Waterfalls and Striped Possums

Atherton Tablelands, Queensland, 11 August 2022
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Click on any image to see it larger (If you are on a PC at least).

In our third full day in Atherton Tablelands, we first headed off to Mount Hypipamee National Park. Here we are walking the Dinner Falls circuit.

Falls on Barron River near Dinner Falls.

Dinner Falls.

Next we walked on to the Mount Hypipamee Crater.

This is of course a volcanic crater.

From the viewing platform, there is a drop of 130 metres to the lake which is then a further 73 metres deep. It’s a long way down.

I was intrigued by the patterns on the surface of the lake.

These are partly natural and partly created by people who frequently throw rocks down into the lake. (Personally, I’d prefer it just to be natural).

Panoramic view.

After that, I decided to head off to Zillie Falls again. I had carelessly exposed my images there at high ISO the previous day so thought to try again. This image is from a viewpoint on the way.

Zillzie Falls.

In the late afternoon I was shooting into the light and I didn’t bracket enough, so there is no detail in the sky.

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I decided to head back via the bird hide at Hastie’s Swamp. That meant a long trip on the back roads, late in the afternoon. I can’t show you much of what we saw because often the light was fleeting and the narrow winding roads often meant nowhere to pull over.

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At Hastie’s Swamp I took some more photographs of the plumed whistling-ducks in challenging low light conditions of the late afternoon.

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This is the opposite shore, which about 200 metres away.

Back with the night life where we were staying, the sugar gliders were there initially but when one or two much larger striped possums turned up, they made themselves scarce.

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Here you can see the elongated fourth finger with a long hooked nail that it uses to extract insects and caterpillars from bark and cracks. In this it is similar to the very weird Aye-Aye from Madagascar. They are not related though. The Aye-Aye is a lemur and a very primitive primate whereas the striped possum is a marsupial found mainly in New Guinea and West Irian but also in coastal North Queensland.

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Rainforest and Sugar Gliders

Nov6

Atherton Tablelands, Queensland, 9 August 2022
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Click on any image to see it larger (If you are on a PC at least).

On our second full day in the Atherton Tablelands, we first headed to Malanda, which was not far. We discovered a wonderful coffee bar near the Visitors’ Centre with great coffee and perhaps the best muffins I have encountered. The owner told us he is a chef and made the muffins himself, whereas most places purchase premade cheap frozen muffins, with a corresponding cost in taste. Creeping Americanisation perhaps.

Krefft’s turtle.

We walked several trails in Malanda Falls Conservation Park on both sides of the road. We were hoping to encounter a tree kangaroo in one of a number of locations in the Atherton Tablelands but this was not to happen. However, there was lots more to see.

There were a number of these turtles swimming round near the bank at a particular location in the North Johnstone River.

I think there may have been a description of this symbiotic flowering plant in the Visitors’ Centre but I did not record it so I can’t tell you what it is.

Grey-headed Robin (Heteromyias cinereifrons).

North Johnstone River.

Funghi by the path.

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Red-legged pademelon (Thylogale stigmatica) moving quickly through the bush.

Funghi by the Path.

Millaa Millaa Falls.

Next we visited the waterfall circuit at Millaa Millaa.

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Zillie Falls.

With a bit of a scramble, I found a good location for the Zillie Falls and also took some studies of water and rocks.

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Ellinjaa Falls.

I also had in mind to visit Crawford’s Lookout, North Johnston Lookout Track, Mamu Tropical Skywalk, Innisfail and Babinda Boulders but we would have needed an extra day for that.

Returning to our accomodation at Chambers Wildlife Rainforest Lodges, we were able to experience nightime observations of sugar gliders (petaurus breviceps longicaudatus).

A Striped possum (Dactylopsila trivirgata) briefly appeared.

And then it was back to the sugar gliders again, feeding on the sap of a tree.

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Herberton and Tully Gorge

Oct30

Atherton Tablelands, Queensland, 7 to 8 August 2022
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Click on any image to see it larger (If you are on a PC at least).

Cairns/ Atherton Tablelands Road.

This is a view from the road from Cairns to Atherton Tablelands. I posted an infrared view from the same spot in the previous post.

Curtain Fig Tree.

