Natural splendour, real musics, wines, wordpower
Western Australia’s south coast is mostly unspoilt, uncrowded, wonderfully wild.
However, in February 2025 sunshine, strong winds and big waves were generally “AWOL”, and the usually-brilliant, clear light was mostly flat, hazy and/or smoke-tainted.
This trip yielded an unprecedentedly low number of worthwhile opportunities for landscape/seascape photography!
Nonetheless, even on a “flat, grey day”…
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You are looking at new growth on a very old, very large tree.
The Red Tingle – Eucalyptus Jacksonii – is a survivor, just, from a much wetter time.
Its “suitable habitat” has shrunk to a tiny portion of Western Australia’s south coast; almost all of it within Walpole-Nornalup National Park, which contains the wettest part of southern Western Australia.
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This post’s forest floor “natural abstract” was photographed a couple of minutes later than was the “5” Porongurup image.
Their locations were only a few footsteps distant from each other.
One of the world’s greater guitarists has (unwitttingly) provided a sublime musical accompaniment..
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On WA’s wonderfully wild south coast there are some calm days, and a few truly safe places to bathe or swim.
16 February 2025 was such a day, and the “secret beach” (just east of Anvil Beach) usually offers safe bathing in perfectly reef-sheltered waters.
As evident in the featured image, even on this exceptionally calm day, the ocean-facing side of the reef gave occasional hints of the ocean’s oomph.
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“Stay here with Mom. Dad’s going fishing.”
In the pictured instance no such words had been spoken, nor contemplated.
It was a quiet delight to observe a father who so well understood that “joyful fishing is not just about catching fish”.
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As in #10 in this series, you are looking at a photo which illustrates the power of the Shyok River.
By road, we were now 35 minutes further upstream, closer to Khaplu.
At 4.49 pm on 15 May 2024, the fast-flowing, largely glacier-fed river’s flow was relatively low.
The Shyok’s width, depth and flow-rate are hugely variable; the river transported and deposited all of the photograph’s silt, sand, gravel and rocks.
My telephoto lens zoomed in on just a very small portion of what my naked eyes could see in a single glance, with head still.
One translation of the Shyok’s name: river of death.
Its floods have killed many people, drowned trees and crops too, and destroyed/removed many formerly-arable fields, even some of the houses that had been built above and behind the fields, on what used to be “safe” ground.
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I do not believe in the notion that any single player/composer/writer/whatever kind of artist is – or ever was the best.
That said, Zakir Hussain was undoubtedly the most influential, most eclectically-inclined, and most ubiquitous hand-drummer/percussionist in human history.
(Jim McGuire took the photo of him)
Zakir Hussain died on Monday, in his adoptive home city of San Francisco.
He was born 73 years earlier, in what was then Bombay, now Mumbai.
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Q #1: what is the pictured jellyfish-like fragment from a (presumably) recently-deceased marine creature?
A: I do not know.
Q #2: upon what has it “washed up”, in very shallow water?
A: sand, obviously.
(on Lights Beach, at eastern end of William Bay National Park, on Western Australia’s south coast)
Bigger question: what is sand, exactly?
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Most non-Indonesians who have any familiarity with the term Wayang think of it as a form of theatre which features so-called “shadow puppets”.
Wayang kulit – the form which involves “shadow puppets” – is in fact just one of Indonesia’s several kinds of Wayang theatre.
One of them does not directly involve any puppets.
Another – the kind pictured above – features highly skilled puppetry and puppet-making, but its puppets are very unlike their Wayang kulit counterparts.
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I took the photo at 8.54 pm on 04 May 2024.
At that time my vantage point – an entertainment barge – was loud and lively, as the preceding several posts have illustrated.
However, if one looked out across the waters of Dal Lake – and up to the ridge overlooking its southern shore – the scene appeared utterly serene, unruffled, “silent”.
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