Goanas are a large sort of monitor lizard, certainly the largest on Kangaroo Island. Being cold-blooded, they need the sun to keep warm,
so a hot, black tarmac road is just the place to bask. This one was trying to get run-over near Hanson Bay.
We slowed down and stopped the car (luckily no one was behind us) as it scurried across the tarmac and then meandered back towards our vehicle.
I took this shot through the front windscreen as it approached us.
It then took refuge in some bushes alongsde the tarmac, after which I couldn't get a clean shot of it through the open side windows.
Tammar wallabies now only exist in the wild on Kangaroo Island. Wallabies and kangaroos are all basically members of the same family. The main difference between them,
apart from wallabies being generally smaller, is that kangaroos will use their powerful tails as a sort of fifth limb, to give an extra push when foraging or as a support when fighting.
Wallabies tend to use their tails only for balance whilst hopping.
This tammar wallaby was one of many that were, at this time of year, foraging in a caravan park near Hanson Bay.
We had driven there as it is a reserve for wild koalas. These wallabies were quite friendly. I could get to within about 10 feet (3 metres) of them
but they weren't keen on me getting much closer, especially when a camera was pointed at them. Wallabies are at least partly nocturnal and usually rest up during the heat of the day,
so this was good place to photograph them out and about in the daylight.
Koalas are quite difficult to see in the wild, as they are usually asleep high up in the eucalyptus trees. Indeed, even in this koala reserve,
we met several people who had not been able to spot a single one. However, they do tend to sit in forks in the branches and after about half an hour we had spotted three.
This angle was the only possibility I could find of taking a reasonably unobstructed shot of any of them. The koala was dozimg high up and was back-lit, so it was quite difficult using both the full zoom and exposing for the shadow areas, but at least it kept still.
The ground was infused with a eucalyptus scent that clung to the shoes. This was effectively koala pooh.
Koalas are not native to Kangaroo Island. They were introduced to this predator-free evironment in the hope of increasing their numbers, which had been falling rapidly on the mainland.
This introduction programme has been so successful, that now there are just too many koalas for the available food supply and selected individuals are being sterilized.
We continued to Admiral's Arch, on the south west side of Kangaroo Island. There is a long walk down (and an even longer walk back up) to this impressive sea arch.
There are some fairly impressive stalagtite features hanging down from the roof of the arch. This seems to be typical of many sea cliffs in this part of South Australia.
However, the main wildlife interest are the New Zealand fur seals that bask on the rocks there. Fur seals are actually a sort of nocturnal version of the sealion.
They have bigger eyes and a shorter snout than sealions, but share with them the external ears and powerful front flippers.
There was a very strong wind and the sea looked quite rough. There was also a very strong smell of fur seals, or their excrement.
Some of the males were sparring with each other and making a lot of barking sounds, but they were a bit too far away to get both a large enough and a sharp enough image with my zoom.
Instead, I concentrated on this female with her pup, sleeping on the rocks below me. I could, at least, jam the camera against the handrail to prevent any camera shake in the mini-gale.
We had intended to continue to the very dramatic Remarkable Rocks, which we could see in the distance. However, a huge storm (to be mentioned again later) was approaching and the lighting had already gone by the time we left Admral's Arch.
Back at Cape Borda lightstation, there were plenty of Kangaroo Island Kangaroos that came out to forage (and to keep us amused?) in the late afternoon.
These kangaroos have a dark tip to their tails, which indicates that they are actually a subspecies of the grey kangaroo, rather than the red kangaroo (which has a white tipped tail).
This is a mother with her large joey. They weren't too bothered about humans,
as long as we kept about 10 feet away, but they were more skittish when cameras were pointing at them
and definitely, preferred to show us their backs. This shot was taken from the outdoor, but undercover picnic area at around 5pm with an exposure of about a twentieth of a second and roughly an 80mm equivalent zoom.
Australian magpies are both very vocal and very cheeky, but they should not be confused with the equally cheeky and much more melodious pied butcher bird,
which looks quite similar to the inexperienced eye.
However, on closer inspection the butcher bird has a black bib on a largely white breast. There were notices around our accomodation advising that it was an offence, punishable by a fine, to feed the wildlife,
but the magpies couldn't read and queued up in anticipation anyway. They quite happily came within a few feet of my camera, to pick up fallen cornflakes, but they wouldn't hold a stationery pose closer than about five feet ( 2 metres) .
