Charlie's Worldand there was more..
Posted on November 29, 2010
More Kitesurfing action from Safety Bay, Rockingham.
Standing in the middle of the lagoon might be good for photos, but is also way too good for toe nipping crabs!
By ‘ek, it’s ‘ot (and more kite surfing)
Posted on November 28, 2010
It’s warming up nicely for the summer. 38 degrees today, which is starting to get to the level of heat you want to avoid.
So I just had to stay in and watch the cricket instead. (c’mon England!!!)
Its a hard life – the cold beers are purely medicinal.
I did get up early today and mow the lawn before it got too hot – cut me some slack!
Anyway. It’s been one of those crazy arsed weeks again, so no time for blog updates, photo taking or, well, any damn thing apart from work.
All work and no play makes Charlie a dull boy.
So, to turn that all around and because, under my layer of winter protection, I’m just an action hero kinda guy, I went out to take some shots of the kite surfers again.
There was sod all wind though, which was a tiny flaw in my plan, but hey, the wind always starts to crank in the end, so full of optimism, I wandered round to Safety Bay to see who was there.
Ah. The no wind thing. There was nobody there. Well, nobody except the Pelicans, and they freak me out. I’m pretty sure they’re not originally from this planet. So I took their photos, and some other random stuff too, just to show them who was boss.
Eventually there was a breeze and the sky started to fill with kites and I could stop taunting the wildlife and turn my attention to the kite surfers.
First up, a totally awesome dad with his son (at least I’m assuming that they were, father and son – might have been a mad uncle, who knows..) – they were so cool and came right up to get their photo taken, poses and everything – hell yeah! Best family ever.
Then, as more and more people came out, and it was low tide, I waded out into the middle of the bay and hoped the kite surfers would come and pose for me, close is good (I soooo need to remember my damn bathers though!)
Within a few mins, one of the girls came up and stopped and said hey, what kind of shots did I want to take, what lens did I have, etc. Awesome! She was pretty interesting (more on this shortly) and had been doing some good tricks already, so I thought I might be able to get some shots.
She did a close fly by (which, of course, I wasn’t ready for) but I did get a few shots before she stacked it and came back for a chat.
We chatted for a bit and it turns out that her name is Nicky Rudd, she’s a pro kitesurfer from England (with a delightful hint of a west country accent) and she’s over in WA for the summer kite surfing season and on the pro tour. You can see more of her here at her site www.nickyrudd.com
I then hopped and screamed like a baby when a crab bit my little toe. No really, I’m not making this up.
Yup, it seems the glorious bay that I have in all my photos is full of saucer sized aggressive flesh-loving crustaceans. Little mo-fo’s! I had no idea they were all over the shallows too, I just thought they liked the weedy deeper bits. Anyway, once I’d recovered my cool (ok, ok, never had any, and with a stupid handlebar Moustache – donate here – I’m hardly James sodding Dean) I realised I was standing in a crab minefield, plus the tide was coming in, so I had to retreat to carry on shooting. Bathers and stout shoes next time. and maybe a spear gun.
So, more Nicky…
Thats quite enough of that before I start sounding like a creepy fanboy. It was lovely to meet you Nicky
There were some other folks out there too by this time and I got some pretty cool shots of them too, but I shall save them for another post or this one will be way too long!
If you like these though, check out these other Kite Surfing blog entries.
https://charliebrown888.wordpress.com/2010/01/15/kite-surfing/
https://charliebrown888.wordpress.com/2010/02/14/kite-surfing-2/
https://charliebrown888.wordpress.com/2010/11/17/learning-to-fly/
learning to fly
Posted on November 17, 2010
I went to Shoalwater Beach the other weekend to see the kitesurfers in action as the wind was blowing and I thought I might get a few shots with the wide angle lens.
Stupidly, I was wearing jeans, so I couldn’t get as close to the water as I would have liked – must remember to take shorts next time.
Anyway, as usual, the guys (and girls – of which there were a good few out) down there were really cool and friendly and happy to chat and pull few moves for the camera, flying upside down and all over the place, so I ended up getting some very interesting shots. I can’t decide if I prefer the ultra wide angle or the 18-200mm that I used on the last shots of Aaron.
