And Happy New Year!

Deb and I are back from our holiday with the girls at Yamba.

It was a relaxing time a fair bit of lazing around, going to the beach and hanging with the girls. I love the fact that in Oz our Christmas break is in summer!

 

One of the things Deb and I did do was to get back to our old pastime of jumping in the car and going for an explore.

We chose to have a look around the lower reaches of the Clarence River. As I have mentioned before Yamba is on the Pacific Ocean at the mouth of the Clarence, and the Clarence is an impressive river.

The first leg of our trip was to head upstream 18km (about 12 miles) to the little town of Maclean where we crossed this Nineteenth Century bridge across the south arm of the Clarence onto Woodford Island

From there we followed Lawrence road about 10km (6 miles) across the island to the Bluff Point Ferry . 

For that whole 10km you are crossing an island in the river. No wonder they call the area “Big River Country”

I snapped this on the ferry crossing the river. The NSW Roads and Traffic Authority runs the ferry 24 hours/seven days a week and its free!

From Lawrence we turned off the main road to follow back roads along the North Arm of the River.

I just had to pause to capture these abandoned dairy bales.  

 

Like many regional areas the rural industries have been in decline.

On one of the side channels I spotted a beautiful Brolga (Grus rubicunda).

Unfortunately,  as I stalked closer to get a good shot a couple of ducks I hadn’t noticed took flight and spooked the Brolga, so all I caught was some shots as it flew away.

A truly beautiful bird.

About ten minutes later we came across this fellow about to cross the road.

At about 90cm (3 feet) this Lace Goanna (Varanus varius) is about half grown. 

I went as close as I was comfortable to capture some nice shots.

But not too close, these guys are versatile predators and even a smallish one like this is armed with razor sharp inch-inch long claws.

If I was silly enough to hassle it, it would show me it was a bad idea.

Having said that, their defensive tactic is usually to run up a nearby tree.

Unfortunately, not being very smart, if there is no tree they have been known to panic and run up the nearest vertical object, that is the person they are afraid of!

Then it was further along the river to the Ulmarra Ferry where we crossed back to the south side before heading back to Yamba.

When one thing leads to another.

My piccie of the day has a story attached to it. If I hadn’t taken the piccie I am about to share the image I used for this week’s What is it Wednesday

would never have been.

Back in May last year Deb and I were down on holiday in Tasmania. One day we went across to Bruny Island which lies just off shore of Tasmania’s south-east coast. We drove from the northern point of the island down to the southern tip.
On the way back across the island I just had to pause to take my piccie of the day…

The strip of water reflecting the sunset colours is the D'Entrecasteaux Channel which separates Bruny Island from the Tasmanian mainland (which sounds absurd to an Aussie ear because Tasmania is an Island off the coast of the Oz mainland).

Anyway, because I stopped for the piccie we just missed the 5:30pm ferry back to the mainland.
Now after the 5:30 ferry there is only the 7:00 ferry. Miss that and you are on the island until the following morning. So we waited by the ferry terminal to make sure.

In the dark.

Now what is a boy with a near new camera going to do?
He’s going to experiment.

So I set up my camera on my tripod, pointed it at the ferry terminal and took a long exposure of 4 seconds.

“Nice”, I think, “but I could get a bit more light in the piccie.”
So I double the exposure time to 8 seconds, a long, long exposure.
This time while the shutter is open a fisherman in a powerboat shoots through the shot.
His navigation light draws an almost straight line 2/3 of the way across the frame before the shutter closes.
Bingo a WIIW puzzle is born!