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Category: New Zealand

Footprints: literally, mostly (with musical bonus)

 

 

This post’s actual footprints come from bears in Alaska, birds on the Indian subcontinent  and continental Australia, a Tasmanian wombat, and humans in an African desert and Australian suburbia.

The musical bonus is courtesy of one of the greatest jazz musicians – equally so as composer, virtuoso instrumentalist and inspired improviser.

There’s also a metaphorical footnote which involves New Zealand’s largest farm…

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Intertidal: #11 in series (living kelp on “dry land”, Catlins Coast)

 

 

More famous for its (diminishing, via global warming) spectacular, fully submerged, underwater forests”, kelp can sometimes be found, alive and well, on “dry” land.

The land in question is only “dry”, briefly, at low tide.

Also, I imagine, this circumstance would only be possible where the climate is cool and humid.

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Intertidal: #10 in series (Otago Harbour, viewed from Otago Peninsula)

Where a particular intertidal zone’s “bottom” has a very gentle slope, even relatively modest tidal ranges will yield spectacular transformations, often twice-daily

One such place is immediately east of Dunedin, on the southeastern side of New Zealand’s South Island.

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Intertidal: #9 in series (“Windows 10 Beach”)

Only a modest number of human feet have walked its actual sands, but every day of our so-called “21st” century many millions of human eyes see this singular beach, virtually.

An image of it is the “screensaver” viewed countless times by subscribers to Microsoft’s Windows 10 operating system.

Doubtless, most of those subscribers have no idea of what and where is this “iconic” beach.

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Intertidal: #8 in series (what is wrong with this landscape?)

 

 

So much of Australia is parched, low-lying, flat(-tish)

So much of New Zealand is well-watered, extravagantly green, and its horizons usually include substantial hills or mountains.

Understandably, many visitors to NZ – Australians, especially – are utterly beguiled, and swallow, whole, the assiduously marketed fiction that New Zealand is “green” and “pure”.

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Intertidal: #7 in series (looking back into bay)

 

 

#6 in this series looked out to sea, from a bay on the western side of the Coromandel Peninsula – a popular “weekend escape” destination for many residents of Auckland.

This post’s featured image was taken from almost exactly the same spot, but looking into a bay whose waters were very much deeper two centuries ago.

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Intertidal: #6 in series (western side of Coromandel Peninsula)

The location pictured in this post’s featured image is not very many kilometres away from the one in #5 in this series.

It is not at all close to the North Queensland coast, where Cairns sits at 16.51 Degrees South – unsurprisingly, a location where mangroves thrive.

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