Moonlit Sanctuary

The weather was better today than I expected. It was supposed to be rainy in the AM and then just cloudy in the afternoon. It was, in fact, pretty nasty in the morning, so I dawdled around more than usual. I wanted to go to the Moonlit Sanctuary SE of Melbourne and try to get some Wallaby footage. They have a area with free roaming Kangaroos and Wallabies and since this is my last day in Australia, I thought I’d give it a shot. By the time I arrived there, the wether had actually cleared off and was fairly sunny. I got my Wallabies, a couple Kangaroos and one more dozing Koala Bear. So I’m finished with my Australia filming and tomorrow I’m off to Bangkok for a month to catch up on my postproduction projects.


Another snoozer.


Here’s a Wallaby. They are much smaller than a Kangaroo and tend to live more in forests than out on grassy plains.


Here’s another one foraging for something good to eat.


This is a smaller species of Wallaby. Except for the long tail and the little Joey in the pouch, they look more like Rabbits than Kangaroos.


Here’s a Roo lounging in the sunshine.


This place obviously gets Asian tour groups that have never seen anything but a squat toilet (a hole in the floor). Sometimes they need some special instruction on how to use a toilet. There’s an old joke that is appropriate for this situation:

You know you are in Asia when you see footprints on the toilet seat.
You know you’ve been in Asia a long time when you see footprints on the toilet seat and it doesn’t seem strange.
You know you’ve been in Asia too long when you see footprints on the toilet seat and realize that they are you own.

Phillip Island

I spent the day on Phillip Island, about 2 hours drive SE of Melbourne. The weather today was better than I expected. I had to wait for clouds a couple times, but it wasn’t too bad. I went to a wildlife reserve that has Koala Bears and I managed to get a few good scenes. They have a boardwalk that is up off the ground a bit, not really very high, but it lets you get a little closer to some of the Koalas. They spend 20 hours a day sleeping, so once you find one, its not going to run away. Most of the Koalas I filmed today were, in fact, snoozing.

I also spent some time out at the SW tip of Phillip Island where there are interesting rock formations and a lot of nesting sea birds.


Sound Asleep!


He doesn’t seem worried about rolling off the limb he’s napping on.


This guy looked like he had a bad night.


Ah, here’s one awake. He looks drowsy though.


This one ate a couple Eucalyptus leaves, then promptly went back to sleep


This is at the SW tip of Phillip Island.


These rock formations are called “The Nobbies”


There are lots of little Succulents blooming this time of year (springtime in Australia).


Several hundred sea birds make their nests in the Succulents.


I think these birds that were flying in formation over the point are Ibis. At least they have a long thin curved beaks like the Ibis do.

Tower Hill

Today was mostly cloudy and not very conducive to scenic photography. It was supposed to start clearing off around noon, but it was still 95% cloud cover by then. I went to the Tower Hill state park to see if I could get a little bit more wildlife. The park is located in an ancient volcanic crater and has several small lakes inside. It is supposed to be a good place to see the Emu, a large flightless bird. I did see several there and got footage of individuals, pairs and a small flock. I also saw one Koala Bear there, but it was not possible to film it as it was obscured high up a tree and the background was bright white cloudy sky.


A small group of Emus. They are a little smaller than an Ostrich. The females leave as soon as they have laid their eggs and the male incubates them and raises the chicks.


This is one of the little crater lakes at Tower Hill.

The Grampians

I spent the day in The Grampians National Park. It is a mountainous park, at least by Australian standards. Australia is relatively flat so any hump gets called a mountain. I visited several of the park’s signature attractions including Mackenzie Falls, The Balconies, Venus Baths and the Fyans Creek trail. A highlight of the day for me was filming Kangaroos at Fyans Creek. I saw a total of about 20. Some were feeding, some were lounging around in the grass, a couple of mothers had baby Joeys in their pouches. This is my third time to Australia, but the first time I’ve seen wild Kangaroos (except road kill). In all honesty, I have to admit that the first time I was diving and t he second time I was just in Sydney which isn’t know for having much of a population of wild Kangaroos (except on gold courses, but I don’t play golf). I got some fairly good footage today, so I now have the two iconic Australian animals, Koalas and Kangaroos.


These pools are called the “Venus Baths”. I didn’t see any goddesses or nymphs.


This is Mackenzie Falls.


On the way back up from a strenuous climb down to Mackenzie falls, you encounter this sign where they are doing some maintenance on the trail. It looks like something they would have for highway construction, not hiking trail work. I had to laugh because everyone who passes this is huffing and puffing and I guarantee they are all prepared to stop.


