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.
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.
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.
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.
A few images from the recent Big Bus trip around Darwin.
Sitting on a park bench about 2 meters away from several red tailed black cockatoos feeding was special.
The longest report The Doc has done for an AWC Supporter’s Event. Lots of photos and an amazing experiences here.
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.
We were delivered in the bush taxi, a Robinson R44 helicopter landing in the gorge.
There was rain overnight at Bullo River Station, so planes cannot land on the unsealed air strip. Guests are leaving earlier from Darwin and being taken to a nearby air strip – that would be a country “nearby”. Kununurra has the nearest sealed airstrip.
Then Guests have a 3 hour drive into Bullo River Station, which has the longest driveway in the Northern Territory. The driveway is the hard left off the Victoria Highway on the map below. All part of the adventure, for me. Plus The Doc knows how to drive into Bullo River Station in the Grenadier!
AWC just works around the challenges to get us there. Thank you AWC.
The Doc is flying out to Darwin today. Next stop Bullo River Station, where Australian Wildlife Conservancy is hosting a Supporter’s Event, starting Wednesday. Thankfully AWC provides a high level of support, if needed.
Bullo River Station is near the headwaters of the Victoria River close to the Northern Territory and Western Australian border, sometimes called the Eastern Kimberleys. More accurately it is the Victoria Bonaparte Bio Region (named after the Victoria River and the Joseph Bonaparte Gulf, into which the Victoria River flows).
The Gulf is part of the larger Timor Sea. The Doc has not been this close to the coast in this part of Australia before, another first. He has only ever been well south around Timber Creek, Kununurra and Wyndham.
The Victoria River flows into the eastern side of the little-known Joseph Bonaparte Gulf, while the 5 Rivers up Wyndham way feed into the Cambridge Gulf on the western side of the Joseph Bonaparte Gulf.
Joseph Bonaparte was the older brother of the more famous Bonaparte.
Looking at satellite maps, there are many mud flats in this area, like Derby. Plenty of water in the wet season, plenty of mud down the river systems and mud flats everywhere! Plus, gorges, crocs and vegetation like the Kimberley.
It is nice to finally get away from all the intense rehab and treatment over the last 9 months. Upon my return The Doc needs to pick up the Vista RV Crossover hybrid van. Then more visits to Specialists and then, he hopes, to start traveling more widely again.
The above image was generated using AI, but The Doc hopes to make his own images during the visit.
EDIT: Now in Darwin and ready to fly out to Bulloo River Station tomorrow morning.
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.
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