Natural splendour, real musics, wines, wordpower
This post’s two photos were taken within thirty seconds of each other.
Promenading pelicans sometimes resemble corpulent “captains of industry” at a “prestigious”, corporate “backslapping”,”bonding” or “charitable” event…or attendees at a political party’s “pay for access” fundraiser.
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This post’s photo was taken three minutes after the previous chapter’s featured image.
As you can see, at 12.40 pm on 13 March 2024, all cormorants near to “our” boat decided to take off.
The nearest pelicans and swans stayed put.
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After our stroll to & from the ocean beach side of the Younghusband Peninsula, “our” boat headed further south along the Coorong’s north lagoon.
It became progressively more apparent that we were visiting during “boom” time.
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For many thousands of years, before Europeans arrived, the Younghusband Peninsula was one of Australia’s most densely (human) populated places.
When we landed on it on the morning of 13 March 2024, we were accompanied by Ngarrindjeri elder Darryl Koolmatrie.
At Godfrey’s Landing he formally welcomed us.
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Happily, the pictured sign is obeyed by most of the many humans who drive onto Goolwa’s ocean beach, then proceed south…all the way along the Sir Richard Peninsula, to Pullen Spit.
Pullen Spit is the constantly-shifting northern bank of the River Murray’s mouth.
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The (constantly-shifting) mouth of the Murray-Darling river system is also the Coorong’s mouth.
If the Murray is “roaring”, its “fresh” water “flushes” the Coorong – Australia’s longest lagoon; if it is not “roaring”, the combined forces of incoming ocean water and evaporation of the lagoon’s water make the Coorong progressively more saline.
The Coorong’s southern lagoon – a long way south of the Murray – is usually hypersaline.
This post’s photos were both taken from the Coorong’s northern part, looking at the Pullen Spit, and across it to the Southern Ocean.
In effect, the Pullen Spit is the northern bank of the Murray’s mouth.
Comments closedSurrounded by many tiny birds (dotterels, I think) is a solitary example of the bird with the biggest bill of them all.
Almost immediately on our entering the northern (Murray mouth);end of the Coorong it was abundantly evident that we were witnessing “boom time”.
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The European carp which infest and degrade the Murray-Darling River system are disdained by most Australian human eaters of fish.
For a seal at Goolwa, however, a carp is a “highly-desirable, easily-caught meal”.
The recent “flood years” have flushed and funnelled umpteen millions of European carp through the Goolwa Barrage’s opened gates.
If long-nosed fur seals could speak English, they’d probably describe the Goolwa Barrage’s current hunting and dining “scene” as akin to “shooting fish in a barrel”.
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As regular readers would already know, the Coorong is one of our favourite places.
This series is the fruit of our most recent visit, on 13 March 2024.
In the wake of the 2022-23 floods – which produced the Murray-Darling river system’s biggest flows in many years – the Coorong was enjoying better overall “”health” than had been the case over the preceding several decades.
Most tourist visitors enter the Coorong via the Goolwa Barrage, where this series begins.
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Venerable and majestic as it is, the pictured river red gum is neither the tallest, nor most massive, nor oldest example of the Australian mainland’s most widely distributed and most widely-loved eucalypt species.
The pictured tree, however was “the hero” in the most famous photograph ever taken of Eucalyptus camaldulensis.
87 years ago one of the most influential Australian photographers saw this tree, standing on a sparsely vegetated plateau, with Wilpena Pound’s flanks behind it.
The tree has stood there for at least several centuries; “the Pound” is circa 800 million years older.
Harold Cazneaux (aka “H.P. Cazneaux”) captioned his 1937 tree portrait, The Spirit of Endurance.
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