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Category: nature and travel

Murray River meets Southern Ocean: little big mouth

 

The featured image’s Southern Ocean waves are breaking on the Younghusband Peninsula’s narrowest, northernmost section.

The peninsula’s tip is the southern “lip” of the mouth of Australia’s biggest river system;  the cormorants are on the “freshwater side”, as was yours truly at 3.35 pm on 30 March 2022.

If you have never been to this spot, you may be thinking, “it looks splendidly wild, barely touched by humans”.

Alas, you would be very wrong….

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Fur seals: bad news for The Coorong?

 

Over the last 15 years seals have become an increasingly common/obvious presence in the Coorong-proper and on/around the Goolwa Barrage.

This has delighted some people, but infuriated/worried some others.

Some of the infuriated/worried people perceive the seals as “intruders”, as “fish thieves”, as “out of control”, “a threat to fish and bird populations”.

So, who are these seals, are they “newcomers”, and are they a threat to “the natural balance”?

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Flight, Coorong National Park: gulls (with musical bonus)

 

When an Australian thinks of seagulls, the relevant species is almost certainly our most common, emblematic one.

Chroicocephalus novaehollandiae – the Silver gullhas prospered mightily, post-1788.

Arguably, this highly-adaptable bird should no longer be described as a “seagull”.

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Flight, Coorong National Park: Pelicans

 

One of the pleasures of Australian life is to look up and see pelicans “surfing the thermals”, soaring, spiralling ever-higher, with so very little apparent effort.

They are also wonderful to watch as they take off from water (or land on it); then, however, a great amount of effort is spectacularly evident.

Pelicans are one of “our” world’s largest, living, flying “machines”.

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Waychinicup waters (“Aspects of Waychinicup” # 24)

 

Waychinicup’s inlet is shallow and sheltered.

It is also dynamic, healthy, and reliably well-watered; low rainfall sometimes turns off the freshwater “tap” (i.e inflow from the Waychinicup River) but ocean waves and tides ensure that this inlet is constantly flushed/refreshed.

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Inlet’s western shoreline (“Aspects of Waychinicup” #22)

 

The photo was taken at 1.57 pm on 15 March 2021, a little less than one hour before the one in #21 of this series.

#21 offered a telephoto view, focused on Waychinicup Inlet’s eastern shoreline, as viewed from midway along the inlet’s western side.

#22’s is a wide-angle (24mm) view, taken from the inlet’s northwest “corner”; it looks along the inlet’s western side, out to where the Southern Ocean meets the inlet.

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