Natural splendour, real musics, wines, wordpower
This post’s photo was taken just after sunset, less than two minutes after the previous post’s.
If I had pointed my camera at the pictured branches a few minutes earlier, they would have been “empty”, and most of the pictured birds would not yet even have flown into our field of view.
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There is a deal of grace here, too!
Ibis are among more than a few birds which appear “awkward” when on terra firma – or on slushier ground, or enjoying the local tip, sitting atop your roof, or “dealing with” a rubbish bin – but are decidedly elegant, aloft.
Comments closedAt 6.20 pm on the last day of March 2024 we were standing beside the western shore of Lake Monger.
The setting sun had just “disappeared”, now hidden by the low slope behind us.
However, in the sky above us, the last of that day’s direct sunbeams were able to reach the underside of the pictured ibis.
It was just beginning its descent.
A few seconds later it joined a rapidly-growing number of roosting “bin chickens”, settling in for the night.
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The very same bird can “look” very different, depending on the observer’s knowledge/ignorance, that observer’s particular preconceptions/prejudices, and the bird’s current activity/stance/position.
And if one is photographing a bird that is both much-loved and widely-loathed, it is easy for a photographer to pander to – or to defy – “negative” or “positive” preconceptions about it.
This little series features one such species.
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For a law-abiding citizen, there was a necessary precondition to enable this post’s photos: to be “on the water” in Port Adelaide, looking at the starboard side of the relevant ship.
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You are looking at Port Adelaide’s most arresting (and “enigmatic”) 21st century structure.
You may be relieved to know that it has nothing to with nuclear power!
As a construction industry journal headline put it, on the 2nd day of February 2023:
The timing of that story’s publication was exquisitely unfortunate.
On that very day – barely a week after the balloon-like structure’s erection/inflation – it burst, very spectacularly:
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Q: what does the “skin” of the world’s oldest such “surviving” clipper ship look like, at age 160 years?
A: have a close look at this post’s photos of the City of Adelaide. (taken in Port Adelaide on 07 March 2024)
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You are looking at the older of the world’s two surviving examples of their particular, “elite” type of sailing ship.
The younger one is the Cutty Sark.
The City of Adelaide was launched five years earlier, in 1864, in Sunderland.
It was custom-built to transport passengers and cargo to and from South Australia.
For its first 23 years of service, City of Adelaide sailed to and from Adelaide, annually.
An amazing “fact”: almost quarter of a million Australians can trace their heritage to passengers and crew of the City of Adelaide.
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This post involves the same vessel as did the previous one: the Santiago.
On 12 January 2023 – more than 166 years after the three-masted barque was launched – the Santiago suddenly lost its status as “probably the world’s oldest substantially intact iron-hulled sailing ship”.
For many years it had been patently obvious that the world’s last such hull would collapse – and restoration/preservation of the vessel would thereby become impracticable/impossible – unless timely (and expensive) efforts were made.
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I took this post’s photos in March 2024.
The pictured vessel was launched in 1856.
It was the largest, the oldest, and – in 1945 – it was the last of many vessels abandoned in Port Adelaide’s ships’ graveyards.
On the 12th day of January 2023 its iron hull collapsed, more than 166 years after its construction, and after nearly 78 years spent embedded in silt, on the mangrove-rimmed North Arm of the Port River.
(the hull’s front section is now upside down, as you can see in this post’s images)
Until 12 January 2023, that hull was probably “our” planet’s last intact example of its rare kind.
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