In the previous infrared post we saw images of the Cathedral Fig Tree. This is a different one, close to Yungaburra where we stayed on the first night. the Curtain Fig Tree.

This tree started out as a seed dropped in the branches of a host tree, presumably excreted by a bird. Over time, the fig strangled the host, causing it to fall over against another tree and the fig roots reached to the ground, creating the curtain you see.

Over more time, the host rotted away, leaving just the fig tree. It is nearly fifty metres tall and you can get a sense of the height of the roots from the people on the platform near ground level at lower right. It is believed to be around five hundred years old.

On our way south, we dropped into the Hastie’s Swamp Bird Hide. These are plumed whistling-ducks, in the reeds near the shore.

Great Egret, in non-breeding plumage.

We next spent a few hours at Herberton. This is a grevillea in flower at the side of the path..

One of the main reasons I wanted to visit Herberton was the graveyard of old cars, which we will see more of in a future infrared post. The is a 1942 UK Austin, ex Forestry Department.

Time takes its toll.

This small bird is a Chowchilla, the southern subspecies orthonyx melasmenus with a longer beak.

Dodge emblem. The text says Dodge Brothers and is probably from the 1930s.

1936 Pontiac Flat head 6.

I don’t think this one would make a good getaway car, given that it has wooden stumps instead of rear wheels.

1934 Buick Straight 8.

The cornering ability of this one is probably suspect.

No identification for this one.

Since it has no wheels, maybe it was intended to fly.

Perhaps the front of an engine housing.

Gone full circle.

Different view of the same grevillea. I realised my shutter speed had only been 1/10 sec so retook it, but need not have worried due to image stabilisation on the lens.

Inside Elderslie House, home of J.Newell, Founder of Herberton.

Herberton was established by John Newell in 1880 for tin mining. In late 1880 it had a population of 300 males and 27 females. The Historic village opened in 1973, on the edge of the actual town of Herberton. It was created by Harry Skennar and includes buildings and artefacts from nearby and further afield. There are probably forty or fifty buildings including historic shops.

Coach House.

Day’s Garage.

The Dispensary or Chemist.

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Dispensary window ledge.

Driving on further south towards Tully Gorge, we visited Big Millstream Falls near Ravenshoe.

Tully Gorge Lookout.

That bare patch in the lower mid right is where Tully Falls was when it was the largest waterfall in Queensland. The free flow of the Tully River was stopped in 1960 by the construction of the Koombooloomba Dam, so now the falls only flow during a big wet season. The road to Tully Gorge Lookout has been sealed for only a couple of years.

A stream flowing by the path on the walk down to the lower viewpoint.

Cliffs and trees from the lower viewpoint.

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A closer view of the Tully River above where the falls used to be and might be again from time to time.

Looking down also at the Tully River, downstream of the falls, now only occasionally fed by the waterfall.

North Queensland Itinerary 2022

Jul7

8 to 29 July 2022.

(Click maps for a larger size if they are too small to see).
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Jools and I are flying north to North Queensland tomorrow for three weeks. You would think this would be quite a change from the currently cold climate of Canberra and for the most part it will be, though in these times of unusual weather, Laura looks like being much the same as Canberra. We attempted this journey in 2021 but had to bail out when we got caught in a COVID lockdown in Brisbane for a week and the ACT Government advised all travellers to return.

In 2021 we flew north to Brisbane to stay with friends for a few days and had intended to fly on to Cairns (as shown above). This time, we fly straight to Cairns and back. The itinerary up there is very similar but we are taking more time this time and there are a couple of additions.

From Cairns, we drive south to the Atherton Tablelands, staying in a small village and then in rainforest near Lake Eacham and Craters Lakes National Park. We expect to visit Cathedral Fig Tree, Lakes Eacham and Barrine, Yungaburra, Curtain Fig National Park, Atherton, Hasties Swamp National Park (bird hide), Herberton, Mt Hypipamee National Park, Ravenshoe, Tully Gorge Lookout and Millaa Millaa waterfalls. We also expect to visit the Art Deco town of Innisfail and various waterfalls and nature sites along the way. This is not shown on the map which I haven’t updated it since last time but it’s a loop down to the coast, starting from Millaa Millaa and meeting up with the road from Cairns to Atherton where it goes inland. You can see it if you click the map for a larger view.

