Category Archives: Landscape

Flinders Island flight

When The Doc visited Flinders Island in late 2023 for a photography course, the group went on a plane ride. The plane took off from Lady Barron airs strip and flew over Cape Barren Island, Green Dog Island and a few other islands all part of the Furneaux group. The images were taken through Plexiglass, so the images are soft and they had heavy colour casts. The Doc got rid of most of the colour casts with some recent techiques, and has salvaged a few images. Not inspiring images but better than nothing.

Devil’s Marbles revisited

The Doc reprocessed some images from his Northern Territory trip, since he cannot travel due to treatment. This time the Devils Marbles south of Tennant Creek. A few image this time. Click on any image to see the slideshow, enjoy.

Arnhem Land Revisited – medium format style

The Doc took two cameras on the helicopter, including a Pentax 645Z Medium format camera. The Pentax gives massive files which The Doc can crop how he wishes. The files have eye watering details, not always appreciated when you can only post small images on a blog.

The Pentax renders very accurate colours, more so than the Canon 1DX which was the other camera used. These images are a very accurate representation on what you see from the helicopter.

To be precise, these images are from the West Arnhem Region.

Arnhem Land Revisited

Some images reprocessed from The Doc’s 4 day helicopter trip around Arnhem Land and Kakadu in 2017. It was a great trip. Click on an image to see the slideshow. Enjoy.

Piccaninny Plains revisited

AWC Supporter events are about to start at Piccaninny Plains on Cape York. The Doc visited back in 2014, and did a flyover in 2015 on Day 4 of the Cape York helicopter trip. It is a fantastic place and very different to others parts of Australia he has visited.

The Doc needed a break from the ongoing rehab and reprocessed some of his old images, using his new post processing techniques. They turned out great.

Most of the images were taken on the helicopter. Enjoy. Click on the first image to see a full size slideshow.

Bullo River Cruise

At the recent AWC Supporter Event at Bullo River Station we had small groups doing guided tours along the Bullo River, with a cold breakfast supplied (fresh fruit, quiche, yogurt, nuts, freshly squeezed OJ and muffins).

A few images are below. Click on an image to see a slideshow at full size. Enjoy the beauty of God’s creation.

The Doc is still writing the longer Bullo report.

Corroboree Billabong – the Sony A9III in the field

The Doc took the Sony A9III out into the field for its first use. A few test photos on the ground at Bullo River Station, but the first proper test was the helicopter trip around the property. Report coming, with images, in due course.

With any new camera there is learning curve concerning how to best set it up and use it. A few mistakes were made and a few images lost, but no disaster. The Doc was worried at setting the frames per second (fps) too low in the helicopter, but the culling of images showed that not to be the case.

The camera can go up to 120 fps in High Plus speed mode. 120 fps was not used on the helicopter, but it was on the Corroboree Billabong cruise, when The Doc had limited time to get images, including the old saltwater crocodile. The camera was amazing and this feature will come in useful for action shots. You must use it sparingly and cull images cull images, hard.

Having visited Corroboree Billabong before with Wetland Cruises, The Doc knew it would be a good day trip out of Darwin. Corroboree Billabong has the highest concentration of crocs in the world. It has both fresh water and salt water crocodiles. Corroboree Billabong is located on the Mary River floodplain.

The landscape images were being taken by the Sony P&S, not the A9III, as the A9III was fitted with a 135mm lens.

The harsh light in the middle of the day meant no brilliant images from the billabong.

The roadtrains and billabong images first, followed by the crocs close ups.

Now the croc images. The croc was getting close to 5 metres in length, so very dangerous to the stupid and unwary.

Bullo River Gorge – lots of bull

The Doc is back in Darwin, sorting and culling images from the trip. He will spend a week here exploring, after a rest day.

If Bullo River Station sounds familiar it was made famous by Sarah Henderson’s book From Strength to Strength.

A superb all round experience. Amazing accommodation, great facilities, great food and support from both AWC Guides and Bullo River staff. The trip included bird watching, a morning river cruise, a guided helicopter trip, road trips around the Station and a last minute change in our arrival because of rain washing out the airstrip. We landed in Kununurra and were driven into Bullo River Station, down the Bullo River Access Road.

One place The Doc visited, on a helicopter trip around Bullo River Station, was Bullo River Gorge. More precisely, the part of the gorge known as Bull River Sands.

Earlier that morning, we had flown around the Bullo River and along the Victoria River to visit an AWC science team in the field, then we flew onto to Bullo River Gorge for breakfast.

The Bullo River starts and finishes on Bullo River Station, hence the Station’s name.

AWC runs the best supporter events, made even better when the Bull River Tourism team was involved.

A taste of what is coming. Enjoy.

Bullo River Sands, Bullo River Gorge, Bullo River Station

We were delivered in the bush taxi, a Robinson R44 helicopter landing in the gorge.