Photos from my life: June 2006

Wednesday, June 28, 2006

Socceroo Rainbow - 27 June

This morning most of Australia had a sour taste following our World Cup defeat by the Referee and a very good Italian team. I was one of the millions. But this is the sight I saw out the back door at dawn...

F4 1/80

It's very rare to see a rainbow at dawn (at least in Adelaide it is).

F3.6 1/30

This one lasted for twenty minutes.

F3.2 1/30

The above photos are in reverse time order (as you might gather from the apeture and shutter speed settings). To see a rather different rainbow scene, click here.

Sunday, June 25, 2006

Front Gate

This is our front gate one autumnal afternoon ...

Another view, a minute later ...

This is the view from the front gate down the side of the house. Check out how bright the permissons are on the tree in the centre ...

Can you spot Libby the dog at the side gate?

Saturday, June 24, 2006

One Recent Foggy Morning.

In the last few weeks we've had cold mornings, with a even a couple of medium frosts. This is quite rare in Adelaide. And then the other morn, there was a fog. This was the view from the back door to the North. I've got to utilise the camera a bit more, I think, to capture the foggy feel.

Detail:

Monday, June 19, 2006

1979 VB Commodore

A nephew recently purchased this 1979 VB Commodore ...

We no sooner saw it than we had to have a look inside. It was a pleasant discovery to find that it still had that peculiar smell of the seventies!

Under the hood, it's a pre polution control V8 monster.

It's interesting to compare it to our 2004 VY II Commodore (click here). That's a quarter of a century of Holden Commodores!

Sunday, June 18, 2006

Front Fence

This picture is from the edge of the veranday, under a melalucca, to the spot at the front fence from where I shot the 'Garden Nook'.

Oranges

The 'orchard' section of our yard has a small but productive orange tree. Here's some of its fruit ...

Weeding

If you haven't gathered, we have a fairly busy garden. Not that we do a real lot except help keep the balance. One of the main jobs is weeding. Here's a small patch out the front which was recently cleared and had several citronella and geranium cuttings put in. This is before weeding ...

And this is after ...

Claude and Tina

Budgerigars are native to inland Australia and travel in huge squabbling flocks. These are our Budgies (budgerigars), Claude (yellow, under a year) and Tina (in her third year). They are always upto something...

Geranium

Geraniums don't take much water and grow easily on the Adelaide Plain. Here's a macro of a flower near our side gate...

Nice Car!

Nice interior ...

Smooth exterior ...

Comfortable engine well!

2004 Holden Commodore Executive VY Series II

2005 Bengal Cat 'Wallace'

To see a V8 from the original run of Commodores, a quarter of a century before this one, click here.

Friday, June 16, 2006

Rainforest Path

The 'Subtropical Rainforest' is perhaps the most atmospheric section of the Roma Parklands.

It is located in a narrow canyon formed by high rocky outcrops (another common feature of Brisbane that distinguishes it from Adelaide). Thus, there is opportunity for a boardwalk, from which you can view the canopy, before taking a (wheelchair friendly) plunge into the shadows ...

All through which, you can hear the burbling creek beneath.

Waterfalls

In the shade of the valley in the forest flows a stream which tumbles over numerous small waterfalls. Its course is artificially laid, and a nice aspect of the design is the fact that none of the falls are alike in terms of either appearance or sound created. For instance, this fall ...

Sounds and looks quite different to this one:

After which, the stream flows into the lake at the centre of Roma Parkland, Brisbane.

Thursday, June 15, 2006

Roma Parkland entrance

This is a view of the entrance, the image most often used for the 'official guidbook view'.

It isn't far and you, though still on a main path, are surrounded by evocative subtropical forest interludes.

And collections of plants that are 'exotic' in adelaide grow rampant in Brisbane. These, I think, are bromeliads.

Australian White Ibis - Brisbane

These photos were taken from a cute little shed on the shore of the lake in the centre of Roma Street Parklands.

(Yes, it is the same bird)

Ibis on land

I saw the Ibis in the Brisbane's gardens several times on my recent trip there. Here is one who was part of a group of ten having an early morning feed near the bottom entrance to Roma Street Parkland early on Saturday morning. I haven't seen anything quite like them here in Adelaide.

They looked fairly ugly on land...

Wednesday, June 14, 2006

The Camera - Panasonic Lumix FZ 30

This is the type of camera I have been using to take the photos on this blog. I have been pretty happy with it. It took me a couple of weeks to get about 80% of the various functions and actions it is capable of. It will take a lifetime, I suspect, to work out how they all fit together.

Panasonic Lumiz FZ 30

The only additional things I got with it are a 1 Gig memory card to replace the standard 32 MB card that came with, and a padded camera bag in which to keep it. I think I'll get a tripod and remote shutter attachment, and then I'll be set to really work it out.

Basically, it's good for everything from (almost) point and shoot to everything manual. Video, macro and animation modes as well as standard photo. I'll write it a proper review once I've got something to say that hasn't been said...

Spider

The other night a friend brought around a spider he had found in his home in Thebarton, a suburb of Adelaide. He told me it is a type of funnel web spider, though not as venemous as the ones that frequent Sydney. We couldn't help ourselves, and turned the lounge into a spider studio. My apologies to those of you who suffer arachniphobia.

I think all of these photos except this one ...

... were macro photos. Which meant that I had to get fairly close. This last photo is probably the closest to the actual colours of the beast. To get it, I had to darken the exposure.