Natural splendour, real musics, wines, wordpower
A bit less than 30 minutes after I took the previous post’s photo, we had walked a little further north, along Flinders’ western shoreline.
By 10.16 am the “face” of Hummocky/ Mount Chappell Island looked very different, albeit still unmistakably-itself.
Mount Chappell is remarkably imposing, given the peak’s modest (198 metres) altitude.
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This post’s photo was taken just a few minutes further into our morning walk on 18 March 2025.
When clouds move along in a dappled sky, they can swiftly and dramatically change a landscape’s/seascape’s appearance.
A few minutes earlier – as pictured in this series’ preceding chapter – the “darkly forbidding”, low-lying island in front of Hummocky/Mt Chappell Island was an “inviting” isle, bathed in golden light.
Matthew Flinders named Mount Chappell in 1798, after the maiden name of the woman he would marry in 1801.
Flinders Island, is named after him, as are more than 100 other Australian places; Flinders was the first person to map the entire Australian continent’s shoreline – mostly, with astonishing precision.
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I took this post’s photo at 9.49 am on 18 March 2025, as we were walking along part of the southern portion of the western shore of Flinders Island.
Flinders is much the largest in the Furneaux Group, which sits at the eastern edge of Bass Strait, off the northeast tip of Tasmania’s “mainland”.
The Furneaux Group has circa 100 members; whatever shorelines you walk on Flinders Island, other islands are always visible.
The pictured “island in the sun” (whilst our vantage point was still cloud-shaded) is variously known as “Mount Chappell Island” or as “Hummocky”.
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The headline above is the key sentence in an essay published on 04 May 2025.
That essay’s headline: Are the Liberals in danger of becoming the Kodak of Australian politics?
Yesterday’s Pelican Yoga post included its most telling paragraph.
It is a direct quotation from a speech delivered in 1946 by a young, multiply-wounded ex-RAAF pilot; in 1949 he became a Liberal senator.
In 1968 he – John Gorton – became Prime Minister.
As the essay’s author observes:
His vision was generous, compassionate and cosmopolitan: of an Australia and a wider world “in which meanness and poverty, tyranny and hate, have no existence.”
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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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