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| The roomy tent where Mark and I slept. |
Saturday, 17 November: Photography all day
In one sense, there is little to report of these days in the Tarkine, since the schedule was pretty much the same every day: breakfast, go out looking for good settings for photography, take loads of pictures, and try to benefit from Rob’s talents and experience. Have lunch either at the base camp or in the bush, take more pictures, return for dinner and good talk. My journal, in fact, has the barest of notations about the days’ doings. As a result, these pages have little by way of narrative, but loads of images.
The pictures in the block to the left show very well what a Southern temperate rain-forest can look like: moss everywhere, and cool dark recesses that you imagine the full sun has never reached. Note in the snap at the lower-left corner the tree fern in the middle distance. No such things in the Pacific Northwest!
Ira at the foot of a Euclyptus regnans, the tallest flowering plant in the world (as opposed to conifers). (Big image, small.)
In the block to the right, I especially like the image at the upper left: it depicts the profusion of growing things, and I am particularly satisfied with the composition. In the right-hand column of that block, in the center, Jo is either simply enjoying the beauty of the forest, or perhaps listening for a bird song. And I was specially interested in the parasitic fungus on the Nothofagus that you see in the bottom of that column. It’s Cyttaria gunnii, and it’s edible all right, though the ever-reliable Wikipedia article says the insides are of a jelly-like consistency. We saw the corresponding fungus in Chile, on the N. antarctica—there the fungus is C. hariottii, and it’s called, among other things, “Pan de los Indios”, the Indians’ bread, and is evidently delicious, unlike its Tasmanian cousin. Sweet flavor, says Wikipedia, and used in making desserts. Wow.
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Above is a shrunken version of the picture below, which is
big enough that you need to scroll to get it all. At the very right is our base camp, what Mark is calling the Long House. I think that this is the only shot I have of that place, even though we spent most of our time there when not out photographing. |
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And finally, a couple of videos showing the immensity of
the
eucalyptus trees:
| 29-second clip. | 18-second clip. |
And so you see the best of the photos that I made this day. For more, you have to go to the next day’s page.