This rock formation is called “The Balconies” You used to be able to climb out on the tip of the lower balcony, but they have blocked it off. I suppose too many people were falling off while attempting a selfie.


When standing, this guy was about as tall as me.


I’m wondering how the Kangaroos know when they have traveled the 64 kilometers. I didn’t see any on the road in either direction so I can only assume that they don’t read too well.

Otago Peninsula

I spent the morning on the Otago Peninsula just East of Dunedin. My original intention was to stay the night on the Peninsula and go on a late afternoon wildlife tour to see Penguins, Sea Lions and Fur Seals. After spending some time this morning with four Sea Lions on one of the beaches on the Peninsula, I decided to skip the organized tour (which would have probably taken me right back to the same Sea Lions). Instead, I fueled up in Dunedin, stopped in a supermarket for some supplies, and then continued Northward to a pair of other locations that were supposedly good for wildlife. I first stopped at Shag Point and had good luck with Fur Seals, then I went on to Katiki Point where I was much luckier with Penguins than I was yesterday. I saw a total of 5 of them over the span of a couple hours. There is a viewing blind there similar to the one at Roaring Bay. The light was better too as it was sunny most of the day. The only problem there was a large amount of vegetation in front of the viewing hide that obscured a lot of the beach and made it difficult to get a good angle on the Penguins. But I managed to eke a few good scenes out of the location.


The Otago Peninsula is very scenic. Grassy green hillsides and lots of Sheep. This view is looking toward the mainland.


This view is looking the other way toward the Pacific.

Lots of Sheep with little lambs this time of year. We call this season “Spring”. The Kiwis call it “Lambing Season”.


This is the beach that the Sea Lions like to rest on.


There were some beautiful wildflower blooming in the sand dunes at the beach I found the Sea Lions.


Here’s one of the guys that I found on the beach sunning himself.


I saw several Fur Seals at Shag Point. Here is a pair of them catching some rays.


The road out to Katiki Point is also very scenic farmland. The beach area in the distance by the trees is where I’m camping right now.


There’s a quaint little Lighthouse at Katiki Point.


Here’s one of the Penguins on the beach. I didn’t shoot too many stills, mostly video.

Muriwai Gannet Colony

I drove south from the Kauri Forests to Muriwai Beach. The headlands at the South end of the beach contain a nesting colony of Gannets. This is one of the few colonies that is on the mainland. Most are located on small isolated offshore islands. It was after sunset when I arrived so I just had a short time to work. The next morning, it was alternating between foggy and rainy. I managed to get a bit more done between rain showers, then it was time to head further South.

The weather forecast is for 4 or 5 days of rainy weather, so I decided this would be a great time to head down to Waitomo Caves. If it’s going to rain, I might as well be underground. I had to pass through Auckland, but since it’s Sunday, there wasn’t much traffic. The main route South through Auckland is a reasonably nice freeway. It even stays freeway for quite awhile South. Finally, it gradually looses lanes and fades into a two lane road like in the North. It was nice to be on 4 and 6 lane freeway for awhile. I went through some heavy rain showers, and was very surprised to pop out into a nice sunny area that lasted all the way down to Waitomo. I’m sure it will be gone tomorrow.



This is the Muriwai Gannet Colony. There are viewing platforms built on the cliffside where you can watch the birds without bothering them. You can see one of the platforms in the upper left corner.


They also use a conveniently flat topped rock just offshore.


This is the nesting area just below the upper platform.


Birds are constantly coming and going.


There are constant territorial squabbles. The birds are just starting to stake out their space and a few are starting to make nests.

Oh My!

Here is one last little film from the first half of this year. I started this year with my “Lions and Tigers and Bears” trip. The idea was to film, among many other things, Lions in Africa, Tigers in India and Bears in Alaska. I was pretty sure I was going to be able to accomplish the Lions. Heck, even an idiot Dentist from Minnesota can find a Lion. The Tigers were something that I thought would be problematic since they are pretty reclusive. I was worried that even if I saw some, they might be in conditions unsuitable for good filming. It turned out that I was lucky with the Tigers and got some good stuff. Then off to Alaska for Bears. I had bad luck with weather that eliminated one of my destinations for Brown Bears (Grizzlies), but I was fortunate with the Black Bears. So I’ve put together a few scenes from each area into this little video. You can view this video in the Wildlife tab on my website or directly on my Vimeo channel at: www.Vimeo.com/fishtales/ltb

Hope you enjoy it.

