The Arrival of Big Al :-)

My dad arrived :-) Not bad at all! His arrival was the starting signal to a well orchestrated 3.5 weeks of excitement ... and probably also the main reason for the pathetic amount of postings hitting the blog lately ;-)

Using the first few days to get the jet-lag under control we kept the action happening in the vicinity of Coogee where we visited a few of the good old favorites. As always it is fantastic to realize how much is happening outside your door if just you make it out there.

Took a few trips up and down along the cliffs of the Eastern suburbs. The picture above is a panorama of Magic Point - a location that has indeed proven quite magic for those who are out looking for Grey Nurse Sharks or a bit of BW'ing. If you click the picture you will get a high resolution version to enjoy.
The wind was wrong for BW'ing and only having two sets of snorkel and mask we decided to just enjoy the views and tick a few whales swimming south :-)


Not having planned to go north during my dad's stay we conveniently also ticket a couple of "Sydney-crocodiles" lying sunning themselves on a rock before going hunting for ... flies.

Final achievement of the first couple of days was to get my dad well and truly hooked on fish and chips, indeed a very easy task, that would give us much happiness during the next few weeks :-)

Eastlakes Golf Course

Eremaea had once again a post telling about all the wonders that reside at the Eastlakes Golf Course. I have never really liked the place - have only been there once - and ended up with exceptional muddy boots and nothing much more interesting than a few Welcome Swallows and some New Holland Honeyeaters.

Well, well - someone never learns and once again I found myself with muddy shoes in the reeds surrounding one of the lakes of the golf course. It was slightly better this time - but only slightly.

EGC is one of those places where you do much better if you arrive at the break of dawn, the good old standing looking into a setting sun is not the way to go! Highlight of the day was probably that even though I had muddy boots, it was still dry boots! Shoes on the other hand has the disadvantage of being significantly shorter than boots and my companion learned the hard way that those extra centimeters of Gore-Tex can make the difference between a bad day in the reeds and a terrible day in the swamp :-D

Quibray Bay Viewing Platform, Boat Harbour and Botany Bay National Park

Yet again we pointed the shiny bonnet of the Magna south and drove towards the south end of Botany Bay National park. Despite being only something like 10 kilometers south of Coogee (in a straight line) the habitat is apparently still sufficiently non-Coogee-like to ensure a very different selection of wildlife.

Made the usual stop at Quibray Bay viewing platform where we finally got decent views of a Whimbrel, - I have not seen that one before - accompanied by some Godwits and a Eastern Curlew. After a few seconds of celebration we got our act together and headed towards Boat Harbour. The walk out towards the rock platform was as always super good for spotting various reptiles.


But bird-wise it was very disappointing .. apart from a wind blown crowd of Crested Terns and some Cormorants we saw no feathered wildlife at all.

Instead we decided to push towards the Eastern end of the park, towards the Cape Baily Lighthouse. During my previous walks in the park this area has often given some great sightings and we were also in for a little treat this time. Sitting overlooking the ocean we suddenly noticed a White-bellied Sea-eagle approaching. WBSEs are normally quite good at keeping a distance, humans have not always treated the big predators of the sky with the respect they deserve and hence it is not straight forward to get a good close-up photo of a flying eagle.

This time, however, luck was on our side: An angry raven decided to try to scare the high cruising eagle away. The surprised WBSE desperately needing speed to outrun the aggressive attack did the only think possible and went into a steep dive, taking it straight above our heads and well and truly into range of the Bigma :-) Not bad at all, managed to get a few good ones of some quite spectacular nature.

La Perouse - Light and Shadow Plus a Bit of HDR Photography

Had a late evening down around La Perouse. Starting our walk the ocean was rough and the layer of clouds gave absolutely no hope of any light from above. If it was not for the possibility of getting some of the best fish and chips around Sydney down at Danny's we would probably have given up before we even started.

All wildlife seemed to have sunken in the ground and I was seriously afraid that carrying the Nikon would end up as nothing more than just some extra exercise. Just as we had finished our non-eventful round coming back towards the car park the sun finally got so low that it started breaking through the clouds.

Having tons of memory card space left I felt I could lash out and shoot some HDR stuff - it gives some colors on the blog ;-)

Coogee in Spring - Whale and Yellow-tailed Black-cockatoo Action

Even when the weather is bad, you can find action-packed entertainment just outside your door in Coogee :-) It was one of those Sundays where a steady flow of coffee in combo with the newspaper and Landline on ABC seemed to be the very best way Sydneysiders could spend their Sunday morning, weather was poor and an irregular surf eliminated any chance of some good snorkeling.

Good telly do unfortunately not last forever and when I get very caffeinated my apartment is not big enough, so we found a break in between the showers and headed out for a quick little walk.

Excellent idea! Less than 10 minuets after putting the boots on the tally included a whale and a flock of probably 20 Yellow-tailed Black-Cockatoos. The YTBCs were feeding vigorously in the trees just north of Coogee beach and showed absolutely no concern towards the Dane running around below the trees frantically trying to keep details in the black feathers while not overexposing the cloudy bright sky.

Guess there are two approaches to photography: You either very carefully compose and plan your shoots and get a high keeper rate - guess that is what you do if you are skilled in photography(?) Or you do as I did: Shoot a lot(!) and hope that some come out great :-D ... I actually managed to shoot so many that a few are likely to end up on my wall one day.

While running around under the trees a very helpful lady came up and said "with such a long lens, you should nearly try to take a few pictures of the whales" How sweet is that?! :-)
Guess the lesson is to get the bum of the sofa and get out and explore. Turning to a very different topic, I have started experimenting a bit with long exposure night panoramas ... a type of photography that screams for a good solid tripod! I do not have one yet (tripod that is), but sometimes you can actually get by without. Since Coogee is mentioned in the title I will throw an attempt in here and save the price of another blog entry :-)

Sydney Olympic Park - Homebush

It has been very quiet on the blog lately - sorry about that! If it can be any comfort the reason for the posting drought is that I have been enormously busy running around with the camera trying to make something happen in the life of Allan so that there would be something exciting to write about later ... and also I must admit that it took me longer than usual to fill out my tax return this year. I might have to rethink my filing system, it seems the good old "keep everything that look important in a pile"-system has grown increasingly cumbersome after 4 years down under :-)

Sydney Olympic Park is a great spot to kill a few hours after trying to find receipts for old flight tickets - at least it stops you from killing other things, such as filing systems and hard-to-search-email-programs ;-)

Triangular Pond is always worth a visit, we got all excited when the little fellow below started darting in between some grass mounds close to the far side - hence the poor image quality - It looks a little bit like something that has lost its tail - any suggestions are welcome.

Otherwise the usual suspects were out showing their feathers:


Walking through the Brickpit ring walk the presence of an Australasian Grebe on the water below could have ended up in a different and dare I say interesting angle for a bird photo - unfortunately it did not really click :-( It was beginning to go dark, the bird was not straight underneath and ca. 20 meters is probably slightly on the long side for a bird of that size .. better luck next time.

Just to make sure it is not all birds I have included this little guy that was lying on the tarmac trying to suck the last bit of heat out of the sun-warm ground before nightfall.