Moggie Madness

Well I would have eaten peaches if the king parrots hadn’t gotten to them first.

Not content with having spent four days last week in the middle of nowhere, I had to go do it again for a night. Only this time, in the middle of nowhere somewhere south-westish of Ipswich in a place where the nearest pub looks like a country farmhouse. I took the camera, hoping to catch a few snaps of the koalas that I know are on my friend’s property somewhere but they remained elusive. Still playing with the damn camera and learning which bit of the mode dial is used for what, so I experimented this time with the sport function while her two bigger dogs were having a bit of rough and tumble play. Well it kind of turned out, except it wasn’t quite the shot I was after.

Lovely spot and they have heaps of room to run around in and go crazy. Just as well…..Nick (the setter) is somewhat manic and needs plenty of room to stretch his legs.

Conditions weren’t overly favourable for outdoors photos in the Barringtons but I did snap a few when it did happen to stop raining.

My most frequent subject was our resident peacock - he just loved to show off and made us felt more at home because his frequent calls reminded us of the cats announcing their presence around the house. I love peacocks….especially the colours of the male but I’ve honestly never seen a bigger poo come out of a bird as the one he left on the roof of my car.

And not gorillas in the mist, but roos in the mist instead. There were eastern greys galore up there but also a plenty of pademelons…..we even saw a northern brownnbandicoot coming back late one night from dinner. There was so much birdlife, not all of them I could identify. I believe there were also platypus in the creek at some stage because I could see some old nesting sites along the creek bank when I went for a wander early in the morning.

And a few shots of the property…if you look closely in the first one, the orange area is the house we stayed in WAY down the bottom of the gully. And a shot of the track you have to take to get down there. In the third photo, towards the top of the slope, you will see where the track has been cut into the side of the hill, where the orange soil is exposed. That’s where I took the shot of the house from part way up the hill. I thought I would put it in to add a little bit of perspective

Our nearest neighbours weren’t even a loud cooee away….no landline, no mobile reception and the only noise to be heard were all part of nature. Instead of the hum of the motorway, we slept to the sound of a gushing waterfall and maybe the odd moo of a cow or the crowing of a slightly confused rooster at 3am.

And the best part?? We didn’t even have to lock the doors because let’s face it - who’s going to rob us?? The peacock?

A macro shot of the frangipani plant outside my house. It is now flowering thanks to a healthy dose of fertiliser.

A few years ago, I had a wonderful opportunity to tour South Australia and Victoria with my partner, his friend and my sister. We flew into Adelaide, hired a 4WD and spent the next two weeks travelling through to Melbourne, stopping in at Kangaroo Island, Warrnambool, Werribee and Melbourne city itself. Photography is one of my interests and my favourite subjects are wildlife and landscapes, which South Australia and Victoria both have in spades. It was a very memorable trip and one that I will always remember fondly.

Environmental issues are a central focus of my study with wildlife and ecology being my specialties. With the exception of the sealions which were photographed in the wild, all the other animals you see in this post were photographed within conservation parks such as Monarto and Werribee - both of which are open plains zoos. Seeing the animals in large open spaces like they would be in the wild was such a thrill for me.

But conservation parks and zoos cannot replace the real thing. For these animals to survive in the wild, they need somewhere to live. Habitat fragmentation is a real issue, particularly in Australia, which threatens survival of endangered and vulnerable species. Some people might wonder what the value of wildlife is…..but how do you place a dollar sign on these animals? To me, wildlife and the places they inhabit have intrinsic value that is beyond reasonable estimation. For purely existing and enriching our world, surely we do not need to put a price tag on conserving our world as we know it for future generations.

These kind of furry (and not so furry) kids need our protection just as much as the ones we share our homes with. The next time you drive through a wildlife habitat, ease off the throttle and take a moment to immerse yourself in their world.

Earlier in the year, we were fortunate to escape to the tropics during winter. Cairns is a place I’ve always wanted to visit but the dreadful summers that we got in central Queensland as a child was enough to put me off going up that far for my summer vacation. But the winter is a perfect time to visit the tropical north - I guess the tour operators have that well and truly sussed since that’s when all their prices go up.We were driving from Brisbane to Airlie Beach in one day, staying there for a few days and then heading up to Cairns from there. For the uninitiated, it’s around 2000km to Cairns….add in the stopover at Airlie Beach and you’re looking at almost 4500km round trip and around 20 hrs driving time. It’s probably not something I will be keen to do again in a hurry but I can imagine it would have been a lot worse with furry (or non-furry) kids on board.

The morning we left Cairns to come home, it occurred to me that while we had some wonderful shots of the region and the various wildlife that we found (mostly in parks), I hadn’t taken a photo of the sunrise or sunset. This is something I try to do when I’m on holidays, particularly if the clouds and sunlight mixture is just right and you get that lovely sprinkle of pinks, oranges and reds through the sky.

So zooming along the highway at 100kph, I decided to take a few shots. The top shot is sunrise just outside of Cairns at around 5:30am….I forget the name of the mountain but if it follows the naming convention of most things Australian (that is, named in the most obvious fashion possible), it will probably be called Mt Pyramid or something like that. The next shot I took around 12 hrs later as we were drawing closer to our stop for the night in Rockhampton.

I got myself a camera as a birthday present a few years ago - it coincided with a research project for my undergrad degree so I felt the expense was easily justified. Little was I to know that the model I got (a silver Panasonic Lumix) was about to get a revamp - more compact but with the same functionality - and be cut in price by half in little under a year. Nevermind, you win some, you lose some.

Anyway, it occurred to me recently that reading the instructional manual may be somewhat beneficial if I wanted to get some half decent shots. Lo and behold, the camera has a macro function! Who would have thought that was what the little flower icon meant? So I have been playing around with the macro function to see whether it actually makes any difference.

So I took a closeup shot of Rosie’s paw, she was most obliging and actually stayed still and didn’t try to claw the lens. Ironically, that is also the paw that goes tap, tap, tap on my nose in the middle of the night when she wants something. She curls herself around my head on top of the pillow, waits for the slightest little movement of my eyelids to signify I’m in a light sleep and taps me ever so gently on the nose.

It can get annoying but I prefer her method to Mojo’s - if he wants something, he will simply howl. Failing that, he will claw my toe - having found that is one of my more sensitive spots.