A happier time

A photo from summer 2013. The beach at the Haven, Terrigal featuring granddaughters Poppy, Ellie and Scarlett. A happier time. No bushfire smoke. No Covid-19.

The lone snapper

An extraordinarily colourful sunrise in Terrigal this morning with a runner taking a break from her exercise to capture it on her phone.

            

Sad sign of the times

Sad sign of the times in the Terrigal Flight Centre store this morning. No one is going anywhere soon.

Social distancing- Terrigal style

Covid-19 isn't in the script. It's impacted the world. As I type this only Antarctica remains untouched by the virus. Some countries are handling the crisis better than others. So far Australia seems to be handling it reasonably well particularly in minimising the number of deaths. The countries I fear for are the US, India, Indonesia and most countries in Africa.

This solitary surfer was up at dawn on Wednesday at Terrigal. He was alone-just him and the sea. Perfect social distancing.

More from Mogo

Two more photos from my visit to Mogo Wildlife Park last week which now seems so long ago and in such a different time. How lucky we were to have gone when we did. We had our doubts about going but all was fine.
Both the photos show South American monkeys. Top photo is a really cute Cellicebus which is only found in a small area of Colombia and N Paraguay. Its habitat is under severe threat and soon these beautiful creatures will only be seen in captivity and we will all be the poorer for that. Below is a Pygmy Marmoset found over a wider area of South America but also with endangered habitats.
Taking photos through glass is always a rather hit or miss affair. Some cameras have a "shooting through glass" mode but this really only ensures that the autofocus ignores the glass. It does not remove reflections or grubby handprints. The best technique is to put the lens either on the glass or as close to the glass as possible.

Big cats

I'm a big cat fan and a fan of big cats. I'm very fortunate to have seen lions, cheetahs and leopards in the wild in Zimbabwe, South Africa and Botswana. I have tried to see tigers in India on two visits but without luck. I have always felt very sad for big cats in zoos and wildlife parks and have been strongly of the opinion that breeding big cats for captivity is wrong. But recently I have changed my views 180º. I now realise that without captive breeding programs there is a real danger that we will lose some of the big cats for ever. Hunting for body parts and pelts for Asian markets and the loss of habitat is rapidly reducing tiger numbers. White lions are extinct in the wild.
My final change of heart came last week when I visited Mogo Wildlife Park-formerly Mogo Zoo- in Mogo in NSW. The Wildlife Park had a very near miss in the summer's bushfires which ravaged the south coast region. A massive fire came right upto the park. An incredible effort by the staff saved the animals and although buildings and fences were damaged the park was able to reopen after a few weeks. Now a good number of visitors, including me, are coming to the park to support it and help it make up for its lost summer visitors. Sadly Covid-19 is about to prove another challenge for the park.
The park has excellent facilities and quite a few big cats, including white lions, which all have big grassy enclosures. There's none of the sad concrete floored cages which so distressed me in the past.
The highlights of the visit for me were seeing the 12 week old white lion cub and its mother playing and having an up close and personal encounter with the absolutely beautiful Sumatran tiger seen in the photo above.
I took my Leica XV but as it only has a short zoom lens I had little expectation of getting good photos and in any case the wire mesh on the enclosures is always a problem. One day a camera manufacturer will introduce a shooting through wire mesh mode for wildlife park and motor racing photographers although probably a smartphone manufacturer will get there first.
I could have taken my Fuji with its long lens as shooting with a long lens through wire mesh does reduce but not eliminate the mesh interference. I decided that one camera was enough for the trip and I am very happy with the tiger photo. It's not anywhere as good as a photo taken in the wild but for me it's a passable substitute. I was really tempted to stroke his nose after I took the photo as he was so close and that's not something I could experience in the wild.

Porsches and Coffee

I went to the Porsche Club Coffee and Cars in Dural this morning. The run down the M1 at 7.00 am was very quiet but I saw a Tesla S on the motorway with the reg plate YOU8ME. Now what sort of nasty moron has this as the plate on a premium car? It's upsetting to think that people like that are roaming free.

There was big turnout of Porsches at the cafe but there were only a handful of early model cars. A very high proportion were the latest cars.  There were only about six people I knew.  I have been a Porsche Club member for 20 years but I felt very much out of place. The world has moved on. The new members with their immaculate, complex and very expensive new model Porsches are on another planet to me. The Porsche Club has changed. I am feeling my age.
Some photos from the morning.
.

Well at least my car-silver- was in the front stalls

Line up of oldies

More oldies. Lancia is a real rarity downunder. I owned a very similar Mini Cooper S once. I wouldn't drive one in Sydney nowadays.

Great colour. Not white or silver. A real novely and a great looking car. I could be enthusiastic about this one.

People were getting seriously enthused around this one. I cannot understand the rear wing. It reminds me of my childhood with Meccano.

Neat. Reminds me of a Hot Wheels toy car.

A very loud interloper

 Imagine kerbing these. Easily done.

Colour me silver

On I Thursday went on a drive upto Enzo's Cafe, Pokolbin with friends Craig and Colin in their early Porsche 911s. It's a very exclusive club. To belong your Porsche has to be an early-longnose-911 and it has to be silver.

