My Patch!

Soon after I moved up here I began thinking how great it would be to get an aerial view of this place. In the past 10 years I have kayaked most of the bays and waterways, walked all the walking tracks within reach, and driven on the more inaccessible tracks with friends in their 4 wheel drive vehicles. However, a flight over the area has still been an unachievable goal! Until the other week, that is! A friend was kind enough to take me and two other friends for a flight to view all our favorite places from the air. Thanks Rod! It was a dream come true!!
Rod has a Cessna with 4 seats which he keeps at the little airport just a few blocks away. We waited for a day without too much wind, with nice clear skies, and with a tide high enough to cover all the sand flats and show the bay at its beautiful best! As you can tell I am still enthusing over the experience! I kept my camera up to my eye and pressed the shutter button nearly continuously! I came back with over 400 photos and have managed to cut these down by about 2/3 - and still need to do a lot of editing. Over the next few weeks I want to show the most scenic and recognizable places - along with some bird photos of course!
All photos enlarge when clicked on. 
We started with a flight over Cooloola Cove which is the place where my two friends and I all live. This was much better than looking at it from Google Earth!

We then flew northwards with the bay on our right (east) and much further east the waters of the ocean.

Tin Can Bay was beautiful with the sun glinting on the water. The marina stretches along Schnapper Creek, and Norman Point - which is a favorite fishing and swimming area - is at the eastern point.

As I said I kept the camera up and kept snapping photos.When I examined the photos at home I saw that I had picked up two of the dolphins in the water next to where they are fed each morning for the benefit of the tourists. (bottom right of the photo between the tourist launch and the waterside cafe)

We continued up the Strait until we reached Inskip Point and the southern end of Fraser Island. This photo shows the Strait looking north with Fraser Island on the right of the photo. The sand Island just off Inskip Point shows clearly and if you click on the photo to enlarge it you can just see a little bit of one of the barges that takes vehicles over to Fraser Island.

I asked for a good view of the sand island - if possible! I had the 70-300 lens on the camera and kept changing this as needed. I am delighted with this view of the island with all the birds standing around the edge. There is quite a large group of pelicans on the northern end of the island - but I can only guess at the rest of the shorebirds standing around. I am sure that there are shorebirds in other photos but when they are standing close to mangrove trees it is hard to be sure which are small trees and which are large birds. The white sand on the island made everything very clear.

This is Inskip Point and the barge loading vehicles to take over to Fraser Island. There is quite a large tourist bus driving along the point to the barge. Tourist buses to Fraser Island are all 4 wheel drive and high off the sand.

Inskip Point is on a narrow neck of land with Pelican Bay on the bottom of the photo and then the beach stretching along to the town of Rainbow Beach and the colored sand cliffs.

If you are not tired of all this scenic detail come back for a continuation next week!!
The birds I am including this week are Little Egrets. There seems to be quite a lot around the bay at present. The first photo was taken the other morning when the dark heavy fog clouds were just beginning to lift.

The second photo is a Little Egret showing breeding plumes and sharing the tree with a Little Pied Cormorant.

For more scenery from around the world visit Our World Tuesday 

and for more birds visit Wild Bird Wednesday.