Category Archives: coastal

Derby helicopter trip – medium format style

4X4, Artesian Range, Australia, AWC, Charnley River, Charnley River - Artesian Range, coastal, Derby, Kimberley, Kimberley, Landscape, ocean, Plant, river/creeks, trees, Uncategorised, WA, WA

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

4X4, Artesian Range, Australia, AWC, camera, Charnley River, Charnley River - Artesian Range, coastal, Derby, Kimberley, Kimberley, landscape, Landscape, sand, Textures, Uncategorised, WA, WA, , , ,

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.

Lord Howe Island to Ball’s Pyramid

Australia, coastal, Landscape, Lord Howe Island, NSW, ocean, seascape, Uncategorised

A few images from the boat trip from Lord Howe Island to Ball’s Pyramid.

Ball’s Pyramid is the largest single rock stack in the world. It is where the Lord Howe Island stick insect survived after being wiped out by rats on Lord Howe (only rediscovered in the the 1970s).

The birds are mostly Providence petrels. Enjoy.

Look more carefully

Australia, AWC, coastal, flowers, Landscape, North Head, NSW, Plant, Textures, Uncategorised, Wildflowers

Creating the colour palettes for the barks, flowers and leaves has been an eye opener. Take Banksia blechnifolia, which The Doc thought was a fairly bland flower, at least as Banksias go. Here is the image:

At first glance it suggests a bland colour palette, until you analyse the palette. Here are the ten most dominant colours including Rose Gold, Big Dip O’Ruby and Turkish Rose:

Further analysis shows 178,775 total colours, comprising 179 core colours. And The Doc was thinking there was two main colours, white and rose-pink.

The Northern Kimberley

4X4, Australia, coastal, forest, Kimberley, Landscape, landscape, mountains, ocean, river/creeks, Uncategorised, WA, WA

While staying at Drysdale River Station The Doc took a plane flight into the Northern Kimberly. Initially through Prince Regent National Park, then up to Mitchell Falls and back again.

Sorry about the funny colour cast and soft images, it was caused by the window on the plane. The best flight in that area without the high price tag of the helicopter flights at Mitchell Falls itself.

Gascoyne Region, WA

4X4, Australia, Carnarvon, coastal, desert, Gascoyne Region, Landscape, ocean, river/creeks, sunrise, sunset, WA

The Gascoyne Region in Western Australia was visited as part of the Kimberley/Pilbara trip in 2015. There are still many images The Doc has never posted, here are some more.

At the mouth of the Gascoyne River is the township of Carnarvon. NASA built a tracking station at Carnarvon to help with the Gemini and Apollo space missions. The tracking station is now gone but there is a major telecommunications hub still there. The Carnarvon tracking station was also used to track long range missiles from the RAAF Woomera Test Range launched from South Australia into the Indian Ocean over Carnarvon.

The Doc stayed in the Carnarvon caravan park for a week, touring around the region and having the Patrol serviced for the trip back across Australia.

The Doc drove a few hours up the river to the Kennedy Ranges National Park (and nearly came to grief crossing the Gascoyne River). The images are from this trip, plus a quick side trip to the Quobba blowholes near where HMAS Sydney was found off the coast. HMAS Sydney being sunk with all hands lost by a German raider, the Kormoran, disguised as a merchant ship.

Remember to click on the image to see the full size. Enjoy.

Video of the Quobba Blow Holes.