Noisy Miner

This bloke is called a Noisy Miner. It's a type of honey-eater. They normally don't let you get too close, but I was able to get about 5 feet away from him/her. I was concerned that the miner would fly away so I just left the Fuji 6500 on auto. Took about 20 quick shots before s/he flew away, and this one turned out the best of all. Gotta love filmless photography! photo by dave

Kangaroo daydreams

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It's a good thing this guy is in a mood to snooze, because when he stands up, he's over six feet fall, and he has claws that could tear down a house! Fortunately, they're peaceable vegetarians, and also nocturnal. In fact, you don't often see kangaroos or wallabies in the daylight! This one is a red kangaroo, one of the larger species, and lives at the Cleland Wildlife Park. The roos and wallabies there are tremendously habituated to humans. The kiosk sells bags of feed for them, but in lieu of the real thing ... a sandwich will do! If you have food in your pocket, be prepared to have a kangaroo's nose in your pocket, looking for it! Photo by Jade, 2006.

Colonial Memories

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The Adelaide Hills are dotted with little sites like this, reminders of the colonial past are everywhere. These farm houses were built between the late 1830s and the turn of the twentieth century, and some of them were still inhabited in the 1960s, even though there was no electricity wired in, and you carried water from your well! (A friend of mine raised five kids in a house just like this, near Victor Harbor! They were a sturdier breed in those days.) These structures were built to last, and will be around a great deal longer, even though they're now derelict and some, like this one, are no more than ruins. This farmer's cottage stands at the edge of the Scott Creek Conservation Park, South Australia, and this image was captured in the fall of 2007. The grass is green ... we've clearly had some rain! Photo by Mel, 2007.

Gone bush!

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Gone bush. The words have an almost mystical quality about them in this country, because they mean ... packed up the tent and gone waaaay out yonder, well beyond network coverage, won't be back till Tuesday, earliest, so don't come looking. They can also mean, "Have vanished for the foreseeable future, gone 4x4 adventuring, will be back when I'm good and ready, with an esky full of barramundi on ice." In other words ... civilization has been shrugged off, one has returned to nature! The quest for sanity has commenced! This imaged is through the windscreen, on one of the access roads leading to the Deep Creek Conservation Park. It's primordial ... raw ... primal. Some of my best pictures are through the windscreen. The rules are simple: clean the glass to avoid "ufos;" zoom out to about 100mm to get past the windscreen wipers and windscreen surround; try to keep the radio aerial out of the picture -- or crop it out later; set a fast shutter speed, because the car is moving and all roads are bumpy; and watch out for the sun direction, because if the light falls directly through the windscreen you'll get "glare," and a reflection off the dash mat into the glass. Stick to these rules and you can get some amazing pictures. Have fun! Photo by Jade, 2006.

The view from the Giant's Cave

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You'd never believe this location is just couple of miles from the suburbs of a major city. As the caption suggests, it's the stunning view from the mouth of the so-called Giant's Cave, at Morialta, near Adelaide, South Australia. The weather was warm and humid -- not hot, but it felt hot with the moisture-laden air. Bright light, excellent "seeing" conditions. Fuji S6500fd, 100 ASA, auto exposure and focus. In bright conditions, the camera can often be left to its own devices! Photo by Mel, 2008.