Thoughtfactory’s Fleurieuscape’s Notebook

The current harmful algae bloom (HAB) in South Australia, a number of species within the Karenia family, some of which produce brevetoxins ((marine neurotoxins) including  Karenia cristata.  This HAB  is the largest and most destructive algal bloom in Australia’s history and it is persisting along parts of the South Australian coastline, a year on from when it was first detected in March 2025. It has affected 20,000 sq km of coast and resulted in marine mass mortality killing millions of sea creatures – from tiny shellfish to top predators like white sharks. It is  the most significant marine mortality events on the great southern reef in living memory. 

Though the  coastal water can be clear along  the beach  it has been stripped of biodiversity and marine life. If you walk along the coastal path between Rosetta Head and  Kings Head you can see the HAB  sitting in the sea just off the coast:

It comes and goes. Looking back we can see that that the initial SA Government response and messaging about the harmful algae bloom  were fragmented and confusing for stakeholders,  and that there were delays in both the Commonwealth and state governments' responses. The concerns of the local community on the southern Fleurieu Peninsula  were not heeded until the bloom reached the Adelaide metropolitan beaches.  

Karenia cristata is  the primary source of brevetoxins and this species produces high levels of neurotoxins -- hence Kalani's death from eating dead fish and the distressed and paralysed western grey kangaroos at Tunkakilla on the southern Fleurieu Peninsula who  were close to the toxic algae bloom. 

 UTS’s Professor Shauna Murray, who who first identified the Karenia cristata  species for  producing brevetoxins in Australian waters in November 2025  observes: “We isolated Karenia cristata cells and grew them in our laboratory and then used a series of molecular genetic methods to  dentify and quantify them in South Australian waters since March 2025. We found K. cristata cells were producing high levels of brevetoxins, which hadn’t been known before.”

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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. 

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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. 

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The cloud formations  that move  across Encounter Bay  around Victor Harbor are often quite dramatic.  

The photos  of the clouds are usually made  from on top of Rosetta Head in the early morning:

The  cloud shapes are constantly changing. 

Domestic coastal architecture  is primarily a  space for living within. Traditionally the buildings are sparse and  functional. They are summer holiday houses simply built.   Their exteriors are so ordinary as to pass unnoticed. 

At Encounter Bay the 1940-50s houses  are slowly being pulled down and  grander  seaside designs are being built. 51 Franklin Parade, Encounter Bay is a recent example:

The old summer holiday house has been replaced by a house for people  to permanently  live in.  Victor Harbor is changing. Sea change is starting to  influence the style of architecture. 

Lately, I have been thinking about stepping  beyond  the boundaries of this Fleurieuscapes  blog that doesn't really go anywhere.  I have been thinking  along the lines of  having  another  solo exhibition,  or of producing a photobook.  I have enough material,  and my thinking has been that the book is primary  and the exhibition is secondary, in that the latter  could be used to  launch the  photo book.  

Judging from my experience with the previous Fleurieuscapes exhibition,  exhibitions with framed  prints are expensive,  they  have a short existence,  and they are quickly forgotten. Few are the memories of them.  So it doesn't really add up. However, an  exhibition could be used as a platform to launch a  photo book,  thereby  making  the latter  known to the public at the opening.  Distribution is the really big problem with photobooks and launching the book at  the  opening night of the exhibition would help.  

If so, then it  is really becomes a question of how to organize the material in a photobook. It needs to  have  an idea to distinquish it from all the other photobooks being produced.  The one that I  have toyed with in the past  a topological thinking is  the idea of place--that is, my experiences of  being in a place that  is the southern Fleurieu Peninsula.  In Heideggerian language to be is to be in place. So it is being -at-home-in-a place.  

Photography, after all,  is a way of collecting experiences, whilst  the book is a way of moving photography away from the  white walls of  the art gallery.  In this case  a photography of a limited situatedness of existence in a place  that is a series of events or processes  in  an open region .

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As I mentioned in this post on the poodlewalks  blog,  I have neglected the Fleurieuscapes project because of my focus on other projects.  Though I  have been plugging away  in a desultory and sporadic fashion, but I really unsure of what I am trying to do with this body of work from my coastal-based photographic practice. Photography, I've realised is good at showing and lousy at explaining.  So what an I going to show? 

The project is about place, and it is different to the Littoral Zone, Abstraction and Tree projects, even if it  does incorporate the odd image from these other projects. Place in the sense of the space of the Fleurieu Peninsula, where people live and have  made this space  their home. So  though Fleurieuscapes  incorporates  nature it also looks at the built environment at a specific historical moment.   

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