Ben Boyd National Park - Australia Day Long Weekend Road Trip

Nothing really beats a road trip! It should be so much more convenient to fly, but it is not! When you choose to fly, you are much more restricted in your packing, you cannot bring gas canisters for cooking and also pillow, doona and a coles bucket of food goodness is very hard to shrink to carry-on size. When you land you have to sort out all of that stuff; gas, food and you will need a car. The car rental company will make you sign a deal that make it impossible for you to go the places you really wanted - those hidden gems at the end of the gravel roads. Another thing is price; Yes, you can get some fantastic offers flying, but remember that getting to and from the airport will cost you! Some absurd political deal must have been made here in Sydney back in the day, when a private train line was built between the city and the airport - great for Sydneysiders and tourists .. well, not really as it is insanely overpriced and the dodgy political deal made sure that any other reasonable alternative to the train line was removed, making Sydney airport near impossible to get to with something as sensible as normal bus - so cab it is!

By choosing the roads, the travel becomes a part of the holiday. There is obviously a time factor that has to be calculated in; making your way to Darwin and back is probably not the most efficient way to see the North End during a long weekend escape, for that you would need a month or two ... ;-) For exploring the south east end of NSW, however, nothing beats the track of bitumen and we decided to once again rely on the comfort of the Magna and start our long weekend road trip with a visit to Ben Boyd National Park.

We made it out of Sydney straight after work Friday afternoon and managed to make it to Cooma before we decided to let it be for the day and crash at a motel. The good effort Friday had left us with only a few hours of additional driving, so we had a great, relaxed and beautiful drive across the mountains towards the coast and Ben Boyd National Park.

We were meeting the Amoores at the Bittangabee campsite in the south part of the national park. If the drive into the park was any indicator of what we would experience during our stay there was no doubt that we were in for a blast :-) Soon after hitting the gravel roads we started seeing Lace Monitors (Varanus Varius). Great stuff! It has been a while since my last encounter with these fairly big monitors and we managed to get a few good pictures. It is surprisingly easy taking pictures of these reptiles, since they for some reason believe that they are safe as soon as they are off the ground. So as soon as you see one, stop the car and get out - there is a good chance that will make the monitor start crawling up the closest tree and you can stand in (safety?) down below and take all the pictures you will need.

The campsite was absolutely fantastic, in fact the whole thing felt a bit like a proper holiday instead of a hardcore bush bashing lean mean camping experience. There was the sweetest little sandy beach next to the campsite and Adelle had booked the absolute best spot of the entire campsite giving us 180 degree water views - it all felt a bit like holiday!


Going to a coastal national park down south during mid Australian summer is a good idea! Despite being midday and no doubt extremely hot back home in Sydney, we had a pleasant sea breeze and the effect of moving nearly 400 kilometers south was definitely noticeable.

A little wander around the campsite was very rewarding and despite being midday we managed to see all kinds of excitement. The Swamp Wallaby (Wallabia bicolor) below was nearly oblivious to our existence.

... and a close up or two of a Wonga Pigeon is always exciting. Quite a few of these good size pigeons were walking around between the tents only slightly shyer than the Wallabys. All good, the Australia day long weekend was of to a fantastic start and there was still plenty of days to go.

La Perouse At Night And A Close Encounter With The Canon 5D Mark II

La Perouse is a great spot! I guess quite a few underrate exactly how nice it is down there; great bush, good beaches, fantastic fish and chips and stunning sunsets. Well, looking at house prices in the area I should probably not want to be quoted for claiming it is underrated, but is there anywhere along the coast that you can get anything decent for less than $1000000 and a couple of kidneys?

