Like the Littoral Zone and poodlewalks this Rhizomes blog has been on the back burner since September,  even though I have been walking in the local bushland with Maya (in the morning) and Maleko (in the afternoon) and continuing to make photos whilst on the poodlewalks.  

There was even the occasional  photo session, such as this one, which was an early morning photo session on Boxing Day, 2023.  

It was an early morning photo session on Halls Creek Rd, which  is a minor link road that is part of the Heysen Trail in Waitpinga.  It has little traffic and so it is safe to both walk along with Maya and to stop to make photos.      

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The local bushland is becoming off limits in the afternoon due to the snakes coming out of their winter hibernation with  the warm spring weather. It is still okay to walk in the bushland  in the early morning before sunrise when it  is cold or wet from the heavy dew.  

I notice that this  Rhizomes blog was neglected during the autumn/winter period this year -- there is a gap between March and August. There is even greater neglect  with The Littoral Zone blog. I'm  sure this neglect  was the result of me struggling to put  the walking and the photography together as a process-based  photographic project. 

The photo below was made in early September 2023 whilst I was on a poodlewalk  in the late afternoon with Maleko:

Going back through the archives Rhizomes  and seeing what  I had photographed in the local bush during that March-August period I can see that an immersive style of walking was emerging: one that was reactive to what was occurring around me, rather than going into the bushland to photograph a  particular object in certain lighting conditions that had been pre-visualised.

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This macro photo was made whilst I was on a hobbled walk in the local bushland. 

It was late in the afternoon. I have looked for this bark since, but I have never been able to find it. The winter winds would have prised it loose from the branch of the pink gum.  

This is what happens to old piles of bark in the bushland that have been lying on the ground for a year of more: 

The colours  fade, the bark slowly breaks up, then it starts to crumble.  

I came across the above  pile when I returned to walking in the bushland with Maya  after a long break over the summer.  I was  introducing Maya to the bushland. I recognised the pile  from a year ago. 

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This is another interpretation of  the hanging bark  along Depledge Rd in Waitpinga. 

 In contrast  to the early morning version that was uploaded  in this earlier post the above  version was made in the late afternoon. 

This picture is a  follow up  to this post on walking along Depledge Rd in Waitpinga in May 2022. 

The above  picture was made on an early morning walk in late May 2022.  It is a close-up  interpretation  of this picture,  and it  was made with a 10 year old  digital camera. There  is a  b+w  interpretation made with a 60 year old film camera. 

The hanging bark along Depledge Rd no longer exists. The gale force winter winds tore it to shreds.  

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A photo of some roadside vegetation along Depledge Rd in Waitpinga in early May 2022. The photo was made in the early morning  on a poodlewalk,  just as the sun's rays  illuminated  the vegetation:

During May Kayla and I usually walked along this road prior to sunrise, then we go into the bushland  5 minutes or so after sunrise. We timed the walk so awe were by the tree when it was illuminated by the early morning light. 

I noticed this hanging bark whilst I was walking along Depledge Rd in Waitpinga on an early morning poodlewalk with Kayla. We have a routine  on this walk. We walk  along the road before sunrise,  then we return to the Forester  via  the bushland. We walk through the bushland is slow as I am  taking photos.  

The bark is on the roadside, hanging from a branch.  It is kind of  sculptural; a mobile if you like,  as it gentle  moves when there is an easterly wind blowing. I've  made a video of the movement. 

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Lying beside one of the paths  through  the local Waitpinga bushland  is a pile of bark. It has been there a while. The pink gums (Eucalyptus fasciculosa)  are shredding their  bark and the pile keeps changing due to the  strong coastal winds.    Occasionally, when I am walking  by whilst on a poodlewalk,  I casually toss another piece of bark onto the pile, to see what happens. 

This  picture of roadside vegetation was made in late January whilst I was on an early morning  poodlewalk along Depledge Road in Waitpinga  with Kayla:

I've  started thinking about the possibilities of making a video showing the  early morning light starting to move across the trunk of the  trees whilst  I have been making these kind of photos of roadside vegetation.  Photographing  along Depledge Rd and in the adjacent bushland  has made me very aware that light is constantly moving.     

 In so  thinking  I have assumed  that  video is an extension of still photography. Video represents movement -- eg., light and wind -- that is beyond the capabilities of still photography.  So video is supplementary to  still photography,  rather than being quite different in its approach to the photography that I've been  doing on poodlewalks. 

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This was made in the early morning in the local Waitpinga bushland. Or to be more precise it was 7.15 am on the 29th December 2021. It was one of the last photos I made in 2021. It was one of the few sunny mornings  of this cool and windy summer. 

Afterwards,  Kayla  and I  walked around the bushland for another 30 minutes taking the odd photo.   There was little traffic on Depledge Rd, or even on the central Waitpinga Rd to the beach and surf.  Depledge Rd and the roadside vegetation was dry and dusty -- it hadn't rained for a while. The main sound that morning was the buzzing of the bees.

