Kangaroo Island, South Australia, 7 July 2024.

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Silo Art Kingscote.

We had to go to Kingscote to refuel because even after filling up at Penneshaw, driving around the island was going to take more fuel than the tank could carry.  We could have got 91 octane petrol closer but preferred to stay with 95 or 98, hence the trip.  Then we returned by the north coast.

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Other side.

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Point [H] is the start and end at Cape du Couedic lighthouse Cottages.  [B] is Kingscote, [C] Stokes Bay, [D] Snellings Beach and [E] Western River Cove Beach.  [F] is approximately where we saw an eagle and [G] is Cape Borda.

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Here we are at Stokes Bay.  There is a curious narrow passage through the rocks to get to the beach.

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The rocks on the other side.

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And someone is emerging from the passage.

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Snellings Beach.

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Another view of Snellings Beach and some plants clinging to rocks beside the beach.

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Snellings Beach from above.

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Not sure if this has a name but it’s the cove just east of Western River Cove Beach.  Those orange rocks look interesting but there was no easy access.

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Stream leading to Western River Cove Beach.

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Willie Wagtail (Rhipidura leucophrys leucophrys).

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The other side of the stream showing the rock formations.

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Rocks made orange by lichens.

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A little plant community on the sand.

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Looking along the beach.

It would be possible to walk over the headland to the cove we saw earlier but it would require crossing the stream which was a bit deep and i wasn’t about to do it while carrying camera equipment.

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Kangaroos along a side road.

From the beach we took a back-country side road.  Here a couple of kangaroos were beside the road and there was a fence they were unable to clear.  I had to drive slowly and carefully so as not to panic them until we were able to go past.

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Wedgetail eagle (aquila audax).

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The wedgetail eagle is Australia’s largest eagle and found in most parts of Australia, with a wingspan of up to 2.9 metres.

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It was in a tree on the other side of a field, perhaps a hundred metres away from the road.

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These images were taken with a Fuji X-T5 and a 100-600mm zoom at 600mm, and the last three with a 1.4x teleconverter for a full frame equivalent of just over 1200mm, which is a very long focal length.  And even then, they are also cropped to about 35% of original size.

In the old days, Nikon had a 360-1200mm, introduced in 1974 and a 1200-1700mm lens, introduced in 1994.  That 1200-1700mm lens was approaching a metre long, weighed 16kg and cost $A90,000 at release, equivalent to about $A280,000 today.  Probably no more than 35 were ever made.  As it happens, I didn’t have one available for this shot.

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Cape Borda lighthouse, with the signal cannon, to warn ships if they might be approaching danger.

I took a similar image in 1987 for the book From Dusk Till Dawn, which you can see in the trip summary.  For that I used an Arca-Swiss monorail view camera, with shift to straighten verticals.  Here I just used a wider lens and cropped up from the bottom.  The fence wasn’t there in 1987 and the 1987 image was taken at a lower angle, I took much more time composing it and it is a better image.

I had intended to take the Harvey’s Return walk not far from the lighthouse, a very steep and rugged walk about a half hour return to the original supply cove for the lighthouse.  It also goes to the Zebra Schist, spectacular rock layers with minerals such as micas in layers with quartz.  However, we needed to get back to Cape du Couedic in daylight due to animals at night on the roads in the National Park, and had run out of time.  We did see the eagle though.

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