Cooktown's splendors

Almost the entire morning was spent remembering James Cook, the seafaring explorer, cartographer and the man responsible for putting Australia on the map. Down on the river bank there are monuments to where the bark "Endeavour" was pulled up to the shore and repaired. The people of Cooktown have gone out of their way to make sure that every item that could be saved of that time has been preserved or even returned to Cooktown. A canon that was on board the ship was sent to them from where-ever it had been found.

Colin is standing on the top of "Grassy Hill" which is reputed to be the place that Cook stood and looked out to see the pattern of the river and coast so that he could plan his next moves. The water below Colin is that of the Endeavour River and Cook would have been anchored just below the trees in front of him.
The Botanic Gardens also had plenty of reminders of Captain Cook. I love looking through Botanic Gardens - but I am not good at remembering the names of plants! I want to share with you a couple of the pictures I took.

There were a few very large Malaleuca trees commonly known as Paperbark. The bark is soft and takes on many shade of gold and has been used artistically to make "bark paintings" which are very clever - tiny pieces of bark are stuck down to give a painted effect.

Bamboo was introduced to Australia and loves the conditions here! Colin helped to show the size of the bunch.

A pretty butterfly obliged by keeping fairly still for me, it was morning so there was still plenty of nectar in the flowers so the butterfly was having quite a feast.

One place that every visitor to this town MUST go is to the James Cook Museum. As the name suggests this museum is mostly about the man who captained the ship that landed here in 1770. I was amused that the stump of the tree to which the "Endeavour" was tied was preserved in the museum!

A very large anchor that is believed to be that of the "Endeavour" is housed behind glass along with a canon that was on board too. The anchor looks to be far too big for the size of the ship that Cook sailed in, it must have been very heavy hanging from the back of the ship - or maybe it was hauled on board. I shall have to investigate further!

A special treat for me was an outing in the company of this man, Wilfred Gordon. He takes people on tours of his country and shows off the ancient artwork that is hidden under rocky overhangs and helps his customers to understand a bit more about the Aboriginal culture of this area.We learned about some of the plants that were important to the Aborigines, about the edible ones and the toxic ones that once treated in a certain way, could be eaten. There was so much I learned and lots more I still want to know!

The artworks under the rocky shelves were almost in the dark and quite difficult to see until your eyes became accustomed to the light (or lack of it!). This picture was taken with the camera on "automatic" which meant that the pop up flash sprang into action. Although a false image because of its brightness it serves to show how much activity has gone on in this small area of about two meters. Red ochre is the crushed rock that was used for the illustrations in this area.
I shall recommend to anyone who is planning a trip to Cooktown to include a "Guurrbi Tour" by Willie Gordon. Everyone needs to learn more about the culture that many Aborigines have lost.
AJ
click on the pictures for larger images. Send any comments to joanren AT gmail.com

On top of the world

It was the first time for me - to have a meal at the famous "St Bernard's Hotel" on Mt Tamborine. This was only the second time I have visited the place, the time before only for a quick look. This time I was able to explore the building and the surrounds, some of which I will share in pictures. The hotel has lots of atmosphere and is understandably very popular both for casual drinks as well as for meals. The staff go out of their way to make you feel welcome and by the time you leave you feel as if they are personal friends!
There has been a tradition to own a St Bernard dog since the doors first opened to the hotel years and years ago. (It acquired a liquor license in 1915) I was lucky enough to spot the youngest of the two dogs, one year old Molly. She was exhaustingly energetic, as you can tell from this picture.

The views from the out door tables is spectacular, the eating area hovers over a valley and looks down over tree covered hills. There are beautiful flower filled gardens with seats and easy pathways for the more energetic visitor to wander.

If the weather is fine a walk through the rainforest to see the waterfalls is a possibility. With a group of people patiently waiting for me to return to place my lunch order I only had time to take a few paces into the rainforest where I couldn't help but take photographs of the wonderful stag ferns in the trees, these ferns grow in the wild in the National Park on Mt Tamborine and in the trees that are much too tall for people to steal them so these specimens in this private piece of rainforest would have been placed here deliberately. They are absolutely magnificent.

(remember that if you click on the pictures you can enlarge them)
In yet another part of the garden the lawns have been mown so that the area can be used for open air weddings and functions. While I was there a small group of geese had claimed it as their own and honked angrily at me for disturbing them. They waddled off into yet another part of the property but no doubt returned as soon as I had left.

