Playing Catch Up With Myself: July 9th - Black Cockatoos and Flower Cellar

Black Cockatoos on Hahn Road, Aldinga

What luck! We'd been for a hike around the Aldinga Washpool and weren't quite sure if we wanted to go through to Flower Cellar for coffee (and/or hot chocolate) because the weather was inclement, just as likely to shower as shine. On a whim, we make the decision to go on, via Hahn Road, which is close enough to the airfield for the sky to be full of the drone of light planes. 

Out of nowhere, an enormous (and I mean, enormous!) flock of Yellow Tailed Black Cockatoos appeared from the vineyards, and scores of them landed in the tall trees off the side of the road. I got Dave Downes to pull over, and grabbed the camera. Got loads of really nice images ... here's a few of the best. From here, we went on to the cafe among the dormant, winter vines -- I'll post some photos from there next time. But, here's luck for you: I've always struggled to get the occasional halfway decent pic of a Black Cockie, and suddenly I have dozens. Neat! Here's a few of them...

After the rendezvous with the flock, we made the decision to go on to Flower Cellar. This was one of our favourite places ... so quiet -- an outdoor café set among the vineyards. Great hot chocolate, and absolutely the friendliest dog in the world. Her name is Stormy, because she was born on a "dark and stormy night." Flower Cellar Door do great food, too; and -- flowers. Dave Downes, Mike Adamson and I were there last week, a few minutes after we photographed the Yellow Tailed Black Cockatoos. The perfect way to spend a winter's afternoon. Alas, Flower Cellar is no longer a café, so though it's still there, you can't go there for a quiet coffee and a breath of fresh air. It's a function venue now... sigh. We'll just have to remember it as it was, and find somewhere else...

Playing Catch Up With Myself : June 2022

I've been gone from this blog for so long! Life has been "interesting" in the last half year or so, and it was so much easier to throw things into Facebook. Then, in September, even Facebook became too much: we all got Covid, and it was December before I was well again. So from September to the end of Novembr, including but not limited to my birthday, nothing of a journal nature was recorded at all. So --

It's time to play Catch up!

Here's my Facebook post from June 28 ... this was way before Covid came to stay...

Winter! I haven't been "on" much in the last few weeks. Have had the mid-winter blahs, plus a couple of sniffles, a period of deep introspection around the anniversary of Mom's passing, and -- I'll be the first to admit this -- I've been reading tooooo much news. It's never good, and if you look at the news before you get something nice out of the day, you usually sink into the moody blues and ...! Dumb thing to do, I know. So I think I'll just, uh, stop doing it. 

But I haven't been "idle," and I've amassed quite a number of pics worth sharing ... notwithstanding the SD card that died suddenly, and took some great shots with it! (I lost about 30 in the transfer of photos from the card to the computer, and as usual (ha!) the ones that got away were the best. They always are, right?) Anyway, I'll post a few at a time, and start with a selfie at Aldinga Scrub a few weeks ago -- grabbing a patch of sunny weather, while it lasts. The rest of the images are all over the place ... Milang, McLaren Vale, Strathalbyn, Belair, on and on...

Phone selfie, at Belair NP ... looks like Pines 1 in the background.

Galah acrobatics in a high wind, at Milang

Winter in Belair NP ... the tail up to Amphitheatre Rocks

Rocky outcrops above Strathalbyn

Sheep in the high paddocks above Strathalby

Winter vines on the walking trails behind McLaren Vale

Playford Lake, after plenty of rain in the nearby hills

Sleepy koala, somewhere at Belair NP

If I had to choose a #photooftheday it would be this one. A Currawong appeared out of nowhere and struck poses for me, on the way back from Punchbowl lookout, Onkaparinga Gorge, a couple of weeks ago. I *thought* I'd lost these shots when the SD card died, then stumbled over them when I came to go through the last thousand or so photos, on the PC. Happy, happy!

A beautiful Currawong at Onkaparinga Gorge

Remembering Mom

Remembering Mom, on the day of her passing ... it's five years today. On the one hand, that seems like a lifetime; on the other, it seems like yesterday. So I spent some time going over the few photos I have of her, when she was young; working them though the software to fix them and colourize them. This year, let me celebrate her life, not her passing, with images of the young girl with every possibility before her. 