Wildlife we hope to encounter includes striped possums, platypodes (the correct plural of platypus since the word derives from Greek not Latin) and tree kangaroos. Tree kangaroos may be elusive though.

We then drive to Laura where we stay overnight and join a camping excursion for Aboriginal rock art over three days and two nights. We next drive to Cooktown where we stay for several days and join another Aboriginal rock art tour on the last morning.

After Cooktown, we drive to Mossman Gorge where we stay for two nights. Next is an early morning wildlife cruise on the Daintree River, then we head to Daintree National Park, where we stay for a few days at Cape Tribulation. The rainforest here comes down to the sea and we may encounter a cassowary.

Next we drive down to Kuranda, in the hills near Cairns and stay overnight. The next day we drive back down the hill then take a cablecar back up to Kuranda and come down again in a small train. Then we have a day or two in Cairns including a day trip to Fitzroy Island (where I visited in 1987 taking pictures of lighthouses). Finally we catch our plane back to Canberra.

I am planning to take both just Fuji photographic equipment. In the abandoned trip in 2021 I also had Nikon for long telephoto and wildlife. The penalty for that change is that the autofocus of my cameras will not be nearly as good for birds in flight (a new Fuji camera is, but It’s not available yet) and I will not have as much capacity to compose loosely and crop down (eg for wildlife which may move unpredictably). The advantage is about 3 kilos less weight and a long lens easier to hand hold.

I will have Fuji X-T2, X-E4 and X-T2 IR cameras, together with 4mm f2.8 fisheye, 8-16mm f2.8, 14mm f2.8, 23mm f2, 35mm f1.4, 56mm f1.2, 80mm f2.8 macro, 70-300mm f4-5.6 and 200mm f2 lenses and a 1.4x TC. My photographic pack will be about 11 kg which is fine. Jools will have an X-E4 and a 18-135mm lens and will be able to borrow the 70-300mm when I am using the 200mm for wildlife.

There’s a complication with selecting lenses for infrared because some produce a “hot spot” or bright flared area in the centre of the image. So I could have taken the 27mm instead of the 23mm and 35mm but it’s not good for infrared. The 8-16mm is only good for infrared at f2.8 so I took the 14mm as well, the 80mm macro is no good for infrared and the 200mm is only good at f4 and below but I have the 70-300mm.

I may find time for some temporary posts while travelling and will in time include below links for all posts I make from this trip. In the meanwhile I have one more post to release from Crete and will resume posts from that trip later.

Here are links to the Brisbane posts from the 2021 trip:

Brisbane posts:

Links to North Queensland 2022 posts to appear here….

Mount Tamborine

Aug8

Brisbane, Queensland, 30 July 2021.

(Click on any image to see it in a larger size.).
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Just before dawn, we headed off on our flight from Canberra to Brisbane, the first step of our journey to North Queensland.

… though as it turned out, we would not get to North Queensland, rather turned back due to COVID lockdowns.

We met up with our friends Jim and Milena, and later headed for Mount Tamborine. This is a view looking inland over the plains.

… and over farmland.

The weather seems to have been changing considerably and is not quite how I remember it, though perhaps that is the infrared sensor and processing.

We stopped at a cafe for lunch.

And then we headed for the Mount Tamborine Skywalk, so the remaining images are from there.

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The bunga bunga pines are towering over the rest.

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Eastern yellow robin (male).

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These two images looking straight down at some distance.

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North Queensland Itinerary

Jul27

30 July to 15 August 2021.

(Click maps for a larger size if they are too small to see).
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Jools and I are planning to fly north to North Queensland for a couple of weeks. This would be quite a change from the currently cold climate of Canberra.

Current Queensland border closures.

However, it all depends of COVID restrictions and border closures. Australia is pretty much closed to the outside world so we can’t leave the country and there are also restrictions for internal travel. Queensland currently has closed its borders to New South Wales, Victoria and South Australia but not the Australian Capital Territory (Canberra). New South Wales is experiencing an explosion of the COVID Delta variant (by Australian Standards at least, 172 new cases yesterday), whereas Canberra hasn’t had a locally spread case for over a year. We just have to hope that the borders will stay open for us at least for the next three days until our planned departure date.

We are intending to fly north to Brisbane, stay with friends for a few days, then fly to Cairns.