As you can tell, I was very impressed with my visit to St Bernard's Hotel. I took far more pictures which I would be happy to share - but every day I see something new that is worthy of a story so I will limit the number of my photos!
AJ
joanren@gmail.com

Faded beauty

I was tidying up in the garden today when I realised that some of the plants, although past their prime, were still very eye catching. Since most people do not bother to admire a flower except when it is perfect I decided to share the things that caught my attention this afternoon.

First the red Eucalyptus tree that I am hoping will grow to be a massive and brilliant specimen tree - but at present is only a couple of pretty branches that reach up about two metres. The fluffy flowers have about finished and the cups that hold the growing seed are left. They create a different sort of display which is attractive.

The stunning heads of blue from the many Agapanthus that were clumped together in the front garden have lost their petals and now are green bunches of seed pods. Most of these I have already cut off and put on the compost heap but a few have been left to provide a sculptural interest in the garden.

Replacing the Agapanthus and Eucalyptus blue and red are many heads of a very tall and severely dangerous (lots of hooked spikes along the sides of the long leaves) Bromiliad. The flowers that come from each of those bulbous tips are quite uninspiring but the huge heads that you see here stay looking like this for weeks and most people who come to visit stop and admire them. So even though the plant is past its prime it is still very attractive.

The pollen producing body of the male cycad has dried out and the seeds have been dispersed but this pendulous shape will stay like this for several weeks before breaking up and needs to be cut away. Again this is the end of the plant's usefulness and yet I will keep it where it is because I like it!

Finally the seed pods that hang from one of the Cassia trees. Actually the Cassia are a real pest - they pop up in the lawns everywhere and have to be mown down or pulled out or we would soon have a forest of them. But the seed pods have their own beauty - the flowers are pretty - like lots of yellow buttercups - but the seed pods with their fluffy soft seed coverings now adorn the trees and while they look attractive I can visualise all those seeds floating in the wind and landing all over the back and front gardens!

For those of you who are interested to know how I took these pictures and managed to get such a soft background, I used the 55-300mm lens at full zoom. I also set the Aperture to a small "F" stop to ensure a narrow depth of field. Since many of you prefer to use a compact camera - just use the zoom to get close and throw the background out of focus.
Notice how I managed to get something dark behind the subject? This helps to push the subject to the foreground and grab the viewers attention. A bright sky background or a house or fence even, would take that attention to the background. It takes a bit of practice but if you can see what is behind the subject before you take your shot you will get a much better photograph - sometimes moving a few inches to one side improves the way your shot will look.
AJ

Keeping "at it"

The garden bug has bitten hard - I find that I just HAVE to get out there and dig!
The garden bed beside the front steps is always in shade so plants that suit those conditions have been put there and have done very well. So well in fact that the area was completely overgrown.
Over the top of my fleecy jacket (the mornings are still quite cool) I pulled on my garden shirt. This is a workman's safety shirt that was stolen from my son's wardrobe! It keeps me reasonably clean!
Fortunately the house is not on a main thoroughfare so no one ever sees me in the garden!

The aluminium plant is a good filler but it had become more than prolific - it had buried almost everything. There is a strappy leafed plant that has dainty little white iris-like flowers that also multiplies energetically and needed pulling out.
It was a bit like working in the "Secret Garden" - I was finding all sorts of plants underneath the overgrowth!

These are new Daylilies struggling to be seen. Now I know they are there!
By the time I had finished pulling stuff out I had a heap of rubbish to be turned into compost almost as big as the heaps I had created yesterday!

The wooden planter box was against the steps and contained a leafy climber but it the climber is too difficult to control so I scraped the tendrils off the brickwork and trust I have managed to remove it all! The planter disintegrated when I pulled it from the position it had remained in for years! (It had a black pot inside that contained the plant - you can just see it among all the rubbish!)
Now the garden has been cleaned up I can plants other daylilies to join the ones that are there already. There are also clivia and bromiliads and a couple of azalea bushes in there - oh yes, and a "prince of orange" which is quite showy when in flower. All shade lovers.
AJ

Recovery in the garden

It is now a week since those pesky little bugs invaded my garden and I am sure there are a few of you who are wondering just what sort of devastation is left behind. The pictures I will include in this post will show you that all is well. The dahlias and ground plants have made an amazing recovery - they are still producing flower buds and fresh leaves so I knew that I would not have to wait for very long before I saw an improvement. The crepe myrtle tree had a few little buds that avoided the jaws of the voracious beetles and have provided a faint tinge of colour to the almost stripped tree. This is what it looks like today.