One of my friends has given in and put his accumulated pocket money to good use and invested in a DSLR. What a sane idea - unfortunately things are not always straight forward with this particular friend in question so while doing something good, as usual a bit of madness struck and made him buy Canon - the 5D Mark II in fact. [As a Nikon shooter you have to write that sort of stuff] :-D

I had been invited to have a closer look at this full frame beast, actually I had more or less invited myself to have a look at this second generation 5D. From what I have read on the internet a very capable package - maybe not the fastest speed monster out there, but probably the best high megapixel full frame deal on offer. Nikon's D3x alternative is way(!) too expensive even for many pros and the Sony alpha900 has started looking a little long in the teeth - it probably just beats the Canon if you are exclusively into landscapes, but the lack of high ISO magic and all the other bells and whistles; live view, video capability etc. makes the new 5D Mark II a much better choice for general full frame photography.

I tried the camera with Canon's 50mm f/1.8 II and the 24-105mm f/4.0 L IS a great combo of lenses. The zoom gives a near perfect range for a walk around lens and the fast 50mm prime is good for all the exciting stuff i.e. shallow depth of field, night shots, portraits and razor sharp when stopped down a bit. I have not done any pixel peeping - many much more capable places on the internet have done heaps of that stuff - but playing around with it, you get that good feeling of handling something of quality, it feels very solid and well built without being excessively heavy and I simply love that full frame viewfinder - WOW that packs a lot of light! :-)

An evening of chatting camera gear over some high quality fish and chips, what could be a better way of spending a week day evening? :-)
By the way, all the pictures in this blog post is from the old trusted D300, when the D5 Mark II pictures hit the internet, I will try to supply a link.

Big Waves In Coogee

Fantastic stuff! It is not very often the really big waves hit Coogee, indeed it is not very often that you can even claim that it is worth surfing around Coogee - the waves are simply just not good enough. This late January day, however, things were different.

[Notice the surfer to the right taking on this monster!]

I had finally decided to do what I should have done from the very beginning; put the new lens on and keep it there till I felt comfortable with it! That is how all new lenses should be treated! At work I had heard that it was looking like it would be "good" surf conditions along most of the coast, so why not take advantage and go for a little surf watching - photo walk combo.

Standing watching these gigantic waves coming in was absolutely gob smacking and when a group of 5 surfers started paddling towards them it attracted a crowd of probably up towards a few hundred people standing there watching the battle.

In about 1 hour all in all we saw one(!) single surfer actually being able to make it out to behind the point where the waves started breaking, probably ca. 500 meters from the beach. After a few minutes of resting he received an epic cheer from the crowd when aligning his board and catching one of the monsters of the day - fantastic stuff! First of all making it out there was only achieved by him - his 4 mates were still struggling in the foamy waters closer to the coast - but someone actually taking on and riding on of these waves was everything you could have hoped for as a spectator ... I would seriously have loved bringing the Bigma, but for keeping the wave in the shot I must admit the macro was probably better suited - exactly the purpose of exploring what you can do with your new lens! ;-)

After his ride, he had been pushed back probably around 100 meters and it was like the water had been infuriated by him conquering a wave and a set of 4 to 5 even larger monsters were rolling in, pushing everyone even further back - at some stage it started looking slightly dangerous since the pounding waves gave very little time for recovery. It broke the spirit of most of the surfers and as we left it looked unlikely that anyone else would be able to ride the waves.

It is weird only having 150mm - at that distance it becomes quite a significant task to "zoom with your feet". At first I was considering running home to pick up the bigma for the surfer pictures, but in reality I should probably be happier with what came out of the prime. With the zoom I would probably have made a close up of the surfer as he plunged down the slope of the wave, but would have lost the shear magnitude of the wave. Being forced to include the wave might indeed have made it a more interesting picture. :-)

Birding With The Pros - Pitt Town Lagoon and Sheyville National Park

Full and contented from a surprisingly good lunch we made the short drive to good old Pitt Town Lagoon eager to see if once again this little gem of a bird spot would deliver.

Weather had changed! Clouds had come in and covered the scorching sun, which was nice, but making our way down to the Lagoon was like walking into a steam sauna, humidity was approaching 100% and temperature had not yet dropped - well, we were not there to enjoy(?) and you cannot die from sweating(?) .. so we dived in ;-)

At first it all seemed a bit difficult, the Australian part of the company was not to happy about the never ending bashing through tall grass in the vicinity of water - absolutely prime snake territory - and trying to alert the snakes of our little party passing through probably had the same effect on all wildlife including the birds - what to do?

