Shot Notes
I am finally back on the road again after a prolonged wait in the Blue Mountains for my bike to clear customs following its journey from the UK. While the welcome has been warm the weather was not. There has even been snow a few times. I will start by going North to find temperatures more suited to #vanlife. After finding some suitable remote spot to photograph the Milky Way during the winter solstice I will go west into channel country where I hope to see a natural event which only happens a couple of times every 100 years.
You may have heard some parts of Australia are experiencing drought. Describing this as a natural disaster is not entirely accurate. The amount of rainfall which qualifies as a drought today would not be in the days before large scale agriculture and industry started taking huge quantities of water from the river system. The difference in the supply and demand for water is both an economic and environmental problem.
The 2018/2019 drought is mainly in the heavily used Murray-Darling basin. It is over 1 million square kilometres and covers most of New South Wales, Victoria and Australian Capital Territory and parts of Queensland and South Australia. Its proximity to all the population centres results in its intense management becoming highly politicized and the rivers have suffered.
By contrast, the mostly desert Kati Thanda-Lake Eyre basin is an untamed natural river system and one of the world’s largest internally draining ones. It covers about 1.2 million square kilometres in Queensland, South Australia, The Northern Territory and a little bit of New South Wales. Instead of flowing to the ocean it drains to Australias lowest point, a lake 15 meters below sea level. This year the lake is set to fill for the first time since I was born attracting wildlife from the whole continent. I hope to see this on my journey west.
This image has been accepted by Shutterstock for Stock Photography and is available for download here.
Bon voyage! The prospect of a fresh inland lake sounds good. Just make sure you give any of the more bitey wildlife a wide berth as they head for the water
Thanks, The biggest risk on this trip is the remoteness. Tomorrow I am going to buy an extra 40 litres of petrol cans so I have enough fuel for the Strzelecki Track.