technonaturalist

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Massive Christmas Island photopost

posted on: Sunday, 12 February 2012 @ 10:44pm in
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[minor pseudonymising edits during Drupal to hugo migration for all the good that will do now]

Everything that happened after the dangers of parking your ship next to a cliff, which I would have posted if my sites hadn’t been playing silly buggers. Everything is okay now, which means I’ll be posting about as much as I was inclined to post before.

Spider

Weird looking spider

Have I scared off the arachnophobes yet? It’s okay, this is the only spider photo this post. I have no idea what kind of spider it is; I don’t recall seeing it when I was growing up. Sprat seems to think it’s fairly recently common.

These are all more or less straight off the camera (aside from any incidental modifications that happen because I resized them down to 500px on the long side from over 4000) because I’m lazy and currently trying to make presentable some lion dance photos I took under bizarro lighting that a complete non-photographer like me has no idea how to deal with.

Navy ship off the cliffs above Lily Beach

Navy ship off the cliff above Lily Beach

Christmas Island is full of temples in seemingly random locations (or at least random to me seeing as I don’t know the reasoning behind why most of them were built where they were built). The one here at South Point is one of the larger ones (if not the largest). I’m not sure why I didn’t take more photos of it. I know JJ has a few on film.

South Point Temple flag

South Point Temple flag

View from South Pt temple

View from South Pt Temple, JJ asking whether Kampong is in the dip or around the visible point

Approaching raincloud!

The rain. It comes. Rapidly.

Phosphate spattered Rav4

Mum loaned us her car. We drove through a phosphate puddle that was slightly deeper than anticipated.

Big hermit crab

Biggish hermit crab, with a 7yo boy hand for comparison

Christmas Island red crablet

Baby red crab

Invasion of the baby red crabs!

Many baby red crabs trying to clamber over a building they eventually work out to go around

Small moth that came to dinner

Moth that was quite happy to sit around for ages getting photographed

My parents decided to have the Chinese lion over this Chinese New Year seeing as there was a big group of us kicking around the house to watch this time round. We hung the ang pow somewhere the spotters could easily see it from the road, then moved it to a higher beam so they’d have to work for it.

Ang pow hanging from the patio for the lion dancers
Chinese lion dance at parents' house on Christmas Island

Lion spots angpow and realises they will have to do a jump for it

JJ and the parents had of course taken prime photograph position on the end of the patio so I made do out in the garden. Consequently this was one of two decent photos I got. As far as the troupe went, there were a number of faces I didn’t recognise, the rest were all kids I barely recognised from school. They had all grown up, strangely.

Robber crabs lunching on coconuts

Impressive is watching a robber crab opening a coconut

Because having that ship wrecked on top of our port wasn’t excitement enough, a cyclone hit a few days before we were supposed to head back to Perth. Kampong was warned it might be flooded and the residents put on evacuation notice. They battened down the doors and sandbagged the place. They’ve been flooded out a few times previously. Fortunately while cyclones aren’t uncommon, ones that cause flooding requiring people to evacuate are. We headed over to the police station where the waves were kicking up huge sprays.

Kampong taking precautions against possible flooding

Kampong taking precautions against possible flooding

Metal fish sculpture near the Christmas Island Police Station

This thing is new to me. I think it looks cool.

Sprat in her standard observational pose

Sprat in her standard observational pose (and not having a clue that I took this)

Getting sprayed by the waves coming up the cliff

Mum and 3yo run from salt spray, lens is getting covered in salt spray, Dad taking photo similar to one below

Shot from near the Christmas Island Police Station showing the cyclone swell

Last one I took after cleaning the lens

There was another couple that showed higher spray, the contrast was crap on them (I don’t know if I can fix it, haven’t tried, too lazy) and they were very blurry as the lens had a decent film of salt spray on them by that stage.

The cyclone cleared up in time for our flight back to Perth.

I miss Home already.