Tasmania – Pelican Yoga

Flinders Island, March ‘25 (#29 in series: living on the edge + musical bonus)

Published June 18, 2025 by Pelidoug

Flinders Island, March ‘25 (#29 in series: living on the edge + musical bonus)

As highlighted in this series, Flnders Island’s shorelines are both beautiful and very demanding – especially for plants.

I imagine that not a few visitors perceive a place such as the one pictured above as “unspoilt”, “wild”, “pristine”.

The above adjectives are “wildly” inaccurate!

(I took the photo on the southern half of Flinders Island’s west coast at 10.08 am on March 2025. I love such places, where things “hard” and “soft”, “massive” and “petite”, “inanimate” and “living” all coexist, near terra firma’s edge)

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Flinders Island, March ‘25 (#28 in series: “natural” forces)

Published June 17, 2025 by Pelidoug

Flinders Island, March ‘25 (#28 in series: “natural” forces)

You are looking at what the strength/weakness, relative abundance/scarcity, or presence/absence of various substances/qualities has delivered.

Likely-major players in the pictured instance: long-extinct volcanoes, erosion, chemical reactions, gravity, wind, rain, salt (windblown, from the nearby sea) and fire, sunlight, shade, shelter, temperature variation, “exhausted” soils, sheep.

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Flinders Island, March ‘25 (#27 in series: rock stars, with hangers-on)

Published June 14, 2025 by Pelidoug

Flinders Island, March ‘25 (#27 in series: rock stars, with hangers-on)

Australia is remarkably rich in exposed rock, including some of “our” planet’s loveliest and longest-exposed rock.

Even by Australian standards, Flinders Island is particularly well-endowed.

Its “rock stars” are often gloriously “decorated” by the wondrous-strange organisms that live on them.

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Flinders Island, March’25 (#26 in series: west coast, again)

Published June 13, 2025 by Pelidoug

Flinders Island, March’25 (#26 in series: west coast, again)

This post’s photos were taken about half an hour after the previous post’s, and circa one kilometre further north.

The featured image involved a telephoto lens; its 400mm focal made Flinders’ highest peaks look very much closer than they actually were.

It also emphasised the ruffled water and the rocks, immediately off the shore on which I stood.

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Flinders Island, March ‘25 (#25 in series: west coast, looking south)

Published June 11, 2025 by Pelidoug

Flinders Island, March ‘25 (#25 in series: west coast, looking south)

This post’s three images were taken within the space of twenty minutes, as we walked in a northerly direction, along part of Flinders Island’s west coast.

All three look south toward Strzelecki National Park; its peaks are the island’s highest, and they dominate its southern end.

The featured image offers a wide-angle view. (34mm focal length)

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Flinders Island, March ‘25 (#24 in series: Mount Chappell Island “3” + musical bonus)

Published June 9, 2025 by Pelidoug

Flinders Island, March ‘25 (#24 in series: Mount Chappell Island “3” + musical bonus)

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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Flinders Island, March ‘25 (#23 in series: Mount Chappell Island “2” + musical bonus)

Published June 7, 2025 by Pelidoug

Flinders Island, March ‘25 (#23 in series: Mount Chappell Island “2” + musical bonus)

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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Flinders Island, March ‘25 (#22 in series: Mount Chappell Island “1” + musical bonus)

Published June 6, 2025 by Pelidoug

Flinders Island, March ‘25 (#22 in series: Mount Chappell Island “1” + musical bonus)

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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Flinders Island, March ‘25 (#21 in series: big geese, taking off)

Published June 3, 2025 by Pelidoug

Flinders Island, March ‘25 (#21 in series: big geese, taking off)

It is very safe to assume that on 26 March 2025 the pictured grassy “runway” experienced more landings, take-offs and taxiings than did Flinders Island’s airport.

At the airport each such action was a “one at a time” affair; in the paddock, invariably, each such event simultaneously involved a pair of partners-for-life.

The featured photo and the one below were taken within a few seconds of each other, and they show the same couple.

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Flinders Island, March ‘25 (#20 in series: ‘til death do them part)

Published June 2, 2025 by Pelidoug

Flinders Island, March ‘25 (#20 in series: ‘til death do them part)

Cape Barren geese are monogamous, and a “breeding pair” usually forms a life-long bond.

During the breeding season the pair focus almost exclusively on each other, their nest and their eggs/chicks.

After breeding season (generally, in tussocky wild places on offshore islands) Cape Barren geese usually fly to grassy places.

These are often on south-coastal, mainland-Australian farmland, or paddocks on the larger offshore islands.

In “grazing mode”, the geese are more generally-sociable.

However, as you can see in the immediately-preceding chapter’s photo, even within grazing “flocks” the pair-bonds are conspicuously evident.

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Tag: Tasmania