I just wish that I could show you how wonderful it looked before the insects arrived. It was a mass of colour and you couldn't see many of the leaves. Never mind. at least the bugs did not arrive as early as they did a few years ago (they do not swarm like this every year, I have been living here 30 years and this is the third time they have come) That time the flowers had only just appeared and the tree was about a third of the size it is now. This time around we had enjoyed the flowers for about a week and it was when they were at their peak that the bugs arrived.
The dahlias - well I have pulled off the eaten leaves and cut off the dead heads so there is no evidence of their trauma left at all.

Two tubers of these dahlias were given to me by my next door neighbour four years ago and I have lifted them and planted them out each year after giving them time to rest and now I have hundreds of them - if you can see the slope of the path in the background of the top one of these two pictures (click on the photo to make it easier to see) you may be able to see plants beside the post and tree and bush - I have planted even more tubers down that edge of our block. They were planted much later so they will be flowering after these ones in the foreground have finished.
What happened to the rose?

The rose was pruned below the damaged area - it is on the right of this picture, at the front, it has since had two new flowers and you may be able to see the red new growth appearing just above my signature. So the rose has recovered too.
I did despair of my flowering gum. It certainly looked as if the bugs had climbed right inside the cups that hold the flowers and eaten everything - but one branch managed to escape the invaders - incredibly the swarm was in a distinct strip across the garden and some plants were totally unaffected while others were ruined (or so I thought.). Here is the surviving flowering branch of my gum tree (Eucalyptus).

So, with a lighter heart I wander around my garden - there is still the odd beetle to be seen but I am not one to use sprays and the birds and lizards and frogs and things are working hard to keep the garden looking good. We have recently added a huge white crane to the birds that check out my flowering part of the garden and I would imagine that he would eat plenty of bugs and nasties! He would stand as high as the shoulders of my seven year old granddaughter! What a magnificent creature!
AJ

Heartbreak in my garden

This morning when I was having breakfast out on the veranda - as I do every day - I gazed around from this high vantage point to admire the colour that is in my garden. My spoon dropped into my dish as I spied the crepe mytle. Beside the driveway the crepe mytle was in full bloom, better than it has ever been before - smothered with the deepest cherise coloured flowers. This morning it was brown! A layer of petals lay on the gravel below but not one petal remained on the tree. I left my breakfast and rushed down to take a closer look. Sure enough the flowers had all gone and there was no evidence as to why - until I looked down to the flowers below. Resting on all the green leaves were the culprits - small orange beetles (with very full tummies).
There is nothing to be done. There is no point spraying when the damage is done.
I walked across the drive to see if any of the flowers over there had been touched. This is what greeted me.

The first thing I noticed was one of my miniature roses - it has decided to be a large rose and has grown quite vigorously and now is about waist high but still with miniature roses on it. The grubs obviously like the sweet soft wood of the growing tip as well as the pretty roses. Click on the photos to see the damage more clearly.
Then I looked over at the big dahlias that are creating such a dramatic splash of colour in the garden and they too look a real mess. Here are a couple of photos of two of them - I wont upset you by telling you how many flowers are like this.

I was so mad that I went inside and grabbed a can of flying insect spray and sprayed the flower heads. One squirt made the outside insects drop straight away and twice as many that were deep in the petals came crawling out to escape. I know that I am not solving the problem at all - there are more insects in the trees and grass and the entire garden but I took real pleasure in attacking these ones! I do not normally use any insecticides on my garden - I rely on nature to provide the control so I have plenty of birds, insects and lizards and spiders and so on that do no harm at all and I do not want to destroy them. I shall be back outside tomorrow with a pair of secateurs to cut off all the dead flowers to make sure that they do not continue to poison the insects!
Just before dark I decided to take a look at another part of the garden - I remembered that there was a small crepe myrtle that I had grown from a cutting of the first one by the drive. Sure enough, no petals on that - but the horrible little invaders were smothering the leaves so I just had to call out the rest of the family to come and take a look. I dashed inside for the camera but had to use flash since it was almost dark. Take a look at these beasties.

They were as thick as this throughout the garden - so you can see how pointless it would be for me to try and spray them all! I hope that they do not stay very long now they have cleaned my garden - do you realise that they have even started eating the geranium flowers?
I had a sudden thought. What about my pink flowering gum? I looked up. NO! They had eaten those too.