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From an early morning poodlewalk with Kayla in the  local Waitpinga bushland in November 2021

We only explore  the  bushland in the early morning just after  sunrise,   due to  the prevalence of the eastern brown snakes. Even though it is cool that early in the morning we tread very carefully whilst keeping a sharp lookout. It is the Littoral Zone  for the afternoon poodlewalk with Maleko.  

There is an earlier picture of bark hanging from a branch here   

On some of the recent  early morning poodlewalks with Kayla  I have been wandering in the local bushland in Waitpinga.  I was scouting and scoping for some possibilities for a  large format photo session. I am looking for something simple and basic that can  done in the early morning  during the summer months. Early in this context means no later than half an hour after sunrise.  

This is one possibility that I came across:

 However, I'm not sure that I could find this particular trunk and branch again. I will need to spend time looking for it and if I find it, then laying a trail to guide me back to it.

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I took  a break from sitting in front of the  computer working on The Bowden Archives and Industrial Modernity book by wandering around the local bushland on a poodlewalk with Kayla. Sitting in front of the computer was getting to me. 

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 From a early morning  poodlewalk in local bushland in Waitpinga with Kayla during the middle of winter 2021.  

It has been 3-4months  since I've walked through the local bushland. I went back yesterday morning to avoid the gale force  south westerly winds. I noticed that the native orchids   were in flower.  During this time I have been reading Photography and Place:  Australian landscape Photography 1970 untill now , which is a pdf of an exhibition curated by Judy Annear, Art Gallery NSW in 2011. 

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Kayla and I made a  brief return the local  patch of bush in Waitpinga last week.   We had not walked around  there since late spring. We had stayed away  over the summer months because of the brown snakes. In early autumn I  decided that it would be safe early in the morning around sunrise as the early morning temperatures was cool.  

So Kayla and I had a  quick poodlewalk one morning when it wasn't heavily overcast to check things out. It is quite dark in this patch of bush early in the morning,  and the heavily overcast skies make it difficult to  take photos handheld. It was safe. We haven't been back since because of the heavy cloud cover in the morning. 

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I have just come across  this current  exhibition of trees at the Monash University Museum of Art entitled Tree Story. I do not know much about the exhibition, or the narrative that is implied in the word 'story'.  The information on the MUMA website is very minimal. It says that the  exhibition's:

"creative practices "create a ‘forest’ of ideas relating to critical environmental and sustainability issues. At its foundation—or roots—are Indigenous ways of knowing and a recognition of trees as our ancestors and family...Tree Story takes inspiration from the underground networks, information sharing and mutual support understood to exist within tree communities, and poses the question: what can we learn from trees and the importance of Country?" 

There are no links to the Tree Story podcast, or to The Tree School publication on the website.  So we don't  have  access to the fleshing  out of the above ideas by the curators. This minimal online approach to an exhibition is standard art gallery practice .The art galleries  continue to assume that exhibitions are about people  physically visiting the gallery, even after a year of living with  the Covid-19 pandemic and its restrictions on people movement. 

Does the  use of 'school' suggest that trees  have the capacity to learn?  Or does tree school  refer to  a place where people can gather for communal learning and the production of knowledge grounded in lived experience and connection to communities? I have no idea. 

From a recent poodlewalk in January 2021:

This branch of a pink gum ( Eucalyptus fasciculosa) is in the local bushland in Waitpinga  adjacent to Depledge Rd on the southern Fleurieu Peninsula in South Australia. 

The picture  was made in the early morning in  mid-Spring (ie., October)  about 15 minutes  after sunrise. I often walk down Depledge Rd on a poodlewalk to avoid the strong,  south-westerly winds off the southern ocean. The bush on the west side of the road provides us with protection from the wind. 

It has been a cold,  wet, windy,   spring so far. We have had so much rain along the southern coast fo the Fleurieu Peninsula.   However, there were  a few days of fine weather between the days of steady rain in early October,  and so we were able to wander  around the local bushland in Waitpinga. 

This  picture was made  in the early morning inbetween  the rains sweeping across the coast:    

It  is a  grounded  branch of a pink gum in local bushland in Waitpinga.  The tree  is growing along the ground. 

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This picture of  roadside vegetation was made on a recent  early morning poodlewalk with Kayla along Depledge Rd in Waitpinga  during the recent stormy conditions. Recent as in late September. 

We chose to walk along this road as the adjacent bushland provided us with some shelter  from  the  strong, gale force  south westerly winds battering the coast.   There was no traffic along the road,  and so we had it  to ourselves; apart from the usual rabbits, kangaroos  and foxes criss crossing Depledge  road.  

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The morning of 2nd August was foggy and, after the  poodlewalk along Depledge Road  in Waitpinga with Kayla we  ended up  slowly walking around the local bushland : 

Foggy mornings like this are rare in the southern Fleurieu Peninsula. We have  only  had two such mornings this winter. 

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In the last week or so I  have been spending the early morning poodlewalks  with Kayla exploring a small patch of bushland as a contrast to the coastal rocks.  The bush  runs alongside Depledge Rd in Waitpinga,  and  I am assuming this patch has been put aside as a result of  the  Landcare moment in the late 20th century.  

On these bush walks I am using a handheld digital camera to build up some supplementary material for the forthcoming online walking /photography exhibition at Encounters Gallery.   This will  open in August as  a  part of the SALA Festival.  I am also using these walks to find some suitable subject matter for a 5x4 photo session. This is one session that has been done. In the first instance the  5x4 photos are for an upcoming online exhibition for the Friends of Photography Group in August.

When walking in the  bush reserve  I  follow the trails that have laid down by the kangaroos who crewe regular visitors to the bushland.    If I didn't walk their trails  iIwould be walking around in circles with no sense of where I was.  

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I made the photo below in the late afternoon of June 20--winter solstice--when I was on a poodlewalk with Maleko. As we were wandering back to the car through the bushland reserve in Waitpinga after a photo session with a medium format film camera  I made the photo in passing just before dusk.

 I didn't think much of it at the time, and I forgot all about it--until I uploaded the photos to check  what the possibilities there were for  from my  recent scoping for another film-based  photoshoot.  This looked to be a good possibility--one worth checking out more consciously.   

Even though it had been rain all day  I decided to go  looking  for the 2 trees this afternoon.  It took me 2 hours of wandering around amongst the passing showers  before I  finally found these 2 trees.  I judged that the subject matter was an afternoon photo session rather than a morning one and that it  needed soft afternoon light and a  blueish sky,  rather than dull light and overcast skies.  

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Whilst on the early morning poodlewalks with Kayla  I have  started to explore a small bush "reserve" running alongside agricultural land and Depledge Rd in Waitpinga.  I presume that this  small block of native bushland  has been put aside  from the old Waitpinga landcare programme.  

Kayla and I  usually walk  along the adjacent  Depledge  Rd  from  6.30 to 7.15 am, then around sunrise we enter the bush "reserve" and wander within it  for around 45  minutes. I am looking for possible photographic subjects and occasionally I  do come across one --such as the one  above. 

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I mentioned in an earlier  post  that I had made a photographic study of these two trees at the beginning of Halls Creek Rd in Waitpinga with  my medium format film camera (a Rolleiflex SL66).   The study is below, and the picture  was made  early in the morning during the winter of  2019. 

It was  just after the early morning sun came above the hill and  early morning light  lit up the roadside corner.

I had forgotten all about this study until I returned to this Tugwell/Halls Creek Rd location early one morning during the Covid-19 lockdown to photograph this scene for the online Covid-19 exhibition at Encounters Gallery.  

This picture was made on  a recent  early morning autumn poodlewalk with Kayla along  the Heysen Trail in Waitpinga. The location  is just around the corner from where we live in Encounter Bay--just a few minutes drive in the Forester,   then a short  walk. The location  is ideally situated  for the light just after sunrise.  

The subject matter and location  are  quite different to  the recent  trend of porch portraits in local suburbs, which has been one key response to the Covid-19 pandemic crisis.  Some hold that "porch portraits"   are rather risky, given the confinement and special distancing requirements.  

This digital picture  was scoping  for a  future film session during stage 3 "lockdown"  of the Covid-19 virus.  I started this a few days latter with the Rolleiflex SL66 medium format camera, followed by  some   large format photography with a Linhof 5x4 Technika IV. I wanted to  keep this slow photography ticking  over within  the limitations of the stay-at-home lockdown.     

It  does look as if the lockdown will continue for another month, then it will be slowly  eased step by step.   At the moment we  cannot undertake non-essential travel around the state during the stay-at-home lockdown--so there is no work on the  Mallee Routes project.    Maybe this particular travel  rule  will be  eased within the month,  whilst the South Australian border continues to remain closed.

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This is another picture  of roadside  trees made recently whilst  an early morning poodlewalks  with Kayla along Baum Rd, in Waitpinga. Whilst walking that morning I spotted rabbits darting across the road,  a fox moving quickly across the field, and a couple of  kangaroos in the distance.   

 We woke to the smell of  the fires that morning, the 11th January 2020.    The  blueish smoke haze from the bush fires  hung   along the southern coast of the Fleurieu Peninsula. It was the morning of the day  that saw some light  rain that was part of a south westerly change.   

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This picture was made in late November 2019 whilst I was on  an early morning poodlewalk with Kayla: 

I made a number of photos along Baum Rd in Waitpinga around this time, prior going into hospital with an infected leg. The wild, windy  spring  weather had eased, the mornings were mild,  and the early morning light was soft. I was attracted by the darkness as opposed to  the brightness of the early morning  light  when I am walking along along the foreshore of Encounter Bay.  

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This picture was made in mid-October whilst I was  on an early morning poodlewalk.  

I was  with Kayla and we had been walking along Baum Rd in Waitpinga since sunrise.  Kayla was on high alert for hares and kangaroos. A fox in the distance  quickly disappeared. We were returning along Baum Rd to the Forester when the photo was made.

In the  few weeks since this photo  the green  undergrowth has turned  yellow/brown.  It is the same with  the fields in the background.  The landscape has  been transformed. It is now a yellow/brown landscape. This is the summer look,  and it lasts until the rains in late autumn.