Da Bears

I’ve uploaded a brief video of some of the Scenic and Bear footage from last week's SE Alaska trip. Though the trip wasn't much of a success for Brown Bears, I did quite well with the Black Bears at Anan Creek near Wrangell. There is a tiny bit of aerial footage in the video, but it was not made with my Quadcopter. It is from a float plane. There's some footage from the ferries that I took from Ketchikan to Wrangell and from Wrangell to Juneau. There's also some footage from the small fast boats that I took to Anan Creek and to Le Conte Glacier. The glacier was difficult to film because it was a very gray soggy day, but in some scenes, that actually makes the blue glacial ice bergs seem to glow against the monochromatic background. You can see the video on this site in the Wildlife section or directly on my Vimeo channel at www.Vimeo.com/fishtales/alaskabears

Pack Creek Bears Cancelled

Well, my trip to Pack Creek today for Brown Bears was cancelled due to inclement weather. The whole area is socked in with drizzly overcast that’s too low to call clouds and too high to call fog. we waited at the airport for a couple hours,but finally they cancelled the flight. So no significant number of Brown Bears this trip for my library. I’ll have to start thinking about a plan B.

Corner Bay and Kook Lake

Today’s mission was Non-Habituated Brown Bears on Chichagof Island. All bears in Alaska are wild, but there are degrees of wild. In places like Anan Creek, the Bears are habituated to the presence of Humans. They generally go about their business as long as the humans don’t bother them too much. Non-Habituated Bears, on the other hand, are not used to being near Humans, and are likely to react in more extremes. The place I went today with Pack Creek Bear Tours is a very remote location that doesn’t see very much Human presence. There is a logging operation in the area that practices very low impact sustainable methods, and there are Forrest Service employees that count the Sockeye Salmon returning to Kook Lake to Spawn, but that’s about it. There are many Bears in the area, and they are pretty much undisturbed.

This is the area we went into today. We flew from Juneau to Corner Bay on Chichagof Island by float plane. Then we went to Kook Lake on an old logging road to see the Salmon counting weir and followed the creek down for a mile or so. We met the two Forrest Service workers who stay at Kook lake in a Wall Tent for 10 days at a time to monitor the Salmon counting weir and the equipment in it that does the actual counting. Then we hiked downstream to check out three different observation points that Pack Creek Bear Tours have cleared out. We also inspected one of the Karst caves in the area. The stream coming out of Kook Lake goes underground through Karst caves in several places. The Salmon swim upstream through these caves to get to the lake. Hmm… seems like an interesting dive expedition.

We had our expectations of seeing Bears tempered prior to the trip. The Bears are shy and close encounters were not anticipated (or hoped for). Despite that, we did manage to spot 5 different Bears. One in the Corner Bay estuary just as soon as we got off the float plane. The second was on Corner Creek as we were coming back out of the area. The other three were a Mother and two little cubs that we saw along the shore at Pavlof Harbor just after we landed the Float Plane. We had stopped at Pavlof to see if we could get the plane in close enough to hike to the falls and look for more bears, but we didn’t even need to get off the place to see them.

I have “record shots” of all five Bears to prove that I saw them, but all but the one on Corner Creek were really too far away to get a quality scene. I only got couple scenes of the one at Corner Creek, but they are nice ones and the setting is beautifully primeval.

Here is Corner Bay on Chichagof Island:


This is the only way to get there:


Here is a very distant Bear that we saw shortly after docking the float plane:


This is Kook Lake where pairs of Forrest Service workers man the fish counting weir for 10 day shifts:


This is the source of the stream that the Salmon navigate to arrive at the lake:


Some Alders near Corner Creek. This is a very green place this time of year:


Corner Creek:




This is the Bear we saw looking for a Salmon dinner on Corner Creek:


Another view of the Bear just before it became aware of our presence and scampered up the other side of the creek:

Anan Creek Day 2

I went to Anan Creek Bear Observatory for my second day with the Bears. They did a little bit better fishing today than they did yesterday. It seemed like there were quite a few more Salmon trying to make their run up the falls today. So when the Bears did get one, they got it fairly fast and easily. In the afternoon, the run seemed to slack off a bit, so the Bears spent a lot of time waiting like yesterday. I also filmed quite a few Eagles today. They seemed to be in a particularly scenic state of mind.

Had a little bit of sun on the creek above the falls for a few minutes:


Here are One, Two and Three Eagles hanging out near the creek:






Here’s a really close one. It hung out on a branch about 25 feet from the observation deck for an hour:


Lots of Salmon trying to make it up the falls today:


Caught one:


Surrounded by Salmon:


Got another: