Tag Archives: Landscapes

Headin’ for the Hills (this time behind the Gold Coast)

A few weeks back I granted myself an extra long weekend, taking a few days annual leave to fly to Queensland’s Gold Coast to visit a friend. On the Sunday morning, we walked down to the beach to catch the day’s sunrise (see Gold Coast Dawn).

The following day was a work day for my friend, and he kindly lent me his car so I could head up into the hills behind the Gold Coast and spend the day exploring beautiful Springbrook National Park. The park is in the Great Dividing Range that extends along the entire east coast of Australia from tropical Cape York down to the Victorian snow country, and is classified as part of the Gondwana Rainforests of Australia World Heritage Area.

Let’s start with something of a positioning shot atop the Springbrook plateau looking down the canyon. Broadwater and the Surfers Paradise highrises are visible in the distance.

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Second Valley – Painted by Light

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After finally finishing the Malaysia holiday series of posts, I’ve taken the opportunity this week to catch up on visits to some of the WordPress blogs I follow.

One of these is High Street Photos X100 authored by another Adelaide photographer Andy Kidd. Andy takes most of his photos with a Fuji X100 camera, hence the X100 in his blog title. He has recently published several posts of photos taken in the area around Rapid Bay and Second Valley. Looking at his posts has prompted me to revisit some photos I took at Second Valley about 18 months ago.

Second Valley is 80 kilometres (50 miles) or so south of Adelaide on the coast of Gulf St Vincent. Size-wise, there’s not much there except a handful of holiday houses, a caravan park and a small jetty. The surrounding area is quite attractive: the coastline is backed by steep hills and Second Valley is located where a small creek flows out of the hills into the sea.

I drove down there in the autumn of 2013 to take photos of some geological formations for use in my son’s Year 12 geology assignment. He’d been down that way some time earlier on a school tour but had apparently missed photographing certain formations he now wanted to reference. So dad to the rescue. He chose to stay home to do some maths home work, so armed with my camera and a quick briefing of what I was looking for, off I went.

The day was drizzly rainy with leaden skies, so I wasn’t expecting too much in the way of interesting photos. But I just happened upon some quite dramatic lighting as you will shortly see.

Second Valley is on the road that leads down to Cape Jervois. After passing through Yankalilla and Normanville, the road runs along the coast for a few miles before turning back inland. This is the view looking south at the point where the road turns left to head back into the hills. Second Valley is one of the little coves in the distance while Rapid Bay is just this side of the far headland. Dreary drizzly conditions and the hazy look at top left is the rain falling on the nearby hill tops.

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Greetings from Lucerne

Dayang Bunting Marble Geoforest

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Photo Morsels goes jet skiing to bring you this post featuring Langkawi’s Dayang Bunting Marble Geoforest.

Prior posts have introduced Langkawi and visited the Machinchang Cambrian Geoforest and Kilim Karst Geoforest Parks. These parks along with Dayang Bunting Marble Geoforest make up the three three major geopark sites on Langkawi.

Dayang Bunting Marble Geoforest is a collection of islands on the southern side of Langkawi and a popular day-tripping location by long boat. For the more adventurous, the area can also visited by guided jet ski tours which is what my family elected to do. We shared two jet skis between the four of us and set off with four other riders (also sharing two jet skis) plus our guide, a young Thai lad who, we discovered, had spent several years living in Melbourne, Australia before returning to Asia.

First up, I’ll quickly recycle a photos from the Gunung Machinchang post which shows off the general Dayang Bunting area.

This view from Gunung Machinchang’s summit overlooks the island of Dayang Bunting together with surrounding smaller islands. Dayang Bunting is the largest of the islands on the horizon slightly to the right of centre.

Departure point for the jet ski tour is Langkawi’s most popular beach, Pantai Cenang. I wasn’t ready for my near new dSLR to disappear into the Andaman Sea, so for this trip, the Pentax gear was left back at the hotel and my smaller Samsung NX 1000 camera with its 30mm F2 prime lens was pressed into service.

Ready for action, Datang Bunting jet ski Tour

On Pantai Cenang, kitted out and ready for action. No need to run the gauntlet of a naval blockage to head out to sea as the ‘U-boat’ on the horizon is a low rocky island that delivers a surprisingly realistic impression of a lurking submarine.

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Kilim Karst Geoforest

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Photo Morsels continues its exploration of Langkawi with a visit to the Kilim Karst Geoforest.

Prior posts have introduced Langkawi and noted its declaration as a UNESCO Geopark in recognition of the island’s relatively unspoilt environment and unique geological features.

Langkawi contains three major geopark areas and a number of smaller sites. The previous post visited the Machinchang Cambrian Geoforest Park. This post turns its attention to the Kilim Karst Geoforest at the opposite end of Langkawi Island to Machinchang.

To quickly summarise the Kilim Karst Geoforest, it is a network of mangrove waterways that takes its name from the Kilim River, one of three rivers in the area and from the geological term ‘karst’ which is used to describe landscapes formed from the dissolution of soluble rocks such as limestone, dolomite or gypsum. It is this karst topography that makes the area quite special. Words can’t really do the beauty of this area justice, so let’s just get on with the photos.

Our boat trip started at Tanjung Rhu where there’s quite a flotilla of long boats waiting to service the tourist trade.

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