• About

snippetsandsnaps

~ Potato Point and beyond

snippetsandsnaps

Monthly Archives: November 2014

In search of a good photo

30 Sunday Nov 2014

Posted by morselsandscraps in native orchids, photos

≈ 19 Comments

Tags

Dipodium roseum (or punctatum), Hyacinth orchids

The hyacinth orchid is a recalcitrant subject for a portrait, as I may have mentioned before. It has a mass of flowers on a tall stem, which woggles madly in the slightest breeze. And the the flowers have a deep trumpet that defies clarity. As if that doesn’t pose enough photographic problems, there’s the backlight, and the marauding wallabies who chew the top off just as the inflorescence is readying itself for splendour.

However, my weekend companion managed to get a few shots this morning, armed with knowledge about ISO, white balance and P. I am envious, but I lack his patience and technical instincts. The photos aren’t perfect (at least in his opinion), but they’re a darned sight better than anything I’ve taken.

Posted with BlogsyPosted with Blogsy

Cinnamon bells

27 Thursday Nov 2014

Posted by morselsandscraps in native orchids, photos

≈ 17 Comments

Tags

cinnamon bells, Gastrodia sesamoides, potato orchid

At the end of my graveyard walk, I amble along the flat on the outskirts of Nerrigundah, mildly disappointed. After all, I've heard a number of stories of old cemeteries hosting colonies of rare orchids. Not this morning. Not as far as I could see. Not without leaving the grassland and poking about, without a stick, in what might well be the territory of snakes.

My eyes have become accustomed to scanning the road edge. Sometimes I even think I've developed some sort of expertise. And there it is. An orchid, or something that looks enough like an orchid to draw me over for a closer look.

My eye has not let me down. There it is, Gastrodia sesamoides, last sighted in the sandy soil at Huskisson on Jervis Bay, holidaying with my sister-in-law. Aboriginal people used the tubers for food and found them by following the scratchings of bandicoots, hence the common name potato orchid. The flowers have a perfume I missed by focusing too much on photography, hence another common name, cinnamon bells. This is one of the orchids that self-pollinate and thrive when there have been summer fires. It is “widespread and common”, as are most of the orchids I see, but that doesn't diminish my pleasure in spotting it.

However there is a down side. I may begin to think every walking episode should end with orchids!

 

 

 

 

 

My source for information about orchids is Native orchids of Australia, including the island territories by David Jones (2006)

 

Posted with BlogsyPosted with Blogsy

A gallery of paper daisies

26 Wednesday Nov 2014

Posted by morselsandscraps in flowers, photos

≈ 7 Comments

Tags

Nerrigundah, paper daisies

The road from Nerrigundah village to the cemetery was blazing with golden everlastings (Bracteantha bracteata I think). Every single flower demanded to be photographed.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Posted with BlogsyPosted with Blogsy

Homage to a splendid tree

25 Tuesday Nov 2014

Posted by morselsandscraps in photos

≈ 3 Comments

Tags

trees

The tree guarding the track up to Nerrigundah graveyard is worth a pure photo-post. Words won't do it justice.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Posted with BlogsyPosted with Blogsy

The graveyard

24 Monday Nov 2014

Posted by morselsandscraps in graveyards, photos

≈ 16 Comments

Tags

Gray's "Elegy", Nerrigundah, tombstones

The track leading off the Bodalla road to the spacious Nerrigundah graveyard moves beyond a venerable tree. Travels past saplings whose peeling bark creates grey doorways leading to orange splendour. Leads up to a gate without padlock or chain, that swings open easily. Through the gate, a pile of wombat droppings.

There are two separate clumps of graves amongst tall slender grass. Local family names. A few with military insignia. One for a young man who died on the way to the first world war. One with two rough crosses simply labelled Mum and Dad.

The graveyard itself is well cared for: slashed out to the boundary. The graves seem a bit sad and unvisited: artificial flowers scattered; plastic vases overturned: a cross broken off at the haft; lettering fallen off or faded; lichen settling in on the tombstones; small branches fallen across the slabs.

I wouldn't mind resting here when the time for permanent rest comes. But I don't think I want a monument, just a scattering on the light breeze, under the tall trees, with Nerrigundah Ridge as the background, and bark peeling to reveal the vividness of tree-flesh.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

A few stanzas from Thomas Gray's “Elegy written in a country churchyard” is a possible way to end this post. You'll need to change the trees, and perhaps wonder whether the second of the stanzas is a tad dismissive of what may have been perfectly fulfilling rural lives. “Celestial fire” can take many forms, and swaying the rod of empire can actually make a person into a monster (as of course can a peaceful rural life.)

