During the late  autumn early winter  months of 2025 winter  I spent my   time walking along various back country  roads. The littoral zone along  the Encounter Coast was  pretty much off limits in this period,    due to the effects of the  toxic micro algae bloom (karenia mikimotoi) caused by marine heating in  March.  Modelling  indicates that though  the algae bloom  may get better over winter  it will get worse next summer. It will  affect  both gulfs – Gulf St Vincent and Spencer Gulf – and Investigator Strait. 

I started photographing  the side of the unsealed back country  roads that I was walking along on the early morning and late afternoon poodlewalks. Prior to the late autumn rains these country roads were extremely dusty,  and some of the roadside vegetation was just hanging on.

Occasionally,  I photographed  the insignificant objects  lying on the ground that caught my eye:  eg., a bunch of dead leaves as  their colour  stood out from  the layers of dust. 

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Another study of dead leaves in the Waitpinga bushland in the Fleurieu Peninsula. This was in  the spring of 2024.  Like the others in the series  the photo  was made whilst on a poodlewalk --this time an early morning  with Kalani.      

This is a bushland that is slowly drying out from the decreasing  rain and increasing temperatures. It is slowly becoming hotter due to rising carbon emissions from burning fossil fuels (coal, oil, and natural gas).  The waste products of fossil fuels are still dumped in the air free of charge.

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The picture below  is another one of my  attempts  at converting a colour digital file to b+w. A previous attempt on an earlier post  is here. These  pictures of the details of  the landscape were made whilst I was on a poodlewalk in the local Waitpinga bushland in the southern Fleurieu Peninsula of South Australia.  

These b+w conversions haven't been successful using an old digital camera and I've never been able to even approach  the rich tonality  that Sebastian Salgado achieved with his  impressive b+w Kuwait photos.   One response has been  to return to using b+w film. 

In both cases my  intimate bushland pictures  were made with a very  old  Sony NEX-7 digital camera (2011),  a  modern Voigtlander closeup adaptor, and a vintage Leica M 35mm Summicron f.2.0 lens (1960s). This  combination is trying to keep my old  photographic equipment going rather than discarding it.

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Another interpretation  of dead leaves in the local Waitpinga bushlandmade whilst on an autumn  afternoon  poodlewalk.   This time it is the leaves that have  fallen to the ground:

The leaves  become part of the ground cover  that we walk on, and often than not they are not  noticed.    As the leaves  slowly decay  during the winter months they lose their colour.  It was the colour that initially attracted me. 

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I have spent quite some  time walking  in  the local Waitpinga bushland this autumn.  I walked with Maya on the morning walk and with Maleko on the afternoon walk. Whilst being preoccupied with dipping my toes into making  walking art I noticed  the dead leaves hanging from the branches of the eucalypts as well as the bark. 

 I'd ignored them up to now as  I had been primarily focused on the bark with a 35mm film camera. The leaves were concealed -- merged into the background.  In the last couple of weeks of walking I started to look at the dead leaves as I walked past them. Their speckled brownness   stood out from  the background  world of green.  I started to  photograph them closeup.   

What emerged was  the  simple awareness of something present-at-hand in its sheer presence-at-hand. The seeing involved in the encounter with the present-at-hand gives precedence to the entity and it does so precisely because it detaches itself from the background context. The emergence of the dead leaves  into presence can be understood as an event of the un-concealment of the dead leaves  out of concealment. The photography discloses this coming into presence. 

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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 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. 

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   

 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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