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Tag: South Australia

Looking down (#11 in series – trees “4” – Spring Gully)

Published January 31, 2026 by Pelidoug

Looking down (#11 in series – trees “4” – Spring Gully)

 

This sequel to #10 in this series looks down into the actual gully in Spring Gully Conservation Park.

Its  own website  explains the Park’s raison d’être:

Spring Gul­ly Con­ser­va­tion Park was set aside to con­serve the west­ern­most pop­u­la­tion of the red stringy­bark Euca­lyp­tus macrorhyn­cha. This park is the only reserve in South Aus­tralia to con­tain this par­tic­u­lar species. 

Alas, Spring Gully’s “hero” species is now in serious trouble in its sole South Australian “refuge”.

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Looking down (#10 in series – trees “3”: Spring Gully, South Australia)

Published January 25, 2026 by Pelidoug

Looking down (#10 in series – trees “3”: Spring Gully, South Australia)

 

Spring Gully Conservation Park is 8 kilometres south of Clare, in South Australia’s mid-north.

From Adelaide, it is a little less than a two hour drive; day-tripping from the city is feasible.

However, the so-called “Clare Valley” (in truth, this distinctive region has more than one valley) is such a rewarding destination that it is a much better idea to base yourself there for at least several days.

As the next post will further explain, Spring Gully is of great “conservation value”, and it is more than a little “vulnerable”.

Meanwhile, enjoy what a ridgetop vantage point can do, late on an autumn day…

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Grand sands (#51 in series: “sur la plage” at Goolwa, South Australia)

Published February 18, 2025 by Pelidoug

Grand sands (#51 in series: “sur la plage” at Goolwa, South Australia)

 

Vive la différence!

Goolwa does not aspire to be “the Saint-Tropez of the Southern Hemisphere”.

No wannabe “Brigitte Bardot” is ever likely to strut, mince or pout her way along this strand.

“Chic” and “Goolwa” are two words I have never seen or heard within the same sentence.

However, I am sure the “relaxed and contented” index is very much higher on its ocean beach than on any “Riviera” strand.

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Grand sands (#47 in series: Lake Eyre Basin [2 of 2] + musical bonus)

Published February 14, 2025 by Pelidoug

Grand sands (#47 in series: Lake Eyre Basin [2 of 2] + musical bonus)

 

 

Many millions of years before any words were spoken on “our” planet, it was already being “adorned”, “painted” and “sculpted” by the greatest of all “abstract artists”.

Relative to a human’s lifespan – or an empire’s or a civilisation’s – some of Nature’s creations are “permanent”.

Others are “ephemeral”, even fleeting.

Uluru is “permanent”, a crisp morning’s hoar frost is “fleeting”.

In an arid landscape, the interactions between sand, wind and water can produce particularly beautiful “abstracts”.

Most of these “artworks” are ephemeral or fleeting.

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Grand sands (#46 in series: Lake Eyre Basin [1 of 2])

Published February 13, 2025 by Pelidoug

Grand sands (#46 in series: Lake Eyre Basin [1 of 2])

 

Even a flat, harsh, arid landscape – the kind some humans regard as “ugly” or “boring”, when they experience it only at ground level – is likely to prove “amazing” and “beautiful” to the very same humans, if ever they fly over it.

This “revelation” is very nearly an inevitability if the relevant aircraft flies when the sun is “low”.

One winter morning in 2023 my beloved and I flew over just such a landscape – the one in which sits Australia’s most extensive lake.

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Grand sands (#34 in series: “looking down” on Aldinga Beach)

Published January 21, 2025 by Pelidoug

Grand sands (#34 in series: “looking down” on Aldinga Beach)

This post’s photo was taken shortly before sunset, at 8.11 pm on 21 January 2023.

Near the southernmost kink in Aldinga Beach’s Lower Esplanade, I was standing on the top of the stairs to Silver Sands – the southern section of Aldinga’s long strand.

As had been true at the same time on the previous day, a cooling breeze was blowing.

Accordingly, sandgrains were dancing;  click here to see a photo, taken at beach level, with a wide-angle (24 mm) rather than a telephoto (146 mm) lens.

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Grand sands (#20 in series: Aldinga Beach – “suburban” strand, but grand)

Published January 3, 2025 by Pelidoug

Grand sands (#20 in series: Aldinga Beach – “suburban” strand, but grand)

 

 

By car or bus, the pictured location is circa 45 kilometres south of Adelaide’s CBD.

If you avoid rush hours, a car trip from the heart of Adelaide to Aldinga Beach can take just 45 minutes.

Aldinga Beach is definitely not “just yet more of Adelaide’s dispiriting, seemingly never-ending sprawl”; it has well-protected natural bushland, a large number of resident ‘roos, reefs onto which one can walk, at low tide…and glorious beaches.

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Grand sands (#3 in series: big spit)

Published December 13, 2024 by Pelidoug

Grand sands (#3 in series: big spit)

 

Definition, ex Wikipedia:

A spit (cognate with the word for a rotisserie bar) or sandspit is a deposition bar or beach landform off coasts or lake shores. It develops in places where re-entrance occurs, such as at a cove’s headlands, by the process of longshore drift by longshore currents. The drift occurs due to waves meeting the beach at an oblique angle, moving sediment down the beach in a zigzag pattern. This is complemented by longshore currents, which further transport sediment through the water alongside the beach.

If a spit is extraordinarily long, long-established and well-vegetated, many people will fail to recognise that it is a spit.

This post’s big spit is not in the photo’s foreground, and does not have an enormous number of pelicans and cormorants standing upon it.

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