In the scene on Lake Windermere (or Ullswater, perhaps Coniston, am not absolutely sure, but I think it's Windermere), she's about 26; in the portrait shot, she's about 17. I wish I'd known her, as a young woman. I try to remember the woman she was, when I was very young, and not to dwell too much on her last years, which were not great. 

Mike, Dave and I did everything we possibly could to make her time good, but there's only so much you can do. I ask myself constantly, what could I have done better? Yes, I made mistakes: I see them now, though I didn't see them at the time. But, none of them were dire mistakes, with far-reaching consequences. So, could I have made a difference, if I'd done something better? Dave and Mike say no. I ... wonder.

I miss her still; I always will. If anyone is interested to meet this amazing woman through the lens of biography, I told her story here: https://jen-downes-writes.blogspot.com/2021/12/biography-my-mothers-life.html

Autumn comes to SA ... normality returns at home!

It would be fair and accurate to say that normality has been restored literally as I write this. Dave is fully fit, healed, well, after the crash; his long pre-booked March holiday is up today, and he's on his way in for his first shift back after seven weeks. So life returns to normal; now, if I can only find my equilibrium, and somehow track down my errant muse, find out where she's disappeared to, and get back to what we'll -- smilingly -- call work. (Occasionally I get paid; in fact, I do believe I'm overdue for a pay check.)

So I thought, why not start with photos? We covered a lot of ground in March, though the much mooted road trip to Mount Gambier wasn't going to happen. The truth is, by halfway through the month, Dave actually could have handled it, but --

-- by the mid-point of March, the impact of the appalling war in Ukraine was starting to bite hard even in SA. The price of fuel was waaay past the point where a driving holiday looked realistic. It wouldn't even have been tasteful, with so many people putting away the car and taking the bus! On top of which, there's always the risk of Covid.

Now, we're all triple-vaccinated -- but. Even triple vaxed, you can catch Omicron; about forty thousand people a day do, nationally. And even though the chances of actually perishing with it are vanishingly small for triple-vaxed people who're not yet entirely geriatric (ouch), the risk of Long Covid is rather alarming. Averaged across the population as a whole, Long Covid attacks about 10% of people; but in certain age groups, the percentage is far higher. Wouldn't you know it? No one in this house is young enough to laugh off the threat. Truth? Long Covid would finish me off, and I've only just begun to clamber back to my feet! So --

Soooo ... we stuck close to home, stayed out of hotels, kept to the outdoor dining areas on the occasions when we went to cafes as diverse as Long Shot at Old Noarlunga, Flower Cellar at McLaren Vale, and The Aldinga Aerodrome. We did just two day trips, using less than a tank of fuel each time -- budgeted for, at over $2 a litre (which will sounds absurd to my ears, though I've seen the news from Western Sydney, where they're paying $2.30, and from the Top End of this poor country, where they're paying well over $3). 

In fact, it's been a great month. Barossa in the rain, the Coorong, the Adelaide Hills, parks and gardens, a few nice cafes, a lot of quality time spent chilling and relaxing. I read some good books, binged some great TV, and come home with a lot of very good photos. Going through them will be fun. I'll post more in the coming days and weeks.

Now, what the heck happened to my muse? Why can't I seem to put fingers to keyboard and actually write something ... like a story, or even a poem? I don't even seem to be able to glimpse an image that inspires me to create art. So, for a while let's blog, play with photographs, and see what happens.

Life goes on. One watches the stories of war with disbelief; one worries about the future of this country, and its people, who're struggling in the teeth of an economy gone bonkers. The 2022/23 budget was handed down last night, at Federal level ... to my eyes it looks like a lousy joke. The kind of budget that will bankrupt small business, land thousands of families on the street, with nary a rental available anywhere ... mind you, the country apparently can afford about sixty billion for defence spending, while the mega-rich don't appear to pay tax at all. Argh. The plight of people in Ukraine is haunting; our own east coast is being blitzed by Mother Nature; and Covid is on the rampage. Sigh.

In light of all this, when I look at our own lives -- living where we do, as safe as we are -- it occurs to me that one needs to take stock a little, count one's blessings, just settle down and wait this situation out. Because nothing is as sure as the fact this will end. Even the Second World War ended, though its death throes didn't come one day sooner through grumbling, complaining, or impatience.

So here I am, settling down, courting patience and setting out on a quest to find my muse. Autumn has come to South Australia, and Dave ... is off to work!