I took this shot before 8am using my on-camera flash, which has created an undesirably dark shadow behind the bird but it has also perked up the black feathers, as indeed has Paint Shop Pro..
This photo was taken on a walk up to Wangarra Lookout. We saw lots of small lizards.
I liked this one because its tail is curving back above its body,
instead of sticking out in a long line behind it, giving a more compact composition.
As per most reptiles, this lizard was enjoying the warming rays of the morning sun,
whilst staying close enough to a hiding place to escape the attentions of the wedge-tailed eagles who were circling above
Wilpena Pound from Wangarra Lookout. It was a long, hot walk. In fact, our lodge provided a bus for the first part of the journey.
This view gives some idea of the undulating, crater-like scenery,
which the Aboriginal people associated with a large snake. I think it looks better with some foreground interest, although Keith may disagree.
Notice the clouds in the sky. The edge of that storm that we bumped into on Kangaroo Island had followed us all the way up to Wilpena.
Later that night we were out with torches looking for nocturnal residents of the outback, when it actually started sleeting.
Yes, really! ... that white, fluffy, watery stuff that floats gently down from the sky in Pommieland, but hardly ever in Australia ... according to popular legend, anyway.
I hadn't brought any clothes suitable for a bad English summer so we had to retreat, frozen nearly solid, to the relative warmth of our rooms.
Many of the bushes along the walking trail to Wangarra Lookout bore these small and very engaging cones.
Rather embarrassingly, I haven't yet been able to ascertain their identity, but they did attract my attention very strongly when I was there, so I've included them here.
This shot was taken using the camera's close-up settings, so that I was close enough to hold onto the branch and stop it blowing out of focus in the wind.
The exposure was down to only a sixtieth of a second with minimum aperture, for maximum depth of focus.
This eucalyptus tree looked very impressive against the skyline, but perhaps the lighting needs to be a little more diagonal.
I particularly like the mottled sky and the way that the branches seem to be flailing about in the wind, even though they aren't!
Probably, a person climbing near the tree would have put it into perspective and made the tree look even taller, but at the time it seemed better on its own.
Bush fires are a neccessary part of life and death in Australia. Here is the remains of a burnt-out eucalyptus.
Without fires, eucalyptus trees would not grow well, as their cones need the heat of a fire to open and so release their seeds.
However, the fires are only beneficial if they are relatively short and sharp, so that they burn through the undergrowth, without damaging the resident trees too badly.
The Aboriginal people would, therefore, only deliberately light fires during the cooler, wetter times of year, when the fires would burn enough to encourage new growth, but not destroy everything.
A bush fire at the height of summer could rage out of control for weeks on end. Eventually, of course the land would recover but it might take years.
The flower here is from the butterfly bush, a plant which is peculiar to the Flinders Range. I had a lot of difficulty taking this shot.
I was using the close-up setting, with the correspondingly narrow depth of focus. The wind, however, was such that even holding onto the stems with one hand,
I could not stop the flower from blowing around all over the place.
You can probably see that the point of sharpest focus, (after six or seven attempts) is on the leaves below the flower, rather than the on the flower itself.
Emus, like ostriches, are flightless and are the largest birds in Australia. Their name comes from the booming sound which they (usually females) sometimes make (ee-moo),
although I have only ever heard it once,... when I was at the Jurong Bird Park in Singapore.
In Autralia, emus are often found amongst domestic herds of livestock, they aren't a problem as they do not compete with each other for food.
This pair, however, were out on their own in the desolate outback, but luckily approached fairly close to our vehicle.
We were looking down on them from a small ridge in the very geologically interesting Brachima Gorge, part of the Wilpena Pound complex.
A general view of the Brachima Gorge area. There is a small herd of goats passing through. Inside the gorge, there are some very colourful rock strata.
However, our reason for being there was to try to spot the elusive and very rare yellow-footed rock wallaby.
We drove into the Gorge, had our lunch in the car and continued right to the end, where I took this photo.
All we had seen was a few kangaroos, four emus and a couple of magpies.
We began driving back the way we had come. It was very hot and there was little sign of wildlife.
Then Keith, who was driving, suddenly stopped the car and pointed up the side of the gorge.
About 20 or 30 feet (10 metres) vertically above us and a little off of our starboard bow (it was quite steep!) was a family of the very beautiful yellow-footed rock wallabies: Dad, Mum and Joey.