So, Michael, Jamie and friends – thanks – see you back down there soon.
Apologies for the sheer number of shots, there are lots of cool ones!
Tuesdays on the beach
Posted on November 3, 2010
As luck would have it, I have to run big’un around on a Tuesday, so it means I get almost an hour of photography in before I have to collect her again.
At the moment, that hour happens to be the golden hour just before sunset, which is awesome for photos.
Last week, I took the old jetty shots and was pretty happy, so I gave that location a miss this time and went further on up the beach in search of some boats and things to get up close and personal to with the wide angle lens.
Mangles Bay in Rockingham is where all the boats anchor and it’s really cool, underused and very quiet. The yacht club could do with some updating, but apart from that, its lovely.
However, this whole place is under threat from a massive marina development (please visit http://handsoffpointperon.com/) which is will destroy hundreds of hectares of previous ‘permanently preserved native bush’ (yeah – that status was overturned – amazing what happens for a quick buck) and replace it with millionaires canal side houses, apartment blocks and an enormous marina. Nice.
Anyway, so before we lose this wonderful place forever (which, lets face it, once the money starts to flow, no amount of local objection is going to make any difference whatsoever), I thought I’d get some photos.
The light was amazing, clouds make such a difference to the sky and the feel of a shot, plus the circular polariser creates outstanding definition between white and blue.
Thats all for now – I’ll be back out later in the week or next week for another location, work and personal commitments being equal – so if you like the pretty pictures, check back soon.
In other news – its the middle of the week, which means – Red Wine Wednesday – stay tuned 🙂
busy, like a fox
Posted on October 19, 2010
A rolling stone gathers no moss, as the saying (proverb?) goes, and this week, I am certainly free of mosses, lichens and any rock growing greenery – I’ve been out with the camera again. I know, amazing, you’re all thinking – he never does that.. **rolls eyes**
Anyway, dear readers (of which I have around 100 a day at the moment, apparently – feel free to leave a comment if you like the purdy photos..) – I popped out to the jetty that I took these pictures at in March for a retake with my new wide angle lens.
There were a few people there already taking photos of a couple, the wife heavily pregnant, so I had to wait a few minutes for them to finish. I have to say, given that she was using the pop up flash on the camera and a kit lens, I don’t have that much faith that the photos will be any good.
/bitch.
As I set up, the Coogee women surf boat team were out practising.
In bikinis.
And I learned something new. Apparently, for grip (or something) they have to, how do I say this, splash their bottoms with water and hoik up their bikini bottoms and give themselves a wedgie, exposing their bum cheeks before sitting down. Classy.
And I’m stood on the jetty with the camera, waiting for it to finish a 4 minute exposure, with nothing to do but loiter and pretend I’m not a pervert.. Awkward.
So, the photos. Hope you like them.
Looking along Palm Beach to Mangles Bay
Jetty with the 10 stop (almost completely black) filter on
Jetty a bit later with just the circular polariser on.
I made a few composition errors and the sky was a bit bland – next time I’m going to go back on a windy as well day with clouds to try to capture the motion in the sky more.
And now, its late and its bedtime in this little corner of the world.
Catchya.
Holidays, the end
Posted on October 13, 2010
And so came the day we had to go home – boooo! We’d had a lovely time, but we still had 950km to drive back, so we had to leave early. We packed everything back in the car remarkably easily, set the chiller bag in the middle seat for the girls to have easy access to food and drinks without having to stop too often.
We had a few viewing places around Denham still to quickly look at on the way, so I dragged the family out to a few places that looked out over the bay first
Then we went 15 minutes south to Eagle Bay. Its well worth going here if you ever make it this part of the world – there’s a walkway on the top of the cliff and you look down on to the shallow clear water below and you can see loads of marine life. In the 15 minutes we were there we saw a couple of sharks and a very large ray. Its a lovely view that holds your attention for a really long time as you scan the water for more creatures.
The ray – this was pretty big and very easily visible, swimming across the bay and out to sea. I zoomed in as much as I could, but didn’t get a better shot than this. I recommend binoculars!
