Category: photographs

Winter 2025, South West WA (#4 in series: an untarnished shore)

Published September 7, 2025 by Pelidoug

Winter 2025, South West WA (#4 in series: an untarnished shore)

Untarnished, but sometimes “stained”…benignly.

I took the photo at 11.19 pm on 16 August, when a handful of humans stood on Yeagarup Beach.

This is where the Warren River meets the Southern Ocean.

In global terms, the Warren is “modest”, in both length and average flow rate.

However, its lower reaches are glorious. Beautiful, globally unique, very tall, never-logged forests segue to dunes, an estuary and a truly wild ocean shore.

As evident in the featured image, when a “properly” wet winter feeds it, the Warren carries enough tannin-rich water to darken the Southern Ocean’s edge.

(and – as a future chapter will show – the river’s mouth then moves “up the beach”, which it reshapes)

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Winter 2025, South West WA (#3 in series: historically, rare in urban areas)

Published September 5, 2025 by Pelidoug

Winter 2025, South West WA (#3 in series: historically, rare in urban areas)

Urban-resident Australian humans who were born after 1970 may find it very hard to believe, but this post’s headline is accurate.

Relatively speaking, Threskiornis molucca – the Australian white ibis – is a newcomer to urban life.

However, the so-called “bin chicken” was already resident on the Australian continent long before Homo sapiens arrived – let alone post-1788 humans and rubbish bins.

It is absolutely not a “feral” bird.

Contrary to what many Australians believe, it and the so-called “Sacred” or “Egyptian” ibis are entirely different species; the latter has never called Australia home.

Still, the roof of a “Federation Era” house in any Australian city – such as the Subiaco one, above – almost certainly never felt the pitter-patter of Threskiornis molucca‘s not-so-tiny feet until the final quarter of the 20th century, or the first quarter of the 21st.

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Winter 2025, South West WA (#2 in series: winter light)

Published September 3, 2025 by Pelidoug

Winter 2025, South West WA (#2 in series: winter light)

Well-known fact about Perth: it is handsomely the sunniest of Australia’s capital cities.

Perth averages 3,200 hours per year – circa 8.8 hours per day.

Little-known, counter-intuitive fact about Perth: its average annual rainfall is considerably higher than Melbourne’s…and London’s.

(Melbourne has twice as many rainy days, and many more hours of drizzle. Perth’s rain – is typically much more “squally”)

Perth’s winter light is often glorious; it can flatter everything it touches – even very “generic” CBD architecture.

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Winter 2025, South West WA (#1 in series: flying low)

Published September 2, 2025 by Pelidoug

Winter 2025, South West WA (#1 in series: flying low)

At least according to European-styled calendars, spring has just begun in Australia’s southwestern corner.

Seasonal realities are in fact highly “fluid”; they do not obey calendar dates.

Whilst seasonal patterns have become progressively more “fluid”, the skies over WA’s south west have provided progressively smaller annual deliveries of actual fluid.

For the past four decades almost every annual and winter rainfall figure has been well below the long term average

in June-July-August 2025 most parts of WA’s south west experienced their first “properly” wet 21st century winter.

Perth’s 2025 winter was the wettest of our 42 years here; only those who have lived in Perth for 68 years have experienced any (barely) wetter one.

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“Old city”, Lahore (series final: Badshahi Mosque “4”)

Published September 1, 2025 by Pelidoug

“Old city”, Lahore (series final: Badshahi Mosque “4”)

On 12 May 2024 in Lahore sunset was at 6.50 pm.

Shortly thereafter, the relevant lights at Badshahi Mosque were switched on.

This post’s photos were taken within sixty seconds of each other, from Haveli Restaurant’s terrace.

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“Old city, Lahore”, (#36 in series: Badshahi Mosque “3”)

Published August 31, 2025 by Pelidoug

“Old city, Lahore”, (#36 in series: Badshahi Mosque “3”)

Following its completion in 1673, Lahore’s Badshahi Mosque remained the world’s biggest mosque/masjid for nearly three centuries.

Size-wise, it is now #3 in Pakistan.

Globally, it sits at the lower end of the “top 20”, or has recently lost that status.

Aesthetically, however, Badshahi Mosque is forever unlikely to have more than a very few peers.

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“Old city”, Lahore (#35 in series: Badshahi Mosque “2”)

Published August 29, 2025 by Pelidoug

“Old city”, Lahore (#35 in series: Badshahi Mosque “2”)

The featured image (immediately above) was taken at 3.47 pm on 12 May 2024; the main building was behind me, as I looked east-ish, across part of Badshahi Mosque’s courtyard.

That paved courtyard’s 25,600 square metres account for most of the mosque’s “footprint”.

Lahore Fort and Badshahi Mosque are almost adjacent.

Their main gates face each other, respectively, from the eastern and western sides of the Hazuri Bagh – a formerly-“royal” garden which is now a well-loved “public” space.

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“Old city”, Lahore (#34 in series: Badshahi Mosque “1”)

Published August 27, 2025 by Pelidoug

“Old city”, Lahore (#34 in series: Badshahi Mosque “1”)

You are looking at Pakistan’s most “emblematic” building.

At the time of its astonishingly swift construction, Lahore’s Badshahi Mosque (“Badshahi Masjid”, to locals) was the world’s largest mosque/masjid.

Construction began in 1671.

It opened two years later.

342 years on, the Mughal Empire’s final large-scale architectural marvel still inspires awe.

Its main building – pictured above – is the key visual presence on every Pakistan 500 rupee banknote.

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“Old city”, Lahore (#33 in series: Sheesh Mahal details…& the reason it exists)

Published August 26, 2025 by Pelidoug

“Old city”, Lahore (#33 in series: Sheesh Mahal details…& the reason it exists)

Lahore Fort’s Sheesh Mahal and Agra’s Taj Mahal were both commissioned by the same Mughal emperor.

Each expressed – mostly, in white marble – his abiding love for his favourite wife.

Shah Jahan (1592-1666) had three wives, but only one marriage was a “love match”.

He renamed his beloved, “Mumtaz Mahal” – “the exalted one of the palace”.

Allegedly, Mumtaz Mahal had a dream/vision of heaven; the Sheesh Mahal was her husband’s attempt to make that dream “real”.

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“Old city”, Lahore (#32 in series: carved marble screens, Sheesh Mahal)

Published August 24, 2025 by Pelidoug

“Old city”, Lahore (#32 in series: carved marble screens, Sheesh Mahal)

The highly elaborate “mirror work” decorations on its walls and ceilings are the signature feature of the Sheesh Mahal.

Much less “showy”, but at least as beautiful, are the carved marble screens on its northern side.

As well as being lovely to look at – and to look through – these screens are very “practical”.

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