Storm approaching

 I had intended to take my Leica X1 with me on my early morning walk yesterday morning but as I stood outside the house I decided that a storm was likely.

The X1 has survived 15 years of hard use but it has never got wet and as Leica make no claims as to its weatherproofing, yet alone waterproofing, I decided not to risk it and set out with just my iPhone. Which is a pity as there was a magnificent and very bright rainbow waiting to be photographed whilst I was on the walk. And in the end the storm missed Terrigal.

Here's the rainbow taken with the iPhone.

 

A soft morning

 

A much softer and autumnal morning at The Haven, Terrigal. Really nice light. Again taken with my Leica X1. The little camera which keeps on giving.

It's a beautiful day....

It's a beautiful day in more ways than one. Firstly. after an overnight shower, a clear, sunny and warm day dawned. I took my vintage Leica X1 with me on my early morning walk and came back with two pleasing photos as the sun rose. And when I got back home there was my beautiful big girl, Holly, sunning herself.

Despite having a collection of much newer and advanced Leicas the quality of the photos from the 15 year old X1 continues to amaze me.

 

 The second and even more pleasing reason that it is a beautiful day is that we are still celebrating the extraordinary outcome of the Australian Federal Election held last Saturday. 

For the benefit of overseas readers of the blog Australia has compolsury voting, no weird electoral college votes, the electoral boundaries are set by an independent body-no gerrymandering here-and elections are held on Saturdays to make it easier to vote. We have a preferential voting system . We vote for individual candidates in our local constituencies. 

 There are two major political forces- the Labor Party-a centre left leaning party- and the Liberal National Coalition-LNP- the centre right leaning Liberal Party combined with the rural orientated National Party. 

There are also the Greens and a rag tag collection of fringe parties and a growing band of Independent candidates. 

Labor has formed the government for the past three years. The polls and most of the media were expecting them to lose to the LNP or, at best, just scrape back with just enough seats in parliament to form a minority government with support from the Greens and/or independents.

The LNP leader, Peter Dutton took the coalition leadership after the previous election. He is hard right and a very unappealing, dour, negative and humourless individual who enthusiastically adopted the Trump playbook with a suite of Trumpist policies- denigrating the Labor leader, extolling anti woke-anti DEI--slashing the public service etc, etc, policies. 

 The LNP fought a shambolic campaign. They were ill prepared. They had few properly costed policies to announce. 

In contrast the Labor team under Anthony Albanese ran a very tight, well disciplined campaign.

The wheels really fell off the LNP campaign when Elon Musk appeared with his chainsaw in our news bulletins and then the appalling Trump/Vance/Zelensky meeting followed by Independence Day and the ill conceived tariffs.

As in Canada, a week previously it all backfired. The Australian electorate overwhelmingly rejected the LNP and Trumpism. It was a bloodbath. The biggest loss of the primary vote by the LNP in Australian electoral history. Literally dozens of LNP members of parliament lost their seats. And the cherry on the cake was that the LNP leader, Peter Dutton, lost his own seat so he is out of Parliament after 23 years.

Labor now have a huge majority. The polls were completely wrong.The media were completely wrong. 

And as Rosie and I spent last Saturday handing out how to vote cards for our local Labor candidate at the local polling place we were doubly pleased.

And to make a beautiful day even better Australian Formula One driver, Oscar Piastri, won the Miami F1 Grand Prix early morning our local time. He has now won three races in succesion and is now leading the F1 World Championship. 

Days don't come much better.

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Portugal bound

 

Only a month to go before we head off to Portugal and Spain. We are looking forward to it but I do have some reservations. On my previous visits in 2016, 2018 and 2019 we had a rental car and were free agents. This time sadly there is no rental car and the travel will be more structured. I just hope that I find as many photo opportunities as I did previously.

Photo taken early morning in Marvao, Portugal in 2016 on an early morning walk using my Leica X Vario.

Terrigal Ocean Classic Swims

Due to the big seas on Saturday the 1km and 2km Terrigal Classic Ocean Swims scheduled for Saturday morning were moved to Easter Monday morning.

I went down to watch the start of the 1 km swim and hopefully take a few photos showing the atmosphere of the event. It's not an easy event to photograph nowadays as most of the spectators, with their smartphones, are now budding photographers jostling for the best photo positions.

Also previously there were massed starts to both events. Now they have more sophisticated timing gear and start groups of 3 in rapid succession which makes for much less of a spectacle but fairer races.

I used the Q2 43 and came away with the photos below. I tried to get some photos of finishers crossing the finishing line but I'm not happy with them due again to those pesky smartphone snappers crowding me out.

 

More big seas

To our surprise we awoke to huge seas here at Terrigal and all along the local coast. The surfers must have thought it was Xmas, not Easter, and they were out in force from early morning.

For scale see the two people at the lookout on the cliff top on the RH side of the photo.

Photo taken from the top deck of the house at 1.30pm so the waves were still big into the afternoon. I used the Leica SL2, with the Lumix 70-200mm f2.8 lens and the 2x converter, mounted on a monopod.

It's the big competitive Ocean Swim here at Terrigal Beach tomorrow, Saturday, morning. There will need to be a much calmer sea for it to go ahead.

A walk on a beach

 Cloudless, sunny, hot days are not a photographer's friend and this summer we've had a lot of them . Not that I'm really complaining but a change is always welcome so when last Tuesday turned out to be a partly overcast day I picked up my camera and two lenses and drove to nearby Bateau Bay to try my lucky.

I always approach these locations, even if I've been there many times before, full of hope but inevitably come home disappointed without a photo worth keeping.

The renowned American landscape photographer, Ansel Adams is reputed to have said that if you take ten good photos in a year then it's a good year! So maybe my expectations are too high.

This trip I surprised myself by coming home with two keepers.

The first was sheer luck- a shot of a very tame magpie which carried on searching for stuff amongst the grass and seaweed on the fringe of the beach even when I got down on my knees to photograph it.

The photo was taken with my Leica SL2 using the superb APO 50mm Summicron ASPH lens. 

The second photo was a seascape from the edge of the mangroves at one end of the bay. I shot it using the same camera and lens combination as the magpie shot. It was taken with the lens wide open at F2 to keep only the centre clump of mangroves in focus.  

 

Full moon over Adelaide

 

Full moon rising over Adelaide, South Australia, in the evening of 12th March 2025- a very hot day.

Photo taken with Leica Q3 43.

The Big Picture

 

Big sea day last week. Rough seas combined with a king tide led to coastal erosion at many points along the east coast of NSW.

 Photo taken at The Haven, Terrigal, looking south towards Avoca Beach.

Taken with the Leica SL2 and 16-35mm Lumix S Pro lens at 16mm.

Postcards from Kangaroo Island

 The final batch of photos from our recent stay on Kangaroo Island. 

Wineries, beaches, lighthouses, sea caves, remarkable rock formations-there's more to Kangaroo Island than just kangaroos and seals.

 

Photos taken with Leica Q3 43

Big sea day

 Really wild weather over the past few days has generated huge seas along the coast of NSW. Photos taken this morning at Avoca Beach on the Central Coast. Taken with the Leica SL2 using the Lumix S 70-200mm f2.8 lens fitted with a 2x converter.

There were terns flying just above the waves which dived in and caught fish as they were tossed up by the force of the breaking waves. 

A tern can be seen following the wave in the bottom photo and another tern is just visible beside the plume as the wave breaks in the top photo. 

I shot these in colour but the storm gave them a green tinge so I have resorted to converting them to black and white.