The bugs are still inside the cups of the flowers so by morning there will be no colour left on the tree at all. So now I am feeling very sad. I put all this effort into creating colour and what do I do? I attract not only the birds that enjoy the nectar in them but the horrible little creatures that destroy everything in their path. My garden will look like everyone else's by morning. Just green. Sigh.....
AJ

My tropical garden

After a very chilly start this day turned out to be a glorious sunny and warm one. I managed to get quite warm working in the garden, digging things out and moving them around then tossing mulch all around the new plantings. Nothing goes to waste in my garden, whatever I pull out gets put through the mulcher and is returned to the garden.
After an hour I had used up my energy for digging and mulching so cleaned up and grabbed the camera. I had noticed that the staghorn fern was looking rather magnificent.

 f6.3  1/10  ISO 200  18mm

 This wonderful plant needs no looking after at all, it is not a parasite, it does not send roots into the trunk of the tree it grows on, it is an "epiphyte" drawing moisture and nourishment from the air and rain that touches it. This particular plant was given to me when it was so small it would fit into the palm of my hand. For the first couple of years it was left on a piece of chip board to grow a bit - it came originally from the surface of a rock. Then it was put onto this tree and held there with a strap of plastic covered television aerial wire. The wire is still there holding it but the main leaf now hides it. Without the wire it may fall to the ground from its own weight.

 f6.3  1/15  ISO 200  20mm

The fence behind the tree gives some sort of scale to the Staghorn fern - that fence is two metres tall and is only a metre away from the tree that is supporting the Staghorn fern.
Many people make the mistake of calling this fern an Elkhorn fern. The Elkhorn fern is also an epiphyte but it does not have a magnificent large top leaf like the Staghorn fern. This is the Elkhorn.

 f6.3  1/6  ISO 200  30mm

It does look rather a mess but this is how the Elkhorn grows - it has lots of "pups" and they seem to crowd together. This one is on an African Tulip tree and it seems to really enjoy being here. Both these epiphytes love the deep shade so these heavily leafed trees provide the ideal situation for them - the Staghorn fern is on a Blackbean tree.
Sharing the same Blackbean as the Staghorn fern is a native orchid. This orchid is known as the King Orchid and has sprays of yellow flowers. Obviously it is not the time for the flowers just yet!

  f6.3  1/6  ISO 200  27mm

My garden is full of imported "exotic" plants but it is also home to many natives too. If it will grow in my garden I don't mind where it originated!
AJ

Fun in the sun

After three days of grey skies and wet weather it was with delight that I awoke to blue skies once more. Once all the chores were out of the way I had a little time to play with my camera. This time I had the 50mm lens fitted on the front so I decided to leave it there and see how I managed. Its a lovely little lens but I find it rather restricting in that I can't always get far enough away from my subject. I really found that to be the case today too - I could not go any further away from where I had set up my backdrop or I would have been in the swimming pool!
I grabbed a handful of little dog biscuits and a sheet of firm plastic board - the sort used for real estate signs - and allowed one dog at a time into the pool yard. For food, my dogs will do almost anything!
First off the blocks was Byron and I managed to get a few good shots of him - but because of the restriction on distance I could not get any further away and head shots were my only option - and even then I was only just far enough away!

On a bright day, perhaps white was not the best colour to have as a backdrop! However it is nice to be able to get a couple of shots with nothing distracting behind the dogs. Byron is now eleven and half years old. He is a "designer dog", an Irish Poodle which is a cross between an Irish Water Spaniel and a Standard Poodle. We get his wool cut every three months. It is about a week since he had his last session at the poodle parlour so his coat is like that of the astrakhan sheep, soft and curly.
Now here is Samson.

Samson is a Curly Coat Retriever and he always looks this sad! He is as black as the Ace of Spades - but picture two makes him look rather blue! Oops! When we bought Samson from the Council pound (six years ago) we were told that he was two years younger than Byron but now he is looking a bit older than his woolly mate! The Curly Coat Retriever is one of the oldest breeds of dog, apparently the breed was used in England by the Game Keepers who looked after the grounds and pheasants for the Lord of the Manor.     
Before I close for today I am going to include two more pictures, this time from my garden. There are a few things in flower - there always are! But these are quite spectacular at the moment. The Calliandra pompoms are a favourite with the Little Wattle Birds. I hear them and see them a lot but they never let me get close enough to take a photo - they zip behind the tree to feed out of range!

I love this small tree because it seems to have these colourful flowers on it for many months, there are always new ones opening up. That little raspberry shaped bud is one of the emerging flowers.

Lastly the Poinsettia that stands beside my mailbox. This is a double one and the flowers would be 30cm across - or more. They are only just wide open, they and all their smaller cousins are brightening our gardens at the moment.
There is a round bush that is smothered in tiny little white star shaped flowers that is a type of Hibiscus that we know as the snow-ball bush and it is just making itself noticed! They seem to be in everyone's gardens - even gardens where there are only lawns and shrubs!
Click on any of the pictures if you wish to see them larger!
AJ

Playing with the Canon macro

Wanting to use the camera and without a car to go some place other than home, I had to content myself with searching for subjects in the garden. Selecting the Canon D40 and the Macro lens as my "weapon of choice" for this venture I started by setting up a table with a white cloth as a backdrop - with an ingenious method of creating a back support with a surfboard strapped to the back two legs! I should have taken a photo of my "studio"!
To begin with I thought that I would try to take plants in isolation from their surrounds by draping white material over the surf board and over the table. I found a piece of florist's "oasis" foam to support the plants. Once the stem had been pushed into the foam the extra white material that fell down the front of the table was doubled back and gently positioned over the oasis block. This acted as a reflector. So the plant was in front of a white draping backdrop and its underside was brightened with reflected light off the white fabric over the block.
Rather than use the macro lens as close as I could to the subjects I needed to find out how much depth of field I would get if I were further away. (I need to know this for a future project). Here are a couple of my white backdrop results.

 Red Salvia         f/8  1/160     ISO200    100mm (fixed focal length)

Plumbago    f/8  1/250    ISO200    100mm (fixed focal length)

 The camera would have been about 700mm from the subjects (for all the photos included here today) I still need to learn a bit more about the Canon camera - I could not remember how to lock the aperture! I was using Manual focus but the camera was in Aperture priority.

Since only one of my roses is flowering and there are only two roses on the bush, I did not want to pick the flowers so clambered onto the raised flower bed with my tripod and camera to get these next two shots.

  f/11    1/500     ISO200    100mm (fixed focal length)

f/11      1/320     ISO200    100mm (fixed focal length)

 I really love orange roses! This one is called "Just Joey" and another orange one that I have taken photos of is "Whiskey".

The macro lens does an excellent job of isolating a single subject and my experimentation showed me that I can get a bigger depth of field by moving further away from the subject. Strangely though, in the viewfinder I cannot tell that the background is so out of focus. It looks almost as sharp as the main subject.

All my photos today were taken outside (Its almost winter and the temperature is a warm 27 degrees!) in the sunshine. All the experts tell you that no one should take photos any time except during the "golden hours" of early morning and late afternoon. In the tropics the golden hour is a mere ten minutes long so that is too restrictive for me!!! I love the full sun, shadows make subjects more interesting. I guess shooting in the midday is why I shall never be considered an expert!

AJ

Fun with Macro

A friend of mine has given me his Canon 40D and f/2.8 Macro lens to play with while he is away touring Australia. This morning - before the thunder claps and rain arrived - it was sunny and worthy of going outside with a camera. With this golden opportunity I decided first to take a few shots with the dedicated macro lens and then take similar shots with the Nikon with the screw-on macro adapter lens I had bought (new) from Ebay.
Here are the first two shots of a tiny grasshopper I spotted on one of the early Chrysanthemums. The head of the flower is only two centimetres across which will give you an idea of the magnification/closeness of me to the creature and petals. First the Canon 40D

 and now the Nikon D90

The depth of field is actually better with the dedicated macro lens on the Canon but I am really amazed at how well the sub $50 adapter behaves. The adapter is in two halves and when I unscrew the wide angle lens I can get up really close - to about 15cm from my subject.
Here are a couple more photos for comparison - the ones taken with the camera were when the light was a bit brighter - the thunder had already started rumbling by the time I took the Nikon outside. The loud bangs and the torrential rain came as soon as I moved indoors! We have had 29 mm of rain since it started ten minutes ago!
First the Canon

The colours are true in this picture from the Canon. The Nikon has tended to pinks.

The colours may need adjusting but see how much closer I can get once I take off that wide extension? Mind you, the depth of field is really really narrow! This flower is only tiny - about 1.5cm across. Because of the fading light I moved the plant outside.
All my photos are taken in full manual (with a few trial runs to get the settings correct!) The pre-sets did not seem to suit either the macro lens on the Canon nor the supplementary lenses on the Nikon. Focus is on manual too.
I enjoy playing with cameras (you would never know it, would you?) so being given permission to use someone else's camera and expensive lens is like going to heaven!
Just to finish, here are two more shots I want to share with you.

Both these flowers are small - the partly open Chrysanthemum is only 2cm at the most. It wasn't until I peered through the camera lens that I could see there were ants crawling around inside it.

If you click on any of these photos, they should open into a larger image, to return to this blog to finish reading or look at other pictures, click the "back" button.
Apologies for not writing in my blog for a while. I have not had good Internet connection due to switching ISPs but hopefully all that is behind me!
AJ