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

Happy New Camera, 2020!

After a year or more of bemoaning the fact that my Fuju HS50 has almost completely given up the ghost, well ... it was time to get a new camera. I've been researching them, looking at reviews, trying to figure out where the "sweet spot" lay, between needing something good, not having unlimited dollars to invest, and also needing to buy something that was light to carry about. So --

All things taken into consideration, I wound up with the Lumix TZ90, from Panasonic ... at at $438, it was an absolutely amazing deal. Then, there's its Leica optics, and its bells and whistles --

Ahem! Suffice to say, I'm having a lot of fun. More fun than I've had with photography for well over a year, because I knew that most of the shots I wanted to get, the HS-50 would spoil. (Almost everything had stopped working on it: light metering was off by a mile, and I'm sure its focusing system was way off too: you'd pull focus "here," with your chosen object right in the crosshairs, and it wold focus about ten degrees of arc away. Not fun. Not fun at all.)

So, in the last year or so I haven't done very much with photography; and I've missed it. The hobby gives you a reason to get out there and hike around, go the extra "nine yards" in order to come back with superb pictures. What's the point, if the camera is only going to spoil them? So --

The biggest step was making the decision to set down a great wad of cash. With that decision out of the way, the next was to work out which camera to buy ... and you really are spoiled for choice, no matter your price bracket. I think I spent about ten hours, hunting down individual cameras, reading reviews, comparing features.

And it all came down to a choice between a Canon PowerShot, and the Lumix TZ90. They are comparable; but the Lumix does a great deal more. It has those Leica optics, and a 3" touch screen display, plus a 'finder ... which the PowerShot doesn't have. The decision turned out to be the right one for me...

...I know, I demand a lot of a camera. I've used Fuji for well over ten years now -- had four of them; but the last one was surprisingly fragile, and I was honestly shocked when it started to break down in just a few years. I think I noticed the first "hmmm" moments after the second year. This time around, I've made the promise to myself, to be ultra-careful with the new Lumix, and deliberately NOT take liberties with it. Don't knock it. Don't let it hit anything.

Sooo I've just got myself a spare battery plus charger (there's another hundred bucks!), and have also ordered a camera bag, which will fit the Lumix snugly, not let it move about, and damage itself...

With any luck the camera bag will arrive before Dave and I take off for the Limestone Coast at the end of this month. If not, I'll have to MacGyver something to protect the camera on the road. I'm looking forward enormously to the trip. We haven't been to Mount Gambier in eight years. Hoping to get good weather for this one ... the last trip (our second to the Grampians), we had rotten luck with the weather for most of the time.

My other hope is that my health picks up a bit before we leave. I'm basically going one day at a time right now, and while I know I need to see a doctor and find out what's wrong ... I also know what the tests are going to be like. I'm putting them off as long as possible, because I just don't want to go there. Not ready yet. I'll know when I am. So --

There you have it! Happy New Camera, 2020! This is going to be big fun ... in fact, the fun has already begun. Pictures here were taken at Belair NP, Punchbowl Lookout, and in the back garden right here at home. Monday, if I'm up to it, I'll see if I can get to Onkaparinga Wetlands, and if the sky is blue and the sun bright, we should get some lovely pictures!

Cleaning up flood damage ... while the sun shines

The day after the high winds and torrential rains Dave and I went south along the coast to check out conditions as the bad weather blew over.

One day after, the rivers were still right up to the roads in many cases. The "water over road" signs were still out, and you saw the lakes of mud where cascades had streamed across, but mostly -- mostly -- folks are down to a clean-up job, while emergency services work on removing broken trees. The good thing is, the community has come out in force, in the hardest-hit areas, to help people who've been underwater. One can only imagine what it must be like to be very old, or sick, or both, and have cold, mucky water rising around your knees and ruining everything you possess. The thought makes you shudder.

But in those hardest-hit areas, it'll to take a lot longer to fix the damage. I've borrowed this image from the ABC news website ...

Full credit to ABC News -- their copyright etc. 

...that is, or rather was, Montacute road. The floods must have washed out the foundations and the road collapsed. This one will take months to fix. If you'd like to read the whole story online, you'll find it here ... and one of their pictures was also on the front page of the state's newspaper:

Normally, Koalas don't pay much attention to rain. They live in the tops of trees and just dig in with their three-inch claws and go right back to sleep. But when the trees are really thrashing, they'll probably have to come down -- or perhaps this little guy was in a tree that actually fell. Either way, he found himself swimming for it, and taking refuge on a fence post; a very bedraggled little thing indeed.

(One hopes Fauna Rescue managed to get him to high ground, make sure he's okay. What makes koalas' lives doubly hard is that in a matter of weeks our temperatures will be so high, the forest so dry, their problems are all about thirst and bushfires; and koalas aren't as highly mobile as kangaroos, who can just get up and go when they must. Still, koalas are more agile, and much faster, than you'd guess. We've seen them on the ground and bounding along. They also have no road sense, and in fact many country roads have "look out for koalas" signs. It's quite an experience when one strolls out in the road right in front of you, in the dead of night. Good job on the brakes, Dave!)

Credits to the ABC photographers for this shot, and the image of Montacute Road ... or rather, the yawning pit where Montacute Road ought to be! See the link above.

Further south and  on the coast, the damage was more about erosion -- dunes have been cut away. It takes years to build up a good, strong system of dunes to reclaim and stabilize some coastline. One of these "super storms," as they're calling it, can undo the work of decades. One wants to say, "Well, the dunes will build back up, as they did the first time." Left alone, yes, they would. But these "storm of the decade" events are coming through every year now, and sometimes two or three times per year. The old "storm of the decade" is now commonplace; which bodes ill for the dunes. Sigh.

