their own species, Himantopus leucocephalus.
Their “preferred” common name: white-headed stilts.
Each of these three individuals has the full complement of two legs.
Stilts, however, often prefer to stand on one leg, with the other one neatly folded and tucked into their lower feathers.
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If you confine your “nature walks” to places easily-reached without a car, and within 15 kilometres of Perth’s GPO, your worthwhile menu options are still surprisingly numerous.
Among them are the largest remaining river flats within the metropolitan area; Ashfield Flats’ nearer side is less than 10 kilometres from the GPO.
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Walking along the path atop Rocky Bay’s cliffs, full-on residential suburbia is generally only a few steps away.
If you look over and down to the other (south/ southeastern) side of the Swan, residential suburbia, yachting facilities, and assorted urban infrastructure oft encroach to within a few steps of water’s edge.
Miraculously, however, on the top/ edge of the steep, cliffy (North Fremantle/ Mosman Park) side – and immediately below, on/near that shoreline – Rocky Bay is altogether wilder and lovelier than is usually true of a riverine environment within a “premium residential real estate” area of a capital city
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Never-sleeping rust (assisted by the Fremantle Doctor’s salty breezes & the estuarine waters of so-called Freshwater Bay), exposed timber, winter sunlight…
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Properly regulated, zip lining is fun, easy, and safe.
Even young children can do it, as per today’s photo; behind them is something much more dangerous.
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