It's always a great run up the backroad starting at Tuggerah, then up the Yarramalong Valley to a coffee stop at Jerry's at Kulnura and on to Wollombi, Broke and Pokollbin. It's 130kms of great driving road. The surface is not good and in some parts the road is narrow. The scenery is wonderful and the biggest bonus is that there is very little traffic and Enzo's is a great cafe. And of course the company is good.
Doing that drive in fine weather is my definition of a perfect day. We did have some rain on the second part of the drive on Thursday and the roads were quite slippery but they were dry on the way back. You certainly know you are driving on a wet road in an early 911.

My 1971 2.2 911-nearest car in photo- is just wonderful to drive. It's like a go-kart with a body. The steering is superb-you can place the car exactly. It handles very well and can be driven very quickly as long as you know what you are doing. The engine is super responsive and it makes a wonderful noise-pure music.The brakes are good and the gearbox is very ordinary-definitely the car's worst feature. It is also noisy and on rough roads-that is most Australian roads- it has more rattles than a millionaire's baby and when driven hard with the throttle on and off repeatedly it is thirsty.
The car is not fun to drive in heavy traffic. The clutch is heavy and the gearbox is hard work. It most definitely not a candidate to be a daily driver but on a twisting open road it is driving in its purest form. It is a pure sports car and every 911 derivative since the early cars has been a step away from that purity.

The colours of autumn

Officially summer is over and it is autumn here downunder. Except that it still feels very much like summer and we don't really have autumn on the coast as summer gradually fades straight into winter.
All the very welcome recent rain has transformed the vegetation. The trees are looking healthier although some won't ever recover from their many months of drought. The grass and weeds are growing very rapidly in the heat and everywhere is looking very green.
Photo taken in the garden this morning. Hibiscus flowers never cease to amaze me. They arrive so quickly with a big burst of colour and then a day later they are gone. So much effort for so little display time.

A favourite

This simple photo is a personal favourite which I came across by chance today.
I spotted the colourful scene in Austria just after I had crossed the border from Slovenia back in 2014. I can never resist a good cat photo.
In those distant days I just had the one Leica camera so choosing the one to travel with was not hard. No frills photography.

Things are looking up

I took this photo back in early November last year a few kilometres west of Armidale in New England, New South Wales. The area was in the grip of severe drought. Armidale itself was on level 5 water restrictions and graziers had been hand feeding their flocks of merino sheep for months. Things were really grim.
Fortunately substantial rain has fallen since then including big falls this week. There is grass in the paddocks again. It would be good to go out there again and reshoot this photo. It's a pity it's so far away.

A beautiful walk

Last week after weeks and weeks of very hot and humid weather and bushfire smoke it was just about cool enough to go for a bushwalk. I am so fortunate live within 15 minutes drive of the Coast Walk through the Wyrrabalong National Park so on Thursday morning I headed north to the park .
See The Coast walk
The walk starts at the Cromarty Hill transmission tower. Just around the corner from the tower is the launch site for local hang gliders and from which there is a glorious vista along the beaches to Terrigal and beyond to Avoca in the distance.

Beyond the launch site is a trig point plinth once used the government cartographers but now rendered redundant by aerial mapping. Until two years ago this trig point and others locally were sadly neglected but they have been cleaned up and the rusty metal vanes and poles used for sighting when taking measurements have been taken away. Now they are just relics of an era when maps were really interesting and when looking at a topgraphical map, particularly a UK Ordinance Survey map, was as good as looking at a good book. Google maps on an iPhone are a very poor substitute.

Beyond the plinth the track goes along the clifftop for a short distance. This is a great location for whale watching in the season. There used to be just a broken down chicken wire fence here until a few years ago and you could walk right to the edge of a very big cliff. Now there is a sturdy metal fence although the previous look out point-for the brave-is visible in the photo below.

From the cliff top its steeply down hill through a section of red gums before you reach the metal staircase with its 75 steps.

 The bottom photo taken from the top of the steps shows the Cromarty Hill tower start point in the distance.
On last Thurday morning the walk was busy in both directions. A few years ago I could have done the walk mid week and only seen a couple of walkers but now we must all be trying to be fitter. I even met a former work colleague who I had not seen for 25 years on the walk last week.
After the steps the walk crosses sandy heathland with plenty of birds and little skinks scurrying around. There are tiny wrens which fly around just above the ground. In September the wildflowers on this section are glorious.
You can, apparently, see deadly Eastern Brown snakes on this section but with the number of walkers last week I am sure they were well away from the track. I have seen snake trails in the sand here but never a snake.

From the heathland it is up to the Crackneck Lookout through more red gums. The prevailing wind and the salt air have caused the gums to become deformed and to develop a lean. After the recent rain the ferns have revived and are now bright green. A few weeks ago they were withered and brown.

At Crackneck Lookout you can see over Bateau Bay and Shelly Beach to The Entrance, Tuggerah Lake and Norah Head.

The photos were taken with my Leica X1 about as big a camera as I want to carry when bushwalking nowadays. The camera, a recycleable water bottle and my car keys and wallet in a small backpack are a comfortable load.