Interruption to normal services

Yesterday, I flew from Sydney to Perth, then from Perth up to Broome whence I (and about twenty five others) hop an a/c Mercedes bus and jaunt up to Darwin, sampling helicopters, light planes and various aquatic craft on our way. I then fly from Darwin to Brisbane, then Brisbane back to Sydney landing on Thursday 1st July hopefully BEFORE my grand-daughter arrives.

Follow that Bird - camera kill

Their sound echoed through the forest for most of the two hour walk.

The excitement was immense for even the most common of sightings, say a magpie lark, grey butcher bird or Willie Wagtail. There was much brouhaha for say, a Grey Goshawk, a Spotted Pardalote, an Olive-backed Oriole or a Golden Whistler. But when we sighted the three Lyrebirds all seven tiles were plonked down on a triple word score!

They are quick and VERY industrious

They were spectacular, both in sight and in sound. They did not scurry away, but afforded us quality time. I have many shots more blurred than these. Panning in low light is essential. I shall get that F1.4 50mm tomorrow!

There is a Brown Gerygone (warbler) on a branch in here.

With my new Celeston 10x42 binoculars and my Canon 450D with both lenses, and with my trusty hiking stick I was weighed down. Too much to do, insufficient hands and balance.

There were a few White-faced Heron's among the cows.

Switching between camera and binoculars was not on at this early stage – I need more experience birding and with the binoculars. On the way up I used the camera, on the way down the binoculars. I saw much more with the binoculars which are just spectacular.

There were large flocks of Cattle Egrets in the paddocks.

Follow that Bird next to the Watagan State Forest in the Hunter Valley on 7th August.

Addendum - I tried out other equipment which I have readied for my travels to the north of Western Australia starting today. The backpack and water-bottle are ditched in favour of my old ones. My shoes and jacket are perfect. Need a belt from which to hang my binoculars.

Follow that Bird - thrill of the chase

There WAS a Spotted Pardalote tending this hole.

Birds to the left of us, birds to the right of us. All told 60 collective sightings for the excursion, all dutifully ticked at the conclusion. Such sharing of ideas, adventures, techniques, such collective joy.

Likewise they all saw the Lewin's Honeyeater in here somewhere.

Having never been ‘birding’ I was overwhelmed by both their eyesight and their identification skills. It was really their brain-sight – they knew what they were looking for, movements up, down, through and beyond. Whereas I might see the flit into or outof the canopy, they kept up with it, identified it by sight and sound, and gave a treatise on habitat.

The water tumbling down from the Minnamurra Falls was gloriously clear.

And it was not confined to the boardwalk up to the Minnamurra Falls.

I had to confine my sightings to forest details anchored to the soil.

On the way back out of the forest, through farming country, the bus would slow, pull over to the side and the most wondrous conversations would ensue.

The boardwalk provided ready access and the falls an opportunity for lunch.

My poor brain was at bursting point. ‘On the edge’ is a most productive sighting area – where one habitat merges into another, say farmland into forest.

For one with cerebral ataxia this swing was 'disturbing' but I took my new stick.

Tomorrow: Photographing birds is a whole new ball-game which brings one down to earth very quickly.

Vivid opera

Angst here today. folks. To post or not to post.

If Jeremiah was a bullfrog, what did he croak about? If that frog had a blog would he winge? A 'jeremiad' is a complaint, a lamentation, in current parlance, a bitch session.

So ... here goes ...


Vivid is a celebration of light which commenced in June 2009. June is the middle of our winter. It is a bit dull and boring. Hence, something to get the populace out on the streets. I have now experienced three aspects of Vivid 2010. It could just be me, but I did not like any of them particularly. Neither the Macquarie Street holograms, nor the lighting of the Opera House sails, nor 'Fire & Water' were a patch on the 2009 offerings. Technically, I suspect they were more complex and 'better' but they were difficult to watch and appreciate. There was too much visual movement, too much visual complexity and way too much writing. 'Fire & Water' was an embarrassment that may have worked on the drawing board but was a yawn on the harbour.

A waste of money. Please don't use my taxes for more of the same in 2011.

Working the land - Paddocks

My friends have lived on this farm for just on ten years now. They swapped a boat and a d-media communications company for something much more physical and just as intellectually challenging. They both work very long hours, seven days a week. On the positive side, they network and play hard, too. Together they designed the shape of the farm. Gail had always been enamoured of horses, so they were carving out a horse stud.


Peter carved the paddocks, clearing them, rationalising them, fencing and watering them. Gail studied up on breeding and nutrition, and does all the animal husbandry work. They sell young horses at auction, and race others. They are successful at both. With any sort of luck, I will tag along to the Inglis Thoroughbred sales in Randwick towards the end of winter.

Working the land - Water

Much of the countryside is very beautiful at the moment. I visited friends on the Central Coast for a few days this week and meandered through paddocks and along fence-lines.


When I last visited, eighteen months ago, Peter had created a new dam and was landscaping a paddock in preparation for sowing general pastures. The difference between then and now is just astounding.


Peter had a triple by-pass just after Easter and this week his cardiologist gave him the all clear to complete the fences in the back paddocks.

Two men on a bridge

The south east pylon of the bridge is a tribute to the people who brought the bridge to fruition.

Separated by eighty years but joined by a vision of the power of engineering to bring peoples together.

Sixty years old at the end of June and never been up the pylon nor walked across the bridge. We soon rectified that!