Slowing down and letting things happen around you is often the way to go and suddenly from nowhere was a little family of about 6 beautifully colored finch sized birds jumping around in the tall grass: Chestnut-breasted Mannikin - I have never seen them before :-)

During our exploration around the Lagoon we managed to a get close to a good selection of waders, however, the target species were not "home". Instead we had another surprise encounter with a (different?) Cuckoo. Unfortunately the pictures are not good enough for the blog, small bird in a tree 100 meters away is not "publishable" here. Instead I have included a link to some of the pictures from the trip down at the end of this post and invite anyone interested to take a look and chip in with comments on the Cuckoo in picture 18 and 19.

Apart from the excitement that comes along with being lost we were getting a bit birded out when exploring around in Sheyville National Park. Some Brown-headed Honeyeater and an unidentified Swift should have been photographic highlights - that could potentially have happened if I had changed to the much less light-hungry macro lens, instead of holding onto the reach of the bigma .. at least, such a swap would have allowed me to do a "proper" macro of the semi-macro fly photos you will have to content yourselves with.
All in all a great trip! Fantastic company and Pitt town and Bushell's Lagoons are always worth a visit. Indeed it could be argued that it would be sad to see everything in one go, since it would severely increase the activation barrier for going on the next trip :-) One would have to do something as stupid as starting up a year-list or similar madness to solve such "problems" :-D

Birding Road Trip

Birding Trip With the Pros :-) Windsor Downs, Bushell's Lagoon, Pitt Town Lagoon and Scheyville National Park

What a trip! Four top birding spots in one day, traveling with some exceptionally experienced birding celebrities, what more can you ask for? Well, one could argue that it would be nice with some birds to look at, and as the observant reader will notice it is often a bad sign when a birding blog post starts with 2 insects pictures :-)

The Nikon started snapping before the trip had really started. In the back streets of Newtown I managed to stalk the butterfly in the first picture - these guys are very shy creatures and seems to know when they are being observed. Though 750mm full frame equivalent (FFE) takes a bit off the required early morning sneaking skills.

Amazingly and brutally honest: The grasshopper in picture two was probably the highlight of Windsor Downs :-D We gave it a good go though, using at least an hour wandering around in a dry and very warm forest seeing only a few wrens and a White-throated Treecreeper - I need to see the Red-browed soon!

Bushell's Lagoon, however, never disappoints! Even during the very warm part of an Australian summer day the waterbirds will be out and on this particular day at Bushell's even a few nice surprises: The Cuckoo below for one :-)

A bit of walking through high grass brought us out on some wonderful(?) mud flats where a good crowd of waders had found refuge. Sharp-tailed Sandpiper (below) and Black-fronted Dotterel. No sight of the Grey Plover, but who cares ...? ;-)

This year seems to be the "year of the turtles", I have seen turtles in every waterhole I have visited since I came back to Australia after Christmas and New Year in Denmark. The little fellow below had dragged itself into a nice warm sunny spot taking full advantage of the scorching sun.

We decide to retreat back to Windsor for some shade, a look at some real estate pricing (I really love that) and a bit of lunching - all in combo with a deliberation on how to solve the the lack-of-birds problem. I have never been to Bushell's Lagoon without seeing a Black-shouldered kite and this day was no different .. At some point I will have to get the Letter-winged Kite .. soon!..?

Yet Another Spider Macro Post

This little fellow was having its web expanded in a fence close to where the Magna sleeps in the streets of Coogee. You get a bit macro-nerdy trying to spot small things in your surroundings that you can practice taking pictures of :-)

I realized that I badly need a spider book! The little fellow here is probably a female Garden Orb-weaver of some sort, it is a bit of a stab in the dark, so if anyone out there has better sources please do not hesitate to chip in - I will start looking for a heavily discounted spider book straight away! :-)