 

Beneath those rugged elms, that yew-tree's shade,

Where heaves the turf in many a mould'ring heap,,

Each in his narrow cell for ever laid,

The rude forefathers of the hamlet sleep.

……….

Perhaps in this neglected spot is laid

Some heart once pregnant with celestial fire;

Hands, that the rod of empire might have sway'd,

Or wak'd to ecstasy the living lyre.



 


 

 

 

 

Posted with BlogsyPosted with Blogsy

To the graveyard

23 Sunday Nov 2014

Posted by morselsandscraps in photos

≈ 16 Comments

Tags

Nerrigundah

I can’t leave Nerrigundah alone. On Saturday I parked the car in the village and walked the two kilometres up the hill to the graveyard. Walk with me, as long as you can bear my passion for photographing bark.

Posted with BlogsyPosted with Blogsy

Silence and the crow

21 Friday Nov 2014

Posted by morselsandscraps in poetry

≈ 20 Comments

Tags

Broken Hill

I

I’d forgotten silence,

assaulted as I always am by ocean

relentless in its rolling.

 

I sit here now

Above desert red and olive green.

Quartz glints and sparkles.

 

Immensity invades my heart

 

and silence.

 

II

I sit in silence writing.

 

A crow accosts me,

Piercing me with white-rimmed stare,

black feathers ruffled by the intermittent wind.

 

Perched on sharp rocks

she quarks her crow cry,

lazy, inconsequential.

 

Glides off above my head

wings panting

pale vee contained by darker gleam.

 

Rides the sky as eagles do,

her crow-cry mocking now,

deriding all that’s tied to earth.

 

III

Humbled by the judgement of the crow

I shrivel.

 

Until desert colours glow again,

quartz glints

 

and silence reinflates me.

For six years in the 1990s I lived in Broken Hill, which became my second heart-place. Then I moved to the coast, and it was twelve years before I returned to the centre. This poem was written in the flora and fauna sanctuary about 10km out of town during that return visit. Since I was living in the cottage set aside for visiting writers, I thought I’d better write.

The poem went through one revision a few years ago, in discussion with a poetry-writing friend. On Tuesday, I submitted it to further scrutiny and revisions at a poetry writing group in Cobargo, where thoughtful suggestions and generous approval encouraged me to post it here.

Posted with BlogsyPosted with Blogsy

Thursday’s special: Warble, glissade and hatchings

20 Thursday Nov 2014

Posted by morselsandscraps in Thursday's special

≈ 19 Comments

Tags

chickens, diamond python, magpie

This week, my Thursday was triply special. It began walking with a friend on her beach. She warbled to magpies on the rocks, and they warbled back: it really was a conversation.

As I drove the Potato Point circuit to look at the beach, as I always do, a ritual of homecoming, a python made its elegant and unhurried way across the road and into the grass.

And when I stalked my Australian daughter on her Facebook page, I discovered there were new additions to her family.

Stolen from my daughter’s Facebook page

Thank you Paula for giving me a chance to assemble the delights of the day.

https://bopaula.wordpress.com/2014/11/20/thursdays-special-swarm-photo-101/

Posted with BlogsyPosted with Blogsy

By the highway

20 Thursday Nov 2014

Posted by morselsandscraps in native orchids, photos

≈ 7 Comments

Tags

Cymbidium suave

This post may look like repetition, but for me the discovery of a stump full of Cymbidium suave on the side of the major coast road between Sydney and Melbourne is worth another set of images of this lovely – and far from uncommon – orchid. I'm also patting myself on the back a bit, firstly because I spotted those strappy leaves as I was whizzing along at a respectable highway speed, and secondly because I saw them again on the return journey. My luck was in: there was a pull-over space opposite, so I got out and scrambled across some uneven dirt, over a couple of slabs of bark, and through some small dead branches for a photo-shoot. The sun was directly overhead, which gave me lovely flower-shadows, but also meant I had to avoid camera-and-photographer shadows. Here they are: the highway orchids.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Posted with BlogsyPosted with Blogsy

River road: the climax

19 Wednesday Nov 2014

Posted by morselsandscraps in native orchids, photos

≈ 9 Comments

Tags

Cymbidium suave

Not the ocean. Not a jazz band. Not an encounter with an animal. Not only food and wine. I hope you’re not disappointed. I wasn’t!

