Trip to Augusta

Enroute lunch and this is my host's idea of camping equipment, as 1950s as his cameras. The stove is an Optimus 00, a heavy Sweedish lump, like his car and favorite wide angle camera.





The above images were taken at Chester Forest Rescue Camp, where we stopped on the way to and the return from Augusta. Protesters are camped there to protest about the destruction of Jarrah coastal woodland by for Simcoa's silicon smelter near Bunbury, in Western Australia. Given that there is less than 5% of the original native forest remaining in Western Australia, it is a protest that I will support.

(The Japanese-owned company Simcoa has an annual allocation of 150,000 tonnes of "3rd grade" jarrah logs for making into charcoal which is used in the process of making silicon. The Labor government intends to continue supplying Simcoa with jarrah. At present the government lets Simcoa have the jarrah at around $6.08/tonne. Substitutes that Simcoa could use, like plantation timber and New Zealand coal, can not compete with this price and as a result jarrah is still being plundered from our forests at alarming rates.

Simcoa also consumes 8% of W.A.'s electricity, at very reduced rates!)

This direction marker at Leeuwin Lighthouse shows the next stop south as the South Pole and it certainly felt very chilly as I looked at.....

both the Indian and Southern Oceans.


This photograph of me at Leeuwin lighthouse just had to be taken with a nod to Bill Brandt's image of Francis Bacon taken at Primrose Hill in 1963, given the wonderful sky.



Limestone forms above Skippy Rock at Leeuwin-Naturaliste National Park, I'm not sure yet how they were formed but to me they look like the impressions of tree trunks.



A couple of pics taken at Hamelin Bay between Augusta and Margaret River, but we had to leave because of the crowds on the beach.


After lunch at a veggie cafe in Margaret River we visited the Saint Thomas More Catholic Church, a modern building, but well worth the visit for the windows, thanks to whoever it was who told me about them.


On the way back to Augusta from Margaret River I just had to return to Hamelin beach to try out the 1970's rainbow coloured, cottonknit bikini I bought at the Red Cross 'op shop' in Margaret River. The beach was just as crowded as it was in the morning.

We found this Port Jackson Shark, Heterodontus portusjacksoni, on the beach, very dead and very stinky. My host wanted to take it back in the Volvo to preserve in his workroom - "The second word is off" I said


Finally a very peaceful end to a lovely day, these spectacular birds off to bed for the night on the Blackwood River, which my hotel room overlooked.