Today I took a trip up to Bute at the top of the Yorke Peninsula to look at their Silo Art. It was finished in August last year and and was chosen to depict the local fauna and industry. Bute is a mainly agricultural area The main painting is of a rooster and a local girl.
I treated myself to a new toy yesterday - A new camera. and of course, I had to try it our, so I took it with me on Kobe's walk to see if we could get some interesting photo. It was a bit later than we normally walk, so there were very few birds around. There weren't many flowers either, so I made do with some blossom, and gum tree bark, and Kobe of course!!
Back home in the garden, the Hebe's are flowering well, and the bottlebrush is just starting to bloom again
And then the afternoon Qatar Airways flight from Doha passed overhead on its way to the airport
Yesterday I spent the day with my good friends Maggie and Steve from Sydney. They were in Adelaide for the Tour Down Under, so we went to Willunga to watch stage 4. We found a spot about 40m from the finish line where the race would pass by three times.
It was opposite one of the channel 7 commentary posts, so during the afternoon we got to see Mark Beretta, the legendary Phil Liggett, Anna Meares and Robbie McEwin
before the riders come past there is a parade of emergency services and support vehicles including some with oversized cyclists on the roof
The first time round, two riders had broken away from the peloton.
By the second time past, the Peloton has caught back up to them again
In the end it was a full on sprint to the finish line
The other day we took a trip around 100Km (60 Miles) Northeast of Adelaide to the country town of Eudunda. In October, artist Sam Brooks finished painting the Silos here. Inspired by Colin Thiele's book The Sun on the Stubble, it shows two local children.
The Silos are beautifully painted
Yesterday evening we took a short drive to look at some of the Christmas lights on homes around the neighbourhood. As usual there were some lovely displays
Earlier this week, there were reports of a mother and calf Southern Right Whale sighted off Christies Beach in the southern suburbs of Adelaide. As we hadn't seen any whaled this season, we decided to go and have a look.
The Southern Right Whale, Eubalaena australis, is a Baleen whale, and adults can weigh up to 23,000 Kg. They are migratory, and spend the summer in Antarctica, migrating to the southern coast of Australia in our winter to calve, before returning to the Antarctic in autumn.
Our first view was from a lookout to the south, and after a few minutes we picked up the adult around a kilometre away.
We were looking into the sun, so after watching it for a while we decided to move closer, and get better light for photography. There was a large crowd watching them, but everyone was considerate and abiding by social distancing requirements in these strange times we now live in.
The adult was pretty easy to see and was slowly traveling north, regularly surfacing. as it turned away from the beach, you got a better idea of the size of these majestic creatures.
The calf was not so easy to see, always staying close to mum. I did manage a few shots with the calf in view.
Today we took a short trip up to Owen, on the Adelaide Plains, to see their recently completed silo art. The theme is "Wheat bags to sand bags" and is honouring the men who left this area to fight in the First World War. It also honours the people left behind, who switched from making bags for the farmer's cereal crops to making sand bags for the trenches.
More information can be found here:
This weekend there is a "fly-in" at Truro Air Park in the Murray Mallee. I popped up on Saturday on what was a chilly, windy and dusty day.
Over 20 aircraft were there, with a mix of old and new, some gliders and a couple of gyrocopters
Amongst the planes were RV6 VH-VEE, Ercoupe 24-5047, Jabiru 19-3774 and the glider tug PA-25 Pawnee VH-HZY
The gliders, from the university gliding club included Schleicher K13 VH-GQC and K8B VH-GAQ
The gyrocopters were Cavalon G-2050 and Eclipse G-5070