We scrambled a little way up the rock face, but the wallabies began looking skittish.
I took a few photos, before they decided that they had seen enough humans for one day, effortlessly hopping off along the steep-sided gorge.
From the nearest position that I could get to, where I was desperately trying not to slide down the crumbling rock face, it wasn't possible to avoid the foreground branch.
I was lucky to be able to get a shot, without it covering any of their faces. These wallabies are classified as being "vulnerable" (although not endangered), having a very restricted habitat, including the Flinders Range.
They were probably the rarest animals that I photgraphed during the entire trip.
After all that excitement we continued slowly back towards home, when we spotted these two euros.
Euros are a cross between a kangaroo and a wallaby, sometimes also known as walleroos.
They are a similar sort of size to a kangaroo, but have a much shaggier coat.
In this case you can see the white tip to their tails, distinguishing them from grey kangaroos, which have a dark tail.
These euros also have a very fetching set of "boxing gloves" on their front paws.
We left Wilpena and returned towards Adelaide, stopping for lunch at a bakery in Port Wakefield.
Outside, silver gulls were trying to entice the customers into feeding them. We sat inside.
This one has lost a certain amount of detail in the sunny white highlights, afterall, it was taken around 2pm.
However, I think it gives a reasonable interpretation of the bird.
We spent a night at the Warrawong Earh Sanctuary in the Adelaide Hills. There, we found a mixture of wild and orphaned animals.
This long-nosed potoroo was free to come and go as it pleased, although was clearly more used to people than a totally wild one might have been.
Bandicoots generally have shorter tails and tend to scurry about much more quickly than Potoroos that tend to "potter" about. They are both nocturnal and easily confused with each other. Both are a form of "rat kangaroo".
I took this potoroo with flash early in the morning.
There were bandicoots and potoroos all over the sanctuary. This one was in a very dark spot under a tree fern and may have a "joey" in her pouch.
The picture is overall bit too dark, partly because the background and subject are both dull colours
and partly my flash setting obviously needed to be stronger.
The red-eye correction doesn't seem to have done too well here either and my composition (including all of the long tail) had left the potoroo's nose dangerously near the edge of the frame,
so I have tried to compensate by adding a thin blackish border.
This red kangaroo was one of a number of orphaned kangaroos, including red, grey and euros. Note the white tip to the powerful tail.
They were all very friendly and a bit of a handful when they all insisted on joining in the morning walk
to the platypus pools (didn't see any of those here). They bounced along beside us hoping (and hopping) for some titbits. It was quite cloudy whilst we were here,
so I was pleased to take a photo that shows the strong red fur colour illuminated by sunlight,
even if the composition looks a little awkward.
After Warrawong, we travelled on towards the Victoria border. We stopped for a short break at the Naracoorte caves. Generally it was too dark inside to take pix without a tripod.
The vast interiors were just too much for my little flash to cope with. However, near the entrance to one cave
I saw some bracken illuminated by sunlight and I quite like the resulting fronds with webs all over them.
Outside of the caves (and in many other parts of Southern Australia, at this time of year) were some very spectacular flowering red gum trees.
From a distance they are just so striking. Honey bees were buzzing all over these beautiful flowers. We continued our journey towards the Great Southern Ocean...
...But had booked an overnight stop at the Murray Cottages near the Victoria border. There was a small tongue-in-cheek golf course
in the grounds and around the course grew a vast array of local flora, which also attracted a good number of local birds.
Some of the flora had been arranged very attractively in a vase for us to admire during our stay from the comfort of our living room.
I cannot really identify what exactly they all were,
but I think that the big bulbous flowers are members of the dryandra family. They look similar to the proteas of South Africa.
This shot was taken with flash which brings out the colours well, but looses all sense of three-dimensional depth
After a most melifluous dawn chorus, we set off for Victoria. We passed through Mount Gambier, not intending to stop.
However, that twerp of a navigator got us lost and by chance we stumbled upon the Blue Lake.
We didn't actually pay to go in, but did find quite a good free viewpoint. It certainly was a deep blue and seemed to be contained within a crater.
I have underexposed the foreground bushes, so that the sky and its reflections in the lake appear with the right sort of colour saturation.
Our trip continues into Victoria and Tasmania, on the next page.
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