“Easy come, easy go

Any way the wind blows”

Lyrics: John Weldon “J. J.” Cale

 

 

It seems a little perverse that we visited Albany Wind Farm when it was blowing a gale, but, that is what we did. Tourism Western Australia promotes this as a destination which I find quite strange, but then I’ve just found out that the old Battersea Power Station in London is now a tourist destination. If you told me 50 years ago that tourists would visit it I’d have thought you’d gone doolally tap. Albany Wind Farm doesn’t have shops and accommodation for tourists, rather it has 18 wind turbines plonked on top of 80m cliffs overlooking the Southern Ocean. We weren’t interested in the wind turbines, we were interested in the coastal heath that grows beneath them and what lives in that.

 

 

 

 

Ostensibly we were looking for the Southern Emu Wren. They are incredibly shy and difficult to find at the best of times and next to impossible when it’s blowing a gale, bucketing down and absolutely taters. The closest I got was a glimpse of the rear end of one in a bush just before it flew off. Very, very frustrating. In fact it wasn’t just the weather that was making things difficult, my camera was misbehaving as well and wouldn’t focus on anything even if it did sit still. It was not a good day out. After a regroup it was decided to return the next morning as the weather forecast was better and importantly, while we didn’t see a lot of bird activity we could hear it in the undergrowth. It wasn’t all bad as I did get a photo of a Fan-tailed Cuckoo which was a first.

 

The next morning was considerably better. The wind was still blowing, but that was to be expected as they wouldn’t have sited the wind farm here if it wasn’t windy, but most importantly it had stopped raining. It’s amazing how a bit of sunshine improves the morale. I’d also checked the autofocus settings on the camera and found that I’d been playing around with them and hadn’t put them back to what they were. AF systems in modern mirrorless cameras are so complicated and you only have to make a small change and everything can go out of whack. Live and learn.

 

On getting home after a very full week we’ve already talked about returning to the Great Southern later in the year or early next as we feel there is a lot more to see and do. I must say that on the camera front that if you intend to stand on a cliff top in the driving wind and rain and take photos then I heartily recommend you take one of the Olympus/OM System series one cameras. I’m always amazed at how well they cope with bad weather.