Gecko!

Caught this sneaky ninja hunting down a moth just now. While geckos are great at keeping bugs at bay, they tend to fall off of whatever they're climbing and scare the hell out of you. They're totally harmless of course, but I scooped up this little fella and took him outside to go hunting elsewhere so I could work in peace.

They do also make this really loud chirping noise to communicate with each other at night. It's pretty common to see 5 or 10 ganging up on one massive moth. poor bugs don't stand a chance around here...

Anyway, nothing too exciting. Just a gecko. I like geckos though, just not convenient when I'm trying to get some stuff done.

More random wildlife

Another day on Coochie-Mudlo island, a few more photos with words to go with them. What should I find first? The same pair of curlews as last time I went over, but with a new baby. The parents were nesting in some scrub, and they aren't worried by people much anymore (probably because Dad always leaves out food for them in the afternoon...) so I managed to get this close to them, but the younger baby Curlew was too frightened to let me get close enough so I left it alone.

Magpies are fun to watch. In suburbia, they screw around by swing off your clothes on the clothes line or teasing cats behind windows. Pretty smart birds really. They're extremely common, but I thought this would make a decent photo. When I first got my camera, I learned to use it by using old lenses adapted to my camera body and taking photos of magpies in a field that was near me.

This Bearded Dragon also lives in the same area as the Curlew family, and spends most of it's time hanging off this tree. It's a bit bigger than the last random reptile I took a photo of, but definitely not very aggressive.

Australia is awesome.

Exploring: Eprapah Creek

I moved house last week to an estate that backs on to Eprapah Creek, and over the last few days I have been doing a bit of exploring for a couple of reasons, one is to collect some food for my fish and some native water plants for the tank, and the other is because I just plain love exploring random bushland. You can find all sorts of random things pretty easily, especially if you know what wallaby trails look like. They tend to cut through the bush finding places to get water and also to rest, so it makes sense to just follow where they go and eventually you'll end up at a nice spot to rest. But it's not all easy going, sometimes you have to do a bit of this:

After a few more dodgy log walks across much larger spans of water, and a bit of being a ninja across some rocks I found this little fella:

And then I followed another wallaby track to my final spot, a section of faster moving water in Eprapah Creek. I did set out with the intention of finding a spot like this, since I'd never tried long exposure photos of moving water before.

Both photos I had settings of f22, ISO 100 and a 5 second shutter speed. I also set a timer of 2 seconds, because the tripod had a little shake in it when I pressed the shutter button.

This spot was actually a thriving little ecosystem, I picked up a couple of plants for my aquarium and some native snails too. There were quite a few native rainbow fish feeding on mosquito larvae and tons of fry feeding on algae. It is actually legal to take rainbow fish from the wild to keep, but I decided to wait until the fry are a bit older so that I don't impact the breeding cycle.

Last one, is a HDR. I'm really shocking at doing these since I hardly ever do them, but I thought I might include this one since it turned out alright:

Giving the bike some love.

The other day while out riding to do the last bunch of photos, I noticed a few things on my bike that needed addressing. After you ride the same bike for so long you can feel when something is not quite right, like a faint vibration through the pedals or perhaps a bit of stiffness somewhere. Some people think I'm either psychic or just mental when I pick these things, but it just comes with a lot of riding and building a lot of bikes.

So, I decided to do a strip and rebuild to find these little issues. Sure enough, I had a headset bearing that was getting a little rough, a pair of crank bearings that will need replacing soon, and a stiff link in the chain. I also serviced my hubs, painted them and laced them to a different set of rims. I re-painted the frame in satin black as well. So here it is:

After almost 3 years of solid abuse, this frame is still going very strong. When I designed it, I intended for it to last 18 months to 2 years, and chose to have it built from Supertherm tubing. FBM did a great job of turning the dream into a reality. I am now expecting this frame to exceed the 5 year mark, which is almost unheard of within the BMX industry. Cheers to the only bicycle so far that can handle being put through hell and back!

Riding photos #4: Nick Barnier

Finally got the chance to head out riding again yesterday, unfortunately I'm now totally wrecked. It's the middle of summer here and the sun was an absolute killer yesterday. Australia sucks in summer. It may as well be the surface of Mercury. Even with sunscreen I started to burn within 10 minutes of being at the skatepark so I tried to become a shade dweller. Well, that still failed anyway and I'm now sunburned senseless and a bit dehydrated too.

While the riding was pretty limited, we still got the job done. Nick wanted to learn to do truckdrivers yesterday, which is a 360 barspin. It's definitely not a simple trick, there is a lot involved in a short space of time and requires fast thinking and heavy concentration. I can't even barspin to save my own life so needless to say I was stoked when he landed it. First stop of the day was Thornlands skatepark.

360 Barspin, trick of the day.

Decent Barspin.

Next stop after Thornlands skatepark was an undercover street spot to try and get a break from the sun. It's just a spot with some square benches but the metal edging makes them ideal for grinding without causing damage. For some reason, the council never put grind stoppers on these and never complain when we ride them, I think partly due to the fact that people respect the spot and take their rubbish with them and never cause trouble while there. I got a couple of shots from this bench, just trying different angles, and this 180 to fakie from the bench seemed to work best.

Last stop of the day was Cleveland skatepark. The quarter pipes here are quite wide so it's easy to pick a spot to sit and let people ride around you while you shoot photos. Though, it was still freakin' hot so it was just a mellow session of basic stuff. The result is this photo of Nick locked in to real nice footjam. I like taking photos of footjams for some reason.

That pretty much ended our day, the heat and sunburn was just way too much to keep going. Thanks to Nick Barnier for shreddin' like a boss even in the ridiculous heat. Possibly some more riding photos next week, depending on the weather and work.

I swear my house is a wildlife santuary...

So yet again I've come home from work, to find a young Blue-Tongue Lizard just chilling near my kitchen table. I have no idea how the hell it got there, nor why it's out at night. Though, they are probably the most hopeless of all lizards when it comes to effective path finding, because they're always the kind you find stuck in your garage. And I guess, my house must clearly be the greatest hang out ever for native animals, seeing as every afternoon there's a bunch of Rainbow Lorikeets in the tree, and the past couple of nights I've found a bunch of frogs that aren't so common, and now a lizard in my kitchen.

I'm not complaining though. I like lizards. Blue-Tongue Lizards aren't all that common either, but most smaller ones are quite tame and happy to sit on your hand for a while, Bigger ones don't appreciate being picked up but they aren't too bothered by the presence of people. I picked him up and took a quick snap before sending it on it's way, though now I'm wondering what else I'm going to come home to... Gotta love living in Australia, where if an animal doesn't kill you, it'll move in with you...

Little Green Friend

 This one was taken about 5 minutes ago, outside my back door. It's just stopped raining, and I spotted this little green tree frog on my window so I went outside to take a photo (I take photos of tons of random things). When I tried to focus on him though, it got a bit startled and decided that my chest was a good place to just sit for a while. So I handed the camera to my girlfriend to take the shot. I hadn't changed the settings, so the photo is a little grainy due to the higher ISO setting.

Unfortunately, these little frogs are becoming pretty rare. Cane Toads are a pest here and have had a massive impact on their numbers. Though, on hot, humid and wet nights, you might see one hanging around your house. Sorry about the lower quality cropped photo below, but it too awesome to not post that chilled out pose. I hope you like it anyway!