Edit: We got to Brisbane and then were caught in a snap 7-day lockdown. Towards the end of that, Jools had already gone back and I was contemplating going on despite a 3-day North Queensland lockdown when I received an email from the ACT Government warning against further travel. So I came back as well. I was concerned I might have to come back to hotel quarantine. ACT is now in lockdown so we’re now in lockdown there.

Hopefully we’ll be able to do the trip at a later date, perhaps next year.

Brisbane posts:

From Cairns, we drive south to the Atherton Tablelands, staying in rainforest for several days near Lake Eacham and Craters Lakes National Park. We expect to visit Cathedral Fig Tree, Lakes Eacham and Barrine, Yungaburra, Curtain Fig National Park, Atherton, Hasties Swamp National Park (bird hide), Herberton, Mt Hypipamee National Park, Ravenshoe, Tully Gorge Lookout and Millaa Millaa waterfalls. Wildlife we hope to encounter includes striped possums, platypodes (the correct plural of platypus since the word derives from Greek not Latin) and tree kangaroos.

We then drive to Laura where we stay overnight and join two tours of Aboriginal rock art the next day. We next drive to Cooktown where we stay for several days and join another Aboriginal rock art tour on the last morning.

After Cooktown, we drive to Daintree National Park, where we stay for a few days. The rainforest here comes down to the sea and we may encounter a cassowary. Then we drive down to Kuranda, in the hills near Cairns and stay overnight. The next day we drive back down the hill then take a cablecar back up to Kuranda and come down again in a small train. From there we drive to Mossman Gorge, stay near there overnight and explore the gorge the next day. Then we drive to Daintree Village where we stay overnight. Early the next morning we have a photographic tour on Daintree river, then drive down to Cairns airport to catch our plane back to Canberra.

I am planning to take both Nikon and Fuji photographic equipment.

I will have a Nikon D850 and a 300mm f2.8 plus 1.4x and 2x teleconverters as my prime telephoto equipment for wildlife.

To reduce weight and also carry a larger range of equipment, I will also have a Fuji X-T2, X-E4 and X-E2 IR cameras, together with 4mm fisheye, 8mm fisheye, 8-16mm, 23mm, 27mm, 35mm, 56mm, 80mm macro and 70-300mm lenses and a 1.4x TC. (I could perhaps leave the 23mm and 35mm behind but they’re fairly small and light.) Jools will have an X-E4 and a 18-135mm lens and will be able to borrow the 70-300mm when I am using the Nikon 300mm.

Next will be a technical post on setting up the new X-E4 but there may be no posts after that for two or three weeks.

L.A. and Salton Sea Monochromes

Jan16

1 to 5 October 2016, Los Angeles and Salton Sea, USA.

Links go to colour posts (for more information and context). If an image does not have a link, the preceding one applies.

Click on any image to see it larger.

Colombian Mammoth (Mammathus Columbi)

La Brea Tar Pits.

Chest of drawers from the 18th century Japan.

Netsuke Gallery, LACMA.

Netsuke.

Buddha Shakyamuni, Sukothai, Thailand, 14th-15th century.

Los Angeles County Museum of Art (LACMA).

Eagle-headed demon (Assyria).

Borrego Palm Canyon.

Desert cacti, perhaps clavellina cholla.

Gomphothere.

Encounters with Megafauna.

A locust or grasshopper and a scorpion.

Ground sloths.

Chinese dragon.

Humans in vehicle.

Salton Sea.

Dead fish on the salt.

The end, but of what?

Near Salton City.

Salton Sea (IR).

Probably at Desert Shores.

Trees in the desert.

Joshua Tree National Park (IR)

Jan10

California USA, 3 October 2016

(Click on any image for a larger view).

We are in Cottonwood Spring in Joshua Tree National Park.

We see the autumnal yellow of the leaves and sometimes white leaves protesting against environmental indignities.

Deep in the grove is a fiery furnace of localised volcanic activity.

You can tell the person at bottom left comes from Colorado because he is turning yellow in sympathy with the leaves of the trees. This is due to long-term deciduous exposure.

The leaves become more orange as the day warms up.

… then more yellow due to a sudden cool breeze.

We’re now in the desert with the ocotillos..

The ancient spirit of a sky snake hangs in the sky.

The local authorities have helpfully planted a sign showing which way is up. This is puzzling for some.

