Natural splendour, real musics, wines, wordpower
In complete contrast to the preceding post, the relevant water is saline rather than “fresh”, and it is neither tannin-darkened, turbulent/fast-flowing, nor shaded by an overcast sky.
At 5.19 pm on the first day of April in 2022, one of our favourite Australian coastal locations was basking in “golden hour” sunlight.
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As was true of #41 in this series, I took the featured photograph in southeastern Alaska’s Glacier Bay in June 2015.
Unsurprisingly, kelp “forests” thrive there.
Kelps (and all other seaweed species) do photosynthesise, but – like all other algae – they are not plants.
Algae – even the towering “forests” of giant kelp – have no roots, nor any “complex” vascular structures.
As anyone who has harvested washed-up kelp from a beach knows, a single frond from a kelp “forest” can be massive – much too heavy to float.
So how does a kelp “forest” manage to stay upright, with its fronds positioned high enough in the water column to enable them to “harvest” the necessary sunlight?
You are looking at the answer.
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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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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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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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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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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.
Comments closedThis 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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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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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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