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.

Wildlife on Kangaroo Island

 Here is a selection of some of the wildlife photos I took on Kangaroo Island. 

Firstly kangaroos. With an estimated million on the island it’s not difficult to find a roo to photograph. We stayed in a lodge close to the Cape Willoughby Lighthouse on the eastern end of the island. Roos were around the lodge all day and as the island is currently desperately dry they come to drink out of the bowls of water put out for them. Late afternoon roos came to the bushes outside our room to feed and we could watch roos feeding as we ate dinner.



 

 

Also one afternoon a Rosenberg goanna with its distinctive very long tail came out. A nearby roo kept a watchful eye on it but as roos are herbivores the gonna was safe.

Despite the fact that there so many koalas on the island-although thousands sadly died in the 2019 bushfires which swept the island-spotting them is not easy. Koalas don’t move fast! In fact they often don’t move for hours. They eat gumtree leaves- but only leaves from particular species of gumtrees-and the KI koalas are eating those leaves faster than the trees can grow them.

Now gumtree leaves are not very nutritious -or some I am told-so each koala has to consume a lot of leaves every day and then not rush around because they don’t have reserves of energy. All of which explains why koalas do f… all all day!



Because they are usually static and well camouflaged in the bush it’s not so easy to spot them but we did well here.

The appropriately named Seal Bay on the south coast of the island is the home to a very large seal colony. The seals live in the sea, on the beach and in the surrounding dunes. Visitors used to freely wander the beach and surrounding dunes but that was not good for the wellbeing of the seals and particularly the pups which have to wait for 3 days every 6 days for their mothers to return with food after 3 straight days at sea.

Now visitors have to be with a National Park Ranger/Guide, stay in a tight group and can only access a small part of the beach by the boardwalk. Life has definitely improved for the seals and their pups but photographers now need long lenses.
 

Click go the shears

 

I'm back from Adelaide in South Australia and  Kangaroo Island which is off the coast of the South Australian mainland, 75kms south of Adelaide

I'll put up most of the photos from Kangaroo Island over the next two weeks but I'll start with photos of sheep shearing which I shot there.

The photos were taken with my Leica Q3 43 and although they were shot in colour I feel that monochrome better suits the subject although I'm not 100% convinced this was the right call.

Along with an estimated one million kangaroos, eighty thousand koalas and thousands of seals, sealions and birds, Kangaroo Island is home to hundreds of thousands of sheep. Sheep farming, is the major industry on the island followed by tourism.

The sheep are predominantly Merinos bred for their highly prized wool. Eighty percent of the Australian wool clip is exported to China.

The photos show the farmer with one of his working dogs, an Australian Kelpie, mustering sheep and shearing.

 "Click go the shears" is the title of a traditional Australian bush ballad which describes a shearer's work using hand shearing scissors in the days before shearing cutters were electrically driven.

In the photos the shearer is putting on his shearing mocassins which protect the sheep's legs when the shearer stands on them to keep them down during the shearing.

Back problems were, and still can be, the bane of a shear's life but the development of the Back Aid, seen in the photos, significantly reduces but does not totally eliminate, the strain on backs.

The shearer removes the fleece in one piece and an expert or "gun" shearer can shear a sheep in under three minutes. 

The shorn sheep look naked but it is said they are relieved to lose their thick coats as they can hear better, feel lighter and are generally more comfortable.

After the fleeces are shorn they are individually assessed for wool quality and then pressed into a bale in a mechanical press. Details of the contents of the bale are stencilled onto it and then it is ready to be shipped most probably to China.

 

Light and shade

 We are experiencing the far edges of Cyclone Alfred today-very strong winds, driving rains and heavy seas. Not a good day to be out photographing and anyway I'm packing ready to head off to South Australia on Sunday. So this one is from the archives. An overlooked shot from a wonderful trip to Oman in 2018.

Taken in Nizwar, Oman. It was a very hot day and I spotted this man hurryng across the courtyard to get out of the burning sun. I particularly like the shadow of the palm tree on the wall.

The early surfer

 

A lone surfer heading out for the first surf of the day on Terrigal Beach although the surf was almost non existent. I guess he decided that he'd got out of bed really early so he'd give it a try anyway. Nothing ventured nothing gained.

Morning has broken-28th February.

 I woke up very early this morning to a magnificent sunrise. Unfortunately the two cats demanded breakfast before I was able to leave the house so I had missed the best of it by the time I reached the Haven however I did manage this shot looking down onto the rock shelf below the Skillion.    

Although I have owned the Q3 43 for nearly 3 weeks I have only managed to take just a few photos with it as it has been either too hot or raining.

What I have discovered is that the new APO f2 43mm Summicron ASPH lens on the camera is extraordinary. In the photo above on my computer monitor I can clearly see the details of the rock fisherman fishing off the rocks. The same is true of the man walking towards the sea with the green bag.The wristwatch on his left arm is clearly visible. The photo was taken with the lens wide open at f2 and right on the top edge of the photo the padlocks on the fence wire- attached by couples- are visible.

Dawn fisherman

Dawn fisherman, Terrigal Beach

India revisited

 As a follow on from the earlier post of photos from Kerala, India, here are more finds from the photo library from that 2015 trip.

Diving into my extensive photolibrary on Lightroom Classic I am finding many photos which I ignored at the time they were downloaded but which I now feel are worth looking at. Also there are photos which are better the second time around with different cropping or processing treatments.

Part of my problem is that from the time of my retirement in 2008 to Covid, in 2020,  my wife and I travelled so extensively and so frequently that I barely had time to look through the photos taken on a trip before I was off to the next destination.

Photos taken with the Leica X1 and Leica X Vario in Ooty, Tamil Nadu, and Kochi Spice Market, Kerala. 

 

Morning has broken

Sunrise over Terrigal Lagoon

 

From Kerala

 My brother, Bob, and his wife, Sorojini, are currently in Kerala, southern India-his second visit to India in just a few months. His visit and the photos he has emailed me reminded me of my own visit to Kerala in November 2015.

That trip was great-very hospitable and friendly people, really interesting places and so many photo opportunities. 

I published some of the photos from that trip at the time here on the blog but reviewing the Kerala folder today I've found quite a few which have not been published before and which really should have been included in the Kerala story at that time.

Here they are-all taken with my Leica X Vario. Enjoy.

Teacher and pupil

In class

Manpower -in the Spice Market

Spice Market trader

Keralan Uber

Waiting for the bus