We set off home and drove back along the isolated roads, seeing lots of other 4×4’s and then a whole load of road trains that must have left Geraldton earlier that day at pretty much the same time. These guys are huge – I gather they’re even bigger going across the top of Australia and also south along the Nulabour.
We drove back into the night and got home late that night – an easy but long journey. Coming back into Perth was horrible – way too many people and bright lights – its amazing what a week in the country does for your perspective on things!
Hope you enjoyed the holiday series as much as we enjoyed the trip – I’ll be back to Red Wine Wednesday later 🙂
Holidays, part 7 – boats, pearls, dolphins and dugongs
Posted on October 12, 2010
On the last day, we went back to Monkey Mia to go on a catamaran, the Aristocat 2, which sails out into Shark Bay in search of dolphins, turtles, dugongs and black pearls. It was a beautiful day, in contrast to the day before – we really do have the best luck!
The boat sails early, so we got there in plenty of time and had a breakfast coffee at the Monkey Mia restaurant. Jay and Piper are both travel sick, so they were both dosed up with Kwells, but the sea was millpond smooth so I figured they’d be ok. Everyone was sat on outside the boat and there was plenty of breeze too.
First up we went to the pearl farm, one of the biggest pearl farms in Western Australia. Shark Bay was originally popular for pearl farming in the mid 1800s to around 1900 – but the people were greedy and generally not very nice and the industry collapsed due to overfishing and the depression.
The Pearl farm is run by Jamie, who was on the TV series ‘The Farmer Wants A Wife’ – he was pretty cool and explained how they made the cultured pearls – its a long and complex and careful process – each shell produces 4 pearls over 8 years. Oh, and pearls and nothing to do with sand grains – natural pearls are caused by damage to the shell making organ thingy, apparently.
We sailed off in search of wildlife – there were lots of dolphins around – small pods mostly, but then a bigger one with a juvenile came over to investigate and swam with the boat for a while, which was very cool.
It was a gorgeous day so we pottered around a bit more in search of dugongs. Dugongs are funny things – they’re mammals that graze on the sea grass meadows in the shallow waters. Shark Bay has about 20% of the world’s population – something like 15000 of them live here, happily pottering about in the shallow water. They spend a fair bit of time sleeping, and like dolphins, send 1/2 their brain to sleep at a time, keeping one half awake to deal with breathing and keeping a watch out for sharks. They sleep just on the surface so we sailed slowly about to try to spot one. They’re very shy, so we kept on seeing tails pop out of the water and they swam back down out of harms way.
We eventually found one snoozing on the surface – very cool!
We sailed back to Monkey Mia and we sat up front in the sun, enjoying the warmth and the gorgeous blue sky and turquoise water.
In all, a beautiful day really and well worth it. We had some lunch before heading back to Denham.
On the way back, I took a some pictures of the Monkey Mia bay – its very beautiful set against the red rocks that dominate the landscape here.
Next up – the journey home – some last minute sightseeing and then the loooong drive back.
Holidays, part 6 (part 2)
Posted on October 11, 2010
I just remembered that Jay took a video on her iPhone as we were crashing along the track back from Cape Peron
The sandy track
The claypan
Not gonna be doing that in a Nissan X-Trail!
Holidays, part 6 – off road to Cape Peron
Posted on October 11, 2010
The next day the weather wasn’t so good, so we decided to go to the Peron Homestead, an old sheep station in the Francis Peron national park and then take the car off road and go up to the top of the peninsula to Cape Peron.
The homestead was very cool – the people that used to do this stuff (and still do I guess) in these remote, hot and dusty places really did it tough. We saw a bloody great big goanna lizard thing just sitting there in the sun – it was probably 3 feet long – eyeing us up for food 🙂
We pulled over to let the tyres down to 20psi for the sandy off road track to Cape Peron – 40km of sandy rutted 4×4 only track right up to the Cape.
The lady in the tourist place said it was ‘fine except for some sandy patches’, but I for city folk like us, it looked pretty gnarly with long stretches of deep sand. We got stuck behind someone who got bogged towing a boat – right in the deepest sand, so it was really hard to get going again. He eventually got underway, but we had to reverse so he could get moving, which meant we had to scrabble around to get going without bogging ourselves and managed to scratch the car on some bushes as we bounced about. Gah!