Here we are, finding the Okaparinga River returned to its channel today, leaving the surrounds a quagmire...

Home -- looks like it's been snowing. Hail, like the last such pics I posed? Nope. Blossom. The trees are stripped.

We were lucky. We suffered no damage whatever, and the worst we can complain of is that the wild winds stripped the trees of spring blossom. It was only September 2, fourteen days ago, when I posted this. All gone now. Well ... botheration. But yes, we were lucky -- and grateful for it...

And then the sun shone, the clouds vamoosed over the horizon, and now it's warm and bright. Dang.

Koala spotting

Glorious spring weather literally demands you get out there and enjoy it -- you know the feeling. Winter is fine, but one day the wind changes direction (you can "tell the difference between a hawk and a handsaw" -- if the ghost of Will Shakespeare will forgive me the reinterpretation) and you just have to get outside and ... do stuff. Have to. So --

I've been wanting to get back to Belair National Park for years now. Dave and I used to hang out there all the time, back in 2005-10-ish, but we haven't had the chance in a long while. Being a full-time care-giver (or carer, as we say downunder) is ... well, it's exactly that. 24/7, and as close to 365 as the carer can get and not go completely insane. It's very tough to get out of the house when the person you're caring for is unwell and there's a never-ending stream of problems to solve.

The good news is, Mom is actually doing much better lately. She has the cough from hell, but the GP promises it's "only" bronchitis, it hasn't gotten into the lung tissue itself -- we're not talking about pneumonia or pleurisy, and the fact is, she could still be hacking at Christmas, at this rate. So Dave and I took the opportunity for a four-hour getaway, while Mike was home to babysit, and went --

Koala spotting!

In fact, we saw about six, and one ... a teddy-bear sized female sitting up in a cherry tree that's just beginning to blossom ... had a little baby:

Mama and baby koala at Belair National Park, 2016

Awwww, so cute! They really are cute -- and they can get very large, much larger that this little girl, above, who really was teddy-bear-size, even though she has a quite well-grown cub. (What is a baby koala called??) This guy, below, was a lot bigger, and ... check out those claws:

They could do a lot of damage with claws like that, but fortunately most of what koalas do is snooze. What a life. Seriously. I was zoomed way in for a closeup on one of these fellows when the camera (Fuji HS50) surprised me: on one of its specialty menus it has a "Toy" setting -- a special pre-set suite of adjustments designed for photographing ... toys. Face recognition is also turned on, and the camera recognized the koala's face as a toy, and clicked itself automatically to Toy mode!

You gotta chuckle, because the fact is, koalas do look like cuddly soft toys. The truth is, they're not. But they're soooo cute. I do believe they still call them "Qantas bears" in Japan, after they featured in an airline commercial a long, long time ago. (In point of fact, they ain't bears at all.)

Along the way ... I think I was stalked and almost set upon by a bunyip ...

...but when I turned around, of course Dave, my knight in shining armor, had chased it away. He was standing there, innocent and heroic, after chasing off this beast which everyone thinks is purely mythical. And after saving my life from the creature he kindly posed for a portrait in the Grand Manner...

Dave, having rescued me from the bunyip. I think.

LOL, anyway -- we survived. We were at the redwoods grove, which is so deep in Belair NP, you actually run into the fence where the park ends. It was gorgeous, with spring coming in and blossom everywhere. In about another two weeks the chestnut trees will be "out," and we must see if we can get back. I'd love to photograph them in flower. The calla lilies -- which grow wild here -- are just beginning their season ...

Calla lilies in the wild ... Belair NP, September 2016

...and the air was sweet with blossom and heavy with the drone of bees. I could have stayed there for a week. Or three. "Gone to hide in woods," as Dave and I like to say. You can see wallabies, emus and echidnas in the park on any ordinary day, but the only other critters we saw yesterday were the usual rabbits, and -- for the first time ever, a southern brown bandicoot ... which I did manage to photograph, but he looks like a dark brown furry bump, so there's nothing dramatic to upload. Too bad, because they're so rare these days. Never seen one in the wild before.

This was interesting:

The park was moving in a number of enormous rainwater tanks -- probably for fire water, I'd say. We watched them moving the first one in, when we were on the trail out to the redwoods, and a couple of hours later -- on another trail entirely, on the way up to Amphitheater Rocks -- we had to step off the asphalt (into somewhat boggy grass) and make way for another tank coming down from Waverly Gate. Interesting, how they move them. The work truck, which you'd assume would move the tank, just follows on. Shows you which vehicle has the oomph -- especially since these tanks are going out to a very steep fire track, from the top of which they'll provide a good supply for fire fighters, in the event (gods forbid) a fire gets into the park. Neat.

When the tank had gone by we continued on to Amphitheater Rocks: the trail has been cleared, you can actually get through now. In other years it's been fortified by bramble bushes, which provide a fantastic habitat for fairy wrens and such, but literally lock out humans. Here's the top of the gorge:

Amphitheatre Rocks at Belair National Park

Rain cascades off the top, after a shower ... and it really does look like a giant, or a troll, lives inside. Reminds me of the Giant's Cave at Morialta. (Must do a blog post about Morialta -- over on the other blog.)

So there you have it: a day's escape into the woods, making the most of this glorious weather, and a very good time indeed was had by all. Even managed to get a selfie that looks pretty decent, so here I am: enjoying the heck out of the day, and (looking at the pic) starting to wonder seriously about putting some color into my hair. I used to be a redhead. Honest! I've got the snapshots to prove it. Born that way: Scots-Irish. Mother Nature had other ideas, starting when I was about 24, and lately I've been letting her get the bit between her teeth and run. Hmmm. Redhead. Food for thought.