Pied Cormorant

Pied Cormorant (phalacrocorax varius), Darling Harbour

Outmoded GPS

The lantern from the Tasman Island light, now at the National Maritime Museum, Darling Harbour

Everywhichway ...

North

South

East

West

Not on your nellie ...

Oh yes, I can clamber the 200 steps to the top of the SE Pylon which is where this photograph is taken from, but you will not find me climbing the arch of the bridge like this intrepid lot. The cost of a climb during the day on a Saturday is AUD198.

That would buy me a Bushnells 8x42 binocular!

Water lily

'The Unbearable Lightness of Being' by Choi Jeong Hwa Part of the 17th Biennale of Sydney, this work is located in the Main Pond in the Royal Botanic Gardens.

This could be worth a look

Bust of Governor Arthur Phillip, in front of the MCA at CQ

Each week in May, we tramped the city trying to recreate in our mind's eye what the landscape looked like when the first settlers arrived and for, say the next 22 years until the arrival of Governor Lachlan Macquarie in 1810. So what did the first governor, Arthur Phillip go on when he sailed out of Botany Bay looking for a better site to found a penal colony, one that offered more protection and fresh running water?


He HAD to have sailed up this stretch of coastline along South Head, saw a likely opening and nipped in for a look-see. Maybe there have been imperceptible changes to these cliffs. 'Here's a go lads. Let's have a captain-cook in there.'


Ahh, changes to the plateau, but not necessarily to the cliffs. Up on that plateau, both Phillip and Macquarie, and the governors in between, stationed lookouts. They were looking out for supply vessels for food and for word from 'home'. Run a flag up a pole or light a fire, and pretty soon those folk down at the cove would see the signal. The signal station and the lighthouse are in the spots of the originals. There is a coastal walk right along these cliffs.


See the CBD and the bridge way off there in the distance? The signal from South Head got there fairly quickly. As the crow flies, it is about 8 miles. But try to remove all the man-made structures. This is a massive drowned valley, as deep and as wide as the Grosse Valley in the Blue Mountains. It was heavily wooded, mainly with Terpentines which are a variety of eucalypt (gum).


So Phillip in his row boat with his soldiers straining like banshees at the oars, rowed around the tip of South Head. Around where the Hornby Light now stands in all its barber-shop gaudiness. Do a mental Photoshop and take the layer out that contains anything manmade. But but but ... be careful with the colour green that you use to replace that layer.

Lycett's aquatint the property of the Dixon Library, State Library of NSW

One Joseph Lycett tried to reproduce what he saw on South Head in about 1825. Still pretty wild and wooly. But he got the green wrong. This is the green that you might see in fields in England. In Australia, the natural green is more olive or grey-blue. Not sure about the vegetation that Lycett has included either. Yes there is a lot of stunted scrubby stuff out on South Head. It catches the full force of the southerly winds which are laden with salt. But, there are eucalypts out there, too.

It was a gutsy call by Phillip.

Macquarie Visions

Bring back bunting, I say. Break open the flags and let them flutter from the highest post. String the darned stuff across the street, and down the street. Festoon the trees - the planes, the figs, the gums - festoon them all with the warm glow of fairy-lights as far up as the eye can see.

Why can't the future be more like the past?


It is so wonderful, and yet exasperating at the same time. The brochure calls it an 'immersive light display'. It is so very clever, and yet so very irritating. The writing moves to the left to the right, up, down and in her lady's chamber. We are immersed in old sepia photographs, which move and sway across facades. Very clever. But ... maybe ... too clever? Could it be that the best things in life are simple.


The immersion commences at St Marys Cathedral, well I guess that is back to basics. And that terrible excuse for a park actually came into its own providing a glorious perspective. Then onto Hyde Park Barracks and Joe Snell's Macquarie Arch. This is meant to represent the road over the Blue Mountains which opened up the colony and made it viable.


Other major buildings along Macquarie Street to receive the immersion treatment are The Mint, Parliament House, and the Mitchell Wing of the State Library. I have yet to see the Palace Garden Gates, The Conservatorium and the Opera House. That is next week's excursion. He built buildings. He built roads. He built a community. But he had a fatal flaw. He reckoned we came into this world as equals, and we should continue as equals once time is served for run-ins with the law. A bit of a bridge too far for many at that time.


The whole she-bang immerses the city from 27th May to 20th June, as part of VIVID, an annual celebration of light, music and ideas. I am particularly looking forward to the FIRE WATER reenactment at Campbell's Cove over the June long weekend. This year the wild colonials say hello to Bollywood. My mind boggles ...


Lachlan Macquarie became governor of the colony of New South Wales on 1st January 1810, accompanied by his wife, Elizabeth. He was the 5th governer since 1788 - Phillip, Hunter, King, Bligh. He departed the colony on 1st December, 1821 returning to London to face charges, levelled at him by Bigge, that he was a wastrel out to self-agrandise. He died on 1st July 1824 a broken man. He was 62.

The stain of a convict past

Vaucluse House, named after an area in France, was built for William Charles Wentworth who was one of the statesmen of the 19th century who guided the state and the nation to self-government. He was born in the UK in 1790 and died in Sydney in 1872. He is interred in a mausoleum close to the remants of his estate.


Being illegitimate and with convict associations - via his father, D'arcy and his mother - Wentworth struggled to be accepted by the polite society of this colonial outpost. This is a disjointed house which exhibits more grace in the grounds and the out buildings, than in the house itself. However, it does nestle in a gloriously beautiful part of this city.