We carried on ploughing along, but got fooled by some deep sand that hid some pretty big dips so we bounced hard a few times, causing everything in the car, children included, to crash about. It was good fun though. We got to the end and discovered that the bounces had smashed off the power coupling from the towbar and caused the right rear wheel to crack the underside of the wheel arch – oops
Luckily we met up with a couple and their young daughter who had some zip ties, so we managed to secure the bits that were hanging off. They were in a new Landcruiser that was totally covered in red dirt – they had come all the way from Brisbane to Western Australia off-road, so had every spare part imaginable. Awesome adventure – I suddenly have visions of wanting to do that kind of thing!!
Other than that, the Kia did very well off road – much better than its SUV classification would have you believe – its actually pretty competent.
Cape Peron is famous for the red cliffs that come almost all the way to ocean, a thin strip of white sand and turquoise blue ocean, but sadly it was high tide and overcast when we went, so we didn’t get the full effect, but on the plus side, we didn’t get our brains roasted in the heat either! It was very barren, very striking and there were lots of goannas about in the red dirt. I walked up to the top of the cliffs and looking down at the ocean below, I could see pretty big shark swimming lazily along in the blue water. Awesome.
We had lunch, but there really wasn’t much else to see, and Jay’s back was starting to hurt, so we packed up the car and drove back again. We did loads better off road on the way back, never even once looking like we might get stuck. I was also much better at spotting the potential bouncers in the sand and we had a really good drive back. That’s my manly status assured then 😉
Back at the homestead carpark, I got the compressor out and re inflated the tyres whilst the girls went off to check out the thermal spring hot tub in the homestead grounds. It was way too hot apparently.
The car done good 🙂
Next up – more dolphins, black pearls and dugongs
Holidays, part 5 – shell beach and dolphins
Posted on October 10, 2010
The next day, we had a poke around Denham, stocked up on food and beer ($50 for a carton of Corona – thats really cheap!) and decided that we’d do a little exploring.
There aren’t a great many things to do in Shark Bay that don’t involve some kind of water/fishing/swimming type activity, so we loaded up the car and drove to Shell Beach, which is 1/2 hour from Denham back down the road we came in on.
Shell Beach is, as the name implies, a beach made of shells. Just shells. No sand or pebbles or anything else, just trillions of teeny white shells. There are so many and the beach is so thick with them that they are mined and bricks carved from the deeper harder almost rock like layers. Amazing.
The girls packed their snorkelling gear as the water looked amazingly clear, but we discovered that the water looks that clear for a good reason. It’s only kneed deep for 2 or 3 hundred metres or more out out to sea.
Still, thats enough for small children, but even though its a breathtakingly beautiful place, its not very interesting for adults. Plus the sea floor being made up of, yes, you guessed it, shells, is not exactly comfortable on the feet. That said, we had a good time, but there isn’t really that much else to do there, so we sat down, had a drink from the cooler and once the girls dried off, we went home again.
The next day, we stocked up with supplies and drove the 1/2 hour to Monkey Mia, where there is a self contained holiday resort (which we didn’t want to stay at, as there is only one restaurant and nothing else to do). The interesting thing about Monkey Mia is that for 30 years or more, dolphins have been coming in to the beach to be fed. This got a bit out of hand in the 80’s so the Environment Department guys created a managed feeding program. 3 times a day, in the mornings only, dolphins swim in and get fed a small ration of fish. The DoE guys pick members of the public to come and feed them – its very cool.
The water was a bit cloudy with sand when we went, but it was still amazing to see the dolphins up close, to watch them swim on their side with one eye out of the water, sizing us all up.
It was a very cool experience and the girls had a lot of fun, even though they didn’t get picked for the feeding. They swam in the sea for a few hours, playing with some American kids (who were perhaps the most loud bossy children I have ever seen) before we’d kinda had enough sun, so we packed up and went home.
As the ocean in Shark Bay is really calm in good weather, we made a plan to come back and go out on one of the catamarans that sail around the bay looking for dugongs, dolphins, sharks and turtles.
Charlie's World 