Woondowing Nature Reserve, A Nice Day Out

The paper says storms are coming and the illuminated sign over Great Eastern Highway warns “Severe Weather Warning, see Emergency WA”… but we set out anyway.

It’s a mild winter Sunday, in the warm-air cushion that so often seems to sit in front of winter weather fronts pushing in, and we just need a nice day out.

We need to drive from the city; swap high-rise for trees; concrete for dirt.

We need a bit of bush.