December … a crazy month full of adventures. I took my parents on a road trip to show them Australia how I discovered it. We drove to “Mon repos” beach on the east coast, famous for being a major turtle breeding ground. After only one hour of waiting we got lucky and one loggerhead turtle (Caretta caretta) started laying her eggs. At that point the only light authorised was the small flashlight placed behind the turtle so we could see what was happening. Pretty difficult light conditions for taking pictures, isos 5000 – 6400.

Once she was done laying all her eggs (127 !), sometimes two or three at the time, and  once she finished covering the hole with sand we were allowed to take some image of from the front and with light.

It was a great spectacle, the sky was unbelievable and I wished i had taken the tripod taht night to get at least one long exposure. On the previous image the “tears” of the turtle is its way of excreting salt. After that amazing encounter we headed towards Carnarvon Gorge.

One of the many lonnnnnnnnnnnnnnnng straight roads in Australia.

I went in this national park several month ago, when Chris, Barbro and myself went on our journey to photograph the platypus (images here : EXPEDITION PLATYPUS). I got really lucky this time and we came across a sub-adult short-beaked echidna (Tachyglossus aculeatus). Echidnas are usually really shy, at least all the ones I’ve seen so far but he was happy to chill around me so I got some good images. I have now photographed the two monotremes of Australia. The fact that it was off season and there was barely anyone in the national park might have helped, the wildlife was everywhere …

Another new species for me was the Whiptail Wallaby (Macropus parryi) or Pretty-Face Wallaby. The prettiest macropod I’ve encountered so far !

But it’s not only about being pretty in this world, and one morning, I got woken up by male Eastern Grey Kangaroos (Macropus giganteus) fighting, it’s a pretty impressive sight. Due to the lack of light that early in the gorge , around 4:50 – 5:00am ,I had to shoot everything at 12800 isos … It does the job to tell the story I think. I am also lucky that my dad was here so that I could borrow his 70-200 f2.8, the extra stop (comparing to my f4) was much appreciated.

My favourite is the last one !

 We saw heaps of other wild critters during our hikes in the gorge, including this lace monitor (varanus varius). Again, being there during the off-season was amazing, the feeling of wilderness is enhanced by the small number of people around. Some of the landscapes here were shot with the canon G11 and i was quite happy how it performed for that task. It makes me eager to test the news Canon G1X, with the larger sensor ! We spent the last night of the trip in Lake Broadwater (older pictures here : Lake Broadwater). I’ve never seen it that full.

Great sunrise over the lake, it’s worth waking up at 4am for this kind of views.