The longest report The Doc has done for an AWC Supporter’s Event. Lots of photos and an amazing experiences here.
Bullo River Station Report finished
Category Archives: Kimberley
Derby helicopter trip – medium format style
The Doc also took his Pentax medium format camera on the helicopter. A selection of a few images from that camera are below.
The original images are massive in size (around 250 megs), and have stunning details even when heavily cropped. Not an easy camera to use in a helicopter because of its size and its slow autofocus. Plus you do not want to take too many images with large file sizes, which are slow and hard to work with. But the images, when they work out, are just gorgeous.
Click on an image to see the slideshow. It is worth it. Enjoy.
Plus some assorted images from Yampi Sound Training Ground, Charnley River Gorge up in The Artesian Range and the Buccaneer Archipelago.
Derby mud flats
The massive tidal changes in King Sound reveals extensive mud flats across the southern part of the Sound, around Derby.
Derby township itself is surrounded by mud flats which The Doc drove on several times (being careful not to break through the dried surface). These mud flats are not fully tidal every day, probably only on King tides. However, anytime The Doc felt the surface get soft he headed back to drier parts.
After taking off, in the helicopter, the first place we see is the big house, the Derby Prison. The Prison inmates look after the graves at the nearby Leper Colony, aka the old Bungarun Leprosarium, just north of Derby (Blog report here). The Doc drove up to Bungarun using the mud flats, not the road.
The mud flats reveal one of nature’s fractals, the repeating patterns you see when water is draining away on the mud flats (what The Doc calls the recurring tree pattern). To be precise “Fractals are infinitely complex patterns that are self-similar across different scales.” If you look carefully, you will see the same pattern repeating itself. Admittedly it is more obvious in the helicopter where you better appreciate the scale of these fractals.
There is endless variety in the mud flats, including their shapes, colour and textures. While they are many images, the total was culled hard to give a good cross section.
The Doc finds the mud flats fascinating. Enjoy.
Charnley River Gorge, Artesian Range, The Kimberley
When posting some Kimberley images recently The Doc realised he has not posted images from his 2-day helicopter trip out of Derby in 2015 (better late than never!) – except 2 or 3 images.
Starting with Day 2, here are images from flying along the Charnley River Gorge, Artesian Range, The Kimberley, Western Australia. It was a thrill of a lifetime, breathtakingly beautiful place. We had permission from Australian Wildlife Conservancy to do the trip over their property and land. With both the pilot and the passenger being AWC supporters helps!
The Artesian Range is the only part of Australia that has not suffered any mammal extinctions since European settlement, but the cane toads got into the area in the last few years. So that may change.
Where the river bed is a muddy light grey, the river is tidal. The clearer water is beyond the tidal zone and is fresh water coming down the river.
We landed and took pictures of Aboriginal art, which had some very rare figures. The Doc may post one or two later.
Make sure you click on the image to see the full size slide show.
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