You might have noticed it’s a desert and quite dry.

One day many years ago, triffids rained down.

But it was a desert and no good for them so they turned into teddybear chollas.

Because it’s so arid they usually don’t move much at all, except sometimes a little in the wind.

You might be tempted to cuddle up in bed with a nice teddybear cholla but beware, it might turn into a triffid.

We are now approaching Jumbo Rocks.

It’s much safer to cuddle up with a rock.

And here we have a Joshua Tree in full autumn colours.

in the foreground we have a Joshua Tree with an identity crisis, trying to be a palm.

The rocks are actually ancient fossilised Mojave Indian spirits.

We are now in Hidden Valley and this may be the headquarters of the Mojave spirits. They provide psychiatric assistance to Joshua Trees with identity crises

The plants here are all Joshua Trees. Some of them are very confused.

The spirit snakes are also very active in the sky in this area.

OK, these are all infrared images. So what does that mean? Well, human eyes have a range of visible colours that can be expressed as combinations of red, green and blue. Below that is infrared and above that is ultraviolet. Many animals see outside our spectral range. One of my cameras has a modified sensor that records infrared, red and green but not blue. (You can also do this with most normal digital cameras but it requires using an R72 filter and a tripod).

The image out of the camera is basically orange but this hides the potential for other colours. I then use software to hit the image with a virtual firehose to assign and modify colours. My last infrared post I processed using complex processes in Photoshop and I processed each image quite differently. Since the images in this post are more homogeneous, I decided to apply similar processing to them all. I used a more simple process just in Lightroom, though using channel-swap profiles I had created in Photoshop.

Jumbo Rocks and Hidden Valley

Jan1

California USA, 3 October 2016

(Click on any image for a larger view).

We continue further through Joshua Tree National Park.

The first half of images in this post are from Jumbo Rocks.

There is a campground nearby.

The rocks are granite, originally created many eons ago by volcanic eruptions and subsequently smoothed by water during immersion in an inland sea.

Not so much more to say so I’ll mainly let the images speak for themselves….

If you look closely, you might see a sign on the right. It is a Keep Out sign. This is after all a fragile desert environment. During the Government shutdown in 2019 and the early impact of COVID in 2020 when the rangers were absent but the park was still open, there were many instances of vandalism. These included illegal off-roading, creating new roads, cutting down the rare Joshua trees and excessive littering. The park was subsequently closed and hopefully better control will be maintained in future.

We have now moved on further and this is Hidden Valley, featuring here a magnificent specimen of a Joshua Tree.

If you look closely on the right side of the rock (perhaps you need to click on the image for a larger size) you will see there is a person climbing it and another below him.

A somewhat mangy coyote near the car park.

And back through the park and on a main road again.

For some reason, the images from this day (this post, the last one and the next one) have all been lost and recovered. Perhaps it is from when I had two disks in my PC and one in my Drobo backup fail in a week and found there was a hole in my backups. Though that would affect presumably more than one day. In any case, the images were all lost until I later realised it was possible to recover full-sized jpegs from Lightroom previews (using a Jeffrey Friedl plug-in).

Salton Sea (IR)

Nov21

California USA, 1 October 2016

With Jeni Bate of Skyscapes for the Soul.

If you have not read the previous post on the Salton Sea then you really should do so. It contains images from similar places but also includes the ecological history of the Salton Sea and the way in which it represents a modern ecological parable.

(Click on any image for a larger view).

The sign is headed SCSB – could this be Salton City Surf Beach? It goes on to say: Property/ Parking Lot/ XXXX (i.e. erased) & Jetty/ Open to Public Use/ Sunrise to Sunset.

This is the end, beautiful friend, this is the end my only friend, the end (Jim Morrison, not to be confused with Van Morrison).

Of course everyone knows that the camera presents a completely accurate representation of reality.

What is not so commonly known is that cameras have a mind-reading chip and really show what you see when you look at the subject.

This is why images commonly have more contrast, more saturated colours and more pleasing renditions than reality.

It is also why most nude photographs you see are of people who had their clothes on at the time. It just depends on how the photographer’s mind works.

One of my cameras is particularly honest and shows what I saw as I stood there in the searing heat with the agricultural toxins born on the wind slowly searing into my brain.