The Big Blog
The Mentor of Mambray Creek
This gentle giant of a redgum tree stands earnestly in the middle of the campground at Mambray Creek in the southern Flinders Ranges of South Australia. It reaches up cathedral like, open to the sky on a series of broad flat pillars. The size of this giant...
7 February 2024
Niugini Diary - 2012
Success chasing a Common Sandpiper Friday 20 January 2012 BNE airport en route to Kimbe, West New Britain PNG - People here seem a lot more casual than in Adelaide, maybe it’s the weather, or that there are a lot of “islanders” about. Strangely the Air Nuigini...
11 February 2023
The Chapel Oak
The Chapel Oak is one of Europe's most treasured trees. The history of its salvation is tied to it being renamed the Temple of Reason during the French Revolution.
15 July 2022
HAPPY AUSTRALIA DAY
Since it's Australia Day today I thought I would return to my 2016 Australia Day Theme of signs of Australia. Firstly, HAPPY AUSTRALIA DAY to Australians and those that might be feeling a bit Australian. I don't get too excited about Australia Day, usually...
26 January 2022
The tree that outlived St Francis
There is a story that this tree in Emilia-Romagna, Italy, grew from a branch that St Francis had thrown on to a fire in the year 1213. Surviving the fire, the next morning St Francis decided to stick it into the ground, from whence the tree grew. This story...
25 July 2021
Back to the birds
Budgerygahs at FarinaI'm not sure why it's six months since my last blog, I guess I can blame COVID19? I shall wind the clock back to our Oodnadatta trip when I returned to my photographic roots somewhat and engaged with the birds and other animals. I moved...
18 June 2021
No Horizons
The Painted Hills, Anna Creek StationSometimes in the outback everything looks the same no matter which way you look. It's often flat with no apparent landscape features to guide you, no wonder many souls get lost and perish. The extraordinary mega Lake Eyre...
1 December 2020
Cosmic Blast
Maree S.A.We managed to get away from contemporary life for a few weeks to where self reliance and weather became the main focus. Traveling on the Oodnadatta Track, an unsealed road linking Maree and Oodnadatta and running just west of the vast Lake Eyre in...
17 November 2020
The Scot on the hill
Very occasionally in life I have experienced a strange feeling of having just arrived home when arriving at a place for the first time ever! The first occasion I recall this was in 1994 when I visited Ireland for the first time. I remember very much feeling...
10 August 2020
The Circle of Oaks
At some point around 1840, or just before, someone planted a ring of some 14 pedunculate or “English” oaks around a spring in the Adelaide hills at what is now known as Gumeracha. A name thought to be derived from Umer-acha, a word used by the local Peramangk...
15 June 2020