My eyes look up the bank at the side of the road, and I behold (I need grand language) some strappy leaves pouring out of a hole in the trunk of a splendid (unidentified) eucalypt. Not daring to believe, I foot my way carefully up the slope and approach lavish sprays of small creamy-green flowers amongst the leaves. This indeed is a rousing end to the Symphony of the River Road. A snake orchid in glorious bloom.

Differences in colour are the result of using two cameras, not fiddling with parameters! I was too delighted by my find to play around with settings.

Posted with BlogsyPosted with Blogsy
← Older posts

Subscribe

  • Entries (RSS)
  • Comments (RSS)

Archives

  • September 2018
  • July 2018
  • June 2018
  • April 2018
  • March 2018
  • February 2018
  • January 2018
  • December 2017
  • November 2017
  • October 2017
  • September 2017
  • August 2017
  • July 2017
  • June 2017
  • May 2017
  • April 2017
  • March 2017
  • March 2016
  • February 2016
  • January 2016
  • December 2015
  • November 2015
  • October 2015
  • September 2015
  • August 2015
  • July 2015
  • June 2015
  • April 2015
  • March 2015
  • January 2015
  • December 2014
  • November 2014
  • October 2014
  • September 2014
  • August 2014

Categories

  • "White beech"
  • Aboriginal history
  • Aboriginal site
  • animals
  • arboretum
  • archaeology
  • architecture
  • archives
  • art
  • Australian Ballet
  • babcia indulgence
  • banksias
  • bark
  • beach walk
  • beaches
  • bench series
  • Bingi Dreaming Track
  • birds
  • Black and white Sunday
  • boats
  • Bodalla
  • books
  • botanical art
  • botanical gardens
  • brief biographies
  • brief reviews
  • Brisbane
  • bush
  • bush walk
  • Cairns
  • camera skills
  • camping
  • Canberra
  • Carters Beach
  • challenges
  • challenges, art
  • cogitations
  • confession
  • Cooktown
  • country towns
  • Cowra
  • creating
  • creative friends
  • creatures
  • Daintree world heritage area
  • decisions
  • discovery of the week
  • Eurobodalla
  • Eurobodalla beaches
  • Eurobodalla bush
  • faction
  • family
  • farewell blogging
  • floods
  • flora
  • flowers
  • flying
  • food
  • found art
  • friends
  • gardens
  • geology
  • Germaine Greer
  • grandchildren
  • graveyards
  • guest post
  • haiga
  • haiku
  • Handkerchief Beach
  • Hervey Bay
  • history
  • hotchpotch
  • I wonder …
  • in memoriam
  • invitation
  • iPhoneography
  • iPhonephotos
  • iPhotography
  • It
  • Janek and Maja
  • Jemisons Headland
  • Jordan
  • journeys
  • K'gari, Fraser Island
  • Kianga Beach
  • Kuranda
  • lake walk
  • Lightroom
  • Liston
  • Melbourne
  • memoir
  • memories
  • miscellaneous
  • Moruya
  • Mossman
  • Mossman Gorge
  • movie
  • movies
  • museums
  • music
  • Narooma
  • National Gallery of Australia
  • national park
  • national parks
  • native orchids
  • Nelson, Victoria
  • new learning
  • Newcastle
  • Northern Queensland
  • only words
  • opera
  • orchids
  • passions series
  • performances
  • phoneography
  • photo
  • photos
  • photos by other people
  • photos by Rosemary Barnard
  • photos by TRT
  • plants
  • poetry
  • Port Douglas
  • portrait gallery
  • possum skin cloak
  • post-processing
  • Postcards from the past
  • Potato Point beach
  • Prue
  • public art
  • Queensland
  • rainforest
  • Reef Beach
  • reflection
  • relaxation
  • road trip
  • ruins
  • saltmarsh
  • series
  • someone else's photos
  • Stanthorpe
  • street art
  • Sydney
  • Syria
  • theme
  • things I didn't know
  • through the windscreen
  • Thursday's special
  • tranquility
  • travel theme
  • Uncategorized
  • video
  • Warsaw
  • waystations
  • Wellington
  • Western Victoria
  • what next?
  • women I admire
  • Wordless walk
  • wordless walks
  • words
  • words only
  • writing

Meta

  • Register
  • Log in

Enter your email address to follow this blog and receive notifications of new posts by email.

Blog at WordPress.com.

  • Follow Following
    • snippetsandsnaps
    • Join 412 other followers
    • Already have a WordPress.com account? Log in now.
    • snippetsandsnaps
    • Customize
    • Follow Following
    • Sign up
    • Log in
    • Report this content
    • View site in Reader
    • Manage subscriptions
    • Collapse this bar