Keeping our bush clean

Another clean up for DBCA, this time on the west side of the Avon Valley in Moondyne country. A small concentrated pile of domestic rubbish (including furniture and white goods) had been found by DBCA rangers. We have magnificent bush land areas to the east of Perth and it is disappointing that there are people out there who would drive kilometres into the bush to dump rubbish, rather than pay to dump at any of the refuse disposal sites around Perth. As can be seen from the following image, it was enough to fill a decent size, caged tandem axle trailer.

Dave (BM Prado Adventures) did a short video on the clean-up. Click on this link to see it.

The thank you came as an offer to camp on private property managed by DBCA, an offer gratefully accepted. A beautiful clear sky day turned into a cool clear sky night. As the sun went down, the darkening night sky, free from the lights of Perth, revealed a stunning panorama of stars above.

Dinner was enjoyed around a warm fire, it’s coals used for baking bread in a camp oven, and cooking “dirty steaks” directly on the coals. A little while after the sunset was completely gone, with east and west horizons sharing the same clear darkness, the Nikon came out.

Set on a tripod facing the sky, with widest lens (18mm) and aperture (f3.5 -not as low as I would have liked) set, a lot of experimenting resulted in a few good take home shots. For all of the following shots, and the ones above, the camera was in full manual mode for shutter, aperture, and focus.

Some of the evening shots around the campsite were simply time exposures, with short bursts of light from a hand-held spotlight to highlight something.

The next morning, while most still remained tucked up warm in swags and tents, the sunrise provided more opportunity to experiment.

The last play for the morning was a short drive down the property fence line to a stile, where wheels were replaced with shanks pony for a walk into the Avon River. This section of the river flowing must surely be quite spectacular later in the year after good rains. There’s a video on my YouTube channel (Mr Jack T – 4WD Touring in Western Australia) of this drive. Click on this link, or the picture at the bottom to watch. Beyond the pictures here, another post will be put up shortly, simply being a gallery of photo’s that Deb’ took walking down the fence line.