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Pelican Yoga Posts

Port River (#3 in series: Red Cosmos)

 

There is nothing Socialist – let alone Communist – about this Red Cosmos.

The bulk carrier of that name was launched in 2015, and has since made more than a few trips to Port Adelaide – all with capitalist intent.

Also a fiction: the vessel’s purported home port.

Majuro is purely a “flag of convenience”; such “false flags” are deployed by most ship-owners.

They are a key part of their efforts to minimise expenditure, to maximise their profits and to evade any legal “liability” in relation to “accidents”, and to mistreatment of employees.

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Port River (#2 in series: lighthouse)

 

A particularly vivid childhood memory: visiting one of the woolstores in Port Adelaide, to see some of our family farm’s wool on display, prior to its auction.

At the time – circa 1960 – Port Adelaide’s woolstores were the world’s largest; the one I walked into was by far the biggest and most impressive man-made space I had ever seen.

Port Adelaide’s lighthouse – pictured above and below – pre-dated any of those woolstores.

Like them, this much more modest structure long ago lost its original raison d’être.

In recent decades, however, the lighthouse has been rather better looked after than have most of the woolstores.

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Port River (#1 in series: working port)

 

 

 

This post answers the question posed in the immediately-preceding one.

The relevant tidal creek is Adelaide’s Port River; its “official name” (which I have never heard anybody actually use, in conversation) is “Port Adelaide River”.

Dredged and much-modified/abused over the last 185 years, this tidal creek is the heart of Port Adelaide – South Australia’s primary seaport.

The Port River is the western branch of the largest estuary on the eastern side of Gulf St Vincent.

Just 14 kilometres southeast – and inland – is the heart of Adelaide’s CBD.

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Tidal creek (teaser)

 

 

Mangroves thrive here.

Heavy industry is also here.

This river is also part of a substantial port, within a metropolis of circa 1.4 million humans; the heart of its CBD is just 14 kilometres inland from the featured photo’s vantage point.

Your eyes are probably telling you that the location is somewhere within the tropics.

But where, exactly?

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Namib Desert’s northwest (#29 in series: riverbed to ridge tops)

 

This is the current series’ final trio of images taken from the bed of the (mostly dry-surfaced, but intermittently greened/vegetated) Hoarusib.

Only on very infrequent occasions is flowing water readily evident; usually, parts of the riverbed double as road.

All three photos were taken within a single “window” of less than two minutes, as I walked a very short distance, and pointed my 400mm lens north/ish.

At this point the Hoarusib’s source is circa 280 kilometres further inland.

The Atlantic’s “skeleton coast” is less than 20 kilometres distant.

Here, I think, is one of “our” planet’s singular places.

Arguably, no other (relatively) accessible location so richly deserves to be described as “pristine wilderness”…

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Namib Desert’s northwest (#27 in series: wide-angle/telephoto)

Each photo in this post has a distinctly different “feel”, I think.

All three were taken within the same “window”, of fewer than four minutes.

The (400 mm) telephoto image, below, looks closely at what occupies just a small portion of the left side of the wide-angle (30 mm) featured image, above.

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Namib Desert’s northwest (#25 in series: one dune, three views)

 

 

All three images involve the same dune, as viewed from the bed of the Hoarusib – the river the dune was “meeting”, at 9.06/9.07 am on 14 November 2022.

I shot all three within circa 90 seconds, with a 400 mm lens.

You will see more within these images if you enlarge them /zoom in on their details.

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