Thoughtfactory: Fleurieuscapes

Burnt

Fire. In Talisker Conservation Park. This park is located on the south-western area of the Fleurieu Peninsula in South Australia, is north west of Deep Creek Conservation Park, and it is populated by rough barked manna gum (Eucalyptus viminalis spp. cygnetensis).

It is primarily known for the former Talisker Silver Mine, which is of significant heritage value, as a largely intact example of historical silver mining practises that represent Cornish mining traditions and mine construction techniques. Deep Creek Conservation Park is the largest portion of remaining natural vegetation on the Fleurieu Peninsula, and it is surrounded by land that has been cleared and is now being used for agriculture, particularly grazing.

There has been a moderate decline in rainfall in the region since the 1970s. Summer in South Australia's Mediterranean climate-type climate with its warm-to-hot dry summers and mild-wet winters means high temperatures, hot north-westerly desert winds, and increased risk of high intensity fires.

Climate change projections for the region indicate decreasing rainfall (the winter rainfall is largely declining), increasing temperatures, rising sea levels and more severe fire danger days. So more bushfires.

Roadside: a note

Roadside, a sub-theme in the Fleurieuscapes project, is informed by, and takes its bearings, from Joyce Evans intriguing 2013 body of work entitled Edge of the Road. The latter appears to have been forgotten in our photographic culture ---- sucked into its black hole.

Roadside emerges from walking the unsealed back country roads in Waitpinga, usually on poodlewalks, and it is concerned with both the state of side of the road, the road itself and the flux of the roadside.

The picture of illegal dumping of carp by local fishermen on Depledge Rd in Waitpinga was made on an early morning poodlewalk. The carp is slowly rotting on the side of the road. Not even the local foxes, who clean up all the dead bodies in the bushland, will eat the carp. Carp makes the standard poodles sick if they eat it.

So much for the assertion that recreational fishermen are in tune with, and respect, nature.

history + the sublime

Adorno argued in History and Freedom that the idea of history as progress in the realisation of freedom was shaken to its very core by the Auschwitz. This catastrophe had its impact on aesthetics in that the progressive quality of art could now refer to only such works that undermined the false optimism of the linear model of historical progress.

One way this undermining took place was the artistic critique of the conventions of the beautiful, glorified by traditional aesthetics as an expression of freedoms, exemplified by modernist aesthetic theory of Greenberg. In this theory abstraction has often been understood precisely in terms of an aesthetic of the beautiful based on the judgment of taste and there is an aesthetic distance from both popular cultural forms and the logic of the market. Art's logic is an interruption of tradition through formal innovation or revolutions to prevent its becoming an object of consumption and ultimately losing its emancipative functions.

he critique and undermining of modernist aesthetic theory was a negating of the beautiful form with its proportion, its balance, its unbroken unity, its harmony and its replacement by the rough, shapeless and resistant. Adorno argued in Aesthetic Theory that the sublime was the only aesthetic idea left to modernism (Lenhardt translation, p. 282).

landscape as place

A personal context about the singular place (topos) in which we find ourselves and where we live, walk and photograph.

The picture below is from a granite headland and is a view of the coastline in South Australia's southern Fleurieu Peninsula looking west from the top of a headland towards Kings Head, Newland Heads and Cape Jervis. The granite headland, which was ice-moulded during the Permian glaciation, is known as Rosetta Head (The Bluff) or Kongkengguwar for the first nations Ramindjeri people. This region is becoming increasingly developed and framed as a tourist experience. Rosetta Head itself is currently undergoing a major, long-term tourist upgrade by the Victor Harbor Council.

The walking trail along the western coastline from Petrel Cove in the foreground is now known as the Wild Coast Way and it links up with the southern part of the 1200 kilometre Heysen Trail, which starts at Cape Jervis and ends in the Flinders Ranges. Suzanne walked the Heysen Trail over 3 years. In spite of its length it is a very popular walk in South Australia.

seascapes

Two seascapes from the winter of 2022. Both of the pictures are of Encounter Bay from Rosetta Head (Kongkengguwarr) . This is a headland, 97m above sea level

I pretty much stand in the same location and I'm looking in the same direction east by south east --- the camera is basically looking across Encounter Bay to the coastline of the Coorong.

This is in the late afternoon just before the sun disappeared behind the Mt Lofty Ranges in Waitpinga.

Kings Head, Waitpinga

I've been re-looking at the film archives on the iMac and I came across these photos of Kings Head, Waitpinga. I haven't looked at this particular archive in years. I cannot remember when these two photos were made. They were probably made just before we moved down to live at Encounter Bay on the southern coast of the Fleurieu Peninsula.

That was roughly when I decided to return to photographing with black and film in response, or a reaction to, digital and colour. The latter had a tendency to make things look pretty --- too pretty. Would black and white film enable me to move away from beauty? To represent, through abstracting from colour, the more rugged features of the coastline's rock formations?

edgelands

A picture from the archives: it is from an early morning poodlewalk in 2022 with Kayla.

The space or zone is the old Victor Harbor Council dump prior to it moving to its new, multipurpose recycling location near Goolwa that is shared with the Alexandrina Council. The old dump site is still owned by the Victor Harbor Council, but it has become an edgeland; one surrounded by grazing land, small farms and tourist accommodation.

Esplanade architecture

The photo below was made on a poodlewalk with Kayla along the Esplanade at Victor Harbor in 2022 with a medium format film camera.

This was one of our regular early morning poodlewalks. We would walk along the beach from the mouth of the Inman River to the Granite Island causeway, then return along the footpath to the car. It took about an hour.

Judging from the negatives that I have scanned so far it looks as if I didn't make many Fleurieuscape architectural photos in 2022. There's not that much of architectural interest along the Esplanade.

clouds and sea

During the winter months I have been photographing the clouds and sea of Encounter Bay on the early morning poodlewalks. This photography has generally been before sunrise from the eastern side of Rosetta Head. The clouds usually disappear after sunrise

An example:

These are not just cloud studies nor just light studies as often it is the play of light on the water that attracts me as well as the clouds.

The clouds, light and colours change rapidly between 15 minutes before sunrise and 15 minutes afterwards.

Parsons Beach

A brief excursion to Parsons Beach in Waitpinga:

It was an exploratory excursion. I have usually avoided going there because it is a surfing beach with access through the Newland Head Conservation Park. So I cannot take the poodles with me.