Well, now I've seen everything: Thunderfoot.

Kinchina is a CP, or Conservation Park, not far from Murray Bridge -- in fact, it's adjacent to the Mobilong facility. Dave and I went there to spot birds (no joy: barely even heard any, and saw just one ... no photos worth sharing). But instead, we saw something we have NEVER seen before. And although I was thrilled and privileged to see this incredible animal, I actually hope not to see another like him. I'll call him Thunderfoot, because --

When he took a STEP -- not hopping, just stepping forward -- the impact of those immense feet sounded like a horse cantering over soft ground. Thudd!!!! 

We heard him before we saw him. We knew something was out there. I wondered if there were some big horses loose in the park -- a whole bunch of deer jumping at the same time could have made a similar thudddd sound. Then Dave spotted what we thought (ha!) was the proverbial Really Big Roo. I said words along the lines or "Wow, look at the size of him!" I popped a couple of frames ... then noticed the body morphology. It was the female. The doe --

And then Dave spotted the male. The one who made that heavy, dense, soft thuddd every time he took a step. When you weigh about 200 kilos, this is what it's going to sound like -- and this weight estimation is based on observation and cold, hard logic. A horse easily weighs more, but it sounds comparatively loud because all that weight is falling on a small area, the hoof: a horse walks on its middle toe, right? Now, consider an animal which is not called a macropod, or big-foot, for no reason. His feet are immense. To hear that same "shire horse cantering" type of thuddd sound, you'll need an utterly enormous weight spread out over that huge foot.

The size of him ... 

Those are trees, not shrubs, around him. That's a boulder, not a little rock, just left of centre of this frame. Now, look at the foliage on the foreground tree: mark the scale of it ... but this animal is standing at least eight meters, probably closer to ten, behind that foliage!!

At left here, Dave is standing beside one of the mock-up ancestral animals at the Womambi Fossil Centre, back in 2009. It's one of the extinct tree-browsing kangaroos. (Imagine the proverbial Really Big Roo with the face of a koala, which evolution designed to reach up and browse tree foliage.) The critter at Kinchina, whom we're calling Thunderfoot, is waaaay bigger than this extinct browser. 

Think of the biggest male roo you've ever seen at Belair NP, or Onkaparinga Gorge, or wherever, and -- literally double it. 

It was like looking at a shire horse, and when he moved, that's what it sounded like, back among the trees. 

I've never before felt that frisson of "Oh, oh ..." when coming across a roo in the wild. Never saw one that concerned me, much less made the breath shorten and the hair rise on the back of the neck.

Very carefully, I doubled back around to get a line-of-sight on him without trees in the foreground...

There's nothing for perspective in that shot, but we can tell you this much: if he were to stand up straight, his head would be around nine feet off the ground. Up on those toes? Standing in your living room, his head would be right through the ceiling. His shoulders ... it was like looking at a bull --

A bull that has seen you, is looking right at you, and you're in his territory, and his female is only twenty meters away. For all we knew, there could have been a joey (his baby) in the area, which makes any wild animal protective. He was intent on me, likely for good reason. No way in any world would this animal be leery of a puny little human, but where his joey is concerned...

I popped a couple of quick frames, then very carefully turned around. To be safe, you walk at right-angles to a big, wild roo: you don't make eye contact, and you do not move like you're slinking or sneaking. Slinky walking, eye contact and walking directly toward them emulates the stalking characteristics of the only predator evolution ever threw at animals this big. There haven't been wild dingoes in this part of South Australia for many years -- I don't even know if they're even still wild up in the state's north. But the programming of evolution isn't going to change, not in another million years.

So we walked on, and heard Thunderfoot and his enormous missus boom off into the bushland. It was thrilling, a little bit scary -- like almost but not quite blundering into a grizzly bear in bush Alaska. I wouldn't trade the experience for anything, yet at the same time, I hope not to repeat it! I honestly did not know that roos grew this big  -- and yes, I know exactly what the official documentation says! But I also know what Dave and I experienced. We're savvy people, and entirely used to Clydesdale horses, wild bull moose in Kincaid Park, camels ... those taxidermed bears in the big glass cases at Anchorage Airport! We know what we saw. 

And I won't be diving through the bush with quite the abandon that I used to! Radar on, wits about you, and make enough noise that wildlife can hear you coming! Because it's bigger that you are. A lot bigger. And it has eight-inch talons! It's very fortunate indeed that roos, even humongous ones, are such peaceable herbivores: they absolutely will not attack you ... unless you give them a justifiable reason, like startling them by running right into them, which would make any animal come up swinging.

 So -- don't given them a reason!

Touching base before November expires

 

Once, I would have said, "So much to do, so little time!" Now I would have to say, "So much to do, so little energy!" There's never any shortage of work waiting for me, and plenty of time to do it in, but no energy do it with. The bottom line is that I haven't recovered from whatever the virus was back in September, much less from the covid in October. I'm thoroughly messed up this time, and I think ... I think, I think ... I have to start cutting myself some slack and awarding points for trying. 

One of the ways I can keep track of myself is to blog a little. (Oddly enough, this was the advice given to John Watson in the first episode of Sherlock. I never grasped the value of it, till now.) In fact, it's been so long since I updated this blog, I haven't written anything, not a word, about the camera dramas I've been through in this last year. Where did time go?!

Long story short ... the Panasonic Lumix FZ80 that was the mainstay of my bird and wildlife photography began to die at the end of 2022, and since February '23, it's been in its electronic death throes. It actually gave up the ghost juuuust about the time Dave and I went orchid hunting. One function after another went splattt, and eventually all the camera would do (when it chose to) was zoom and record an image. That was when it wasn't giving me a "zoom error" message, and telling me to "turn the camera off and then on again." During which time, your subject has flown. Literally.

Well, that put paid to my birding! You can't photograph birds without a long lens, and yet very often the lure of photographing birdies on a bright, sunny day, particularly if it isn't cold, was the only thing getting me out of the house. The problem was, when we had a look at the price of new cameras, the price tags were silly. Two thousand bucks, to catch up with yourself? Not going to happen this year, or next, or even the one after. (Sure, I have the cash; no, it's not for spending on hobbies ... not when you have to pay for teeth in Australia.) So it looked like I was just out of luck there, until...

...somehow, and I don't actually know how, Dave stumbled over an ad for an "open box" FZ80, from the same company where I got the original one. Not the $960 that had been quoted for the same camera, brand new, elsewhere ... $440, or similar, because it had been used as the shop's display model, sitting on the shelf for six months or whatever. Then checked over 100%, put back in a box and shipped out for less than half the price. Now, in lieu of the Canon EOS R50 plus lenses, which I cannot afford till about 2026, this was doable. And it would arrive in time for my birthday...

Suffice to say, the camera issue was solved with a new one. And although the FZ80 doesn't give me quite the quality of image I want, it gives me the 1200mm that makes it well worth getting out there and putting in the miles, keeping the old body going, because the lure of photographing birds is powerful. Especially birds I haven't photographed before. This post, for instance, I'm showing off the Great Crested Grebe, the Sharp Tailed Sandpiper, the Great Cormorant, all photographed for the firs5t time (by me) on the same day, down at Goolwa, on or near to the Barrages. And there's more. 

I'll keep up with this blog, for the same reason John Watson was advised to blog: it's therapeutic. Also, looking back on this as a journal helps to put dates to things that have begun to blur out with the passage of time. (This brain ain't getting any younger!)

Round Two ... and it was no easier this time than last!

What can you say? Fully vaccinated against Covid and 'flu ... I get Covid so badly, it's hard to describe. Worse yet, it's left me with the symptoms of "Post Covid Syndrome," which I'm hoping and praying won't turn into Long Covid. Sigh. 

Add to this, the camera chose this moment to die, and the car had major breakdowns again. And all this was right on top of my birthday -- a real milestone birthday, to boot! -- so that everything that had been planned was cancelled. Vacation, trip, the lot. The whole experience was huge fun ... argh. 

So for me, it's been about art lately. I'm not going to bang on too much, here, about the sheer rottenness of what's been going on. Most people would tell you that their lives are full of the same kind of twaddle (I could use stronger language!), and when you contrast this nonsense with what's going on in the Mid East right now, well ... yeah. So --

So ... art. It's been easier to paint than even attempt to write, but in the last couple of days I'm starting to feel up to working on my blogs and new website again. Got to start somewhere, and this is it! Energy levels are so low that the batteries go flat literally while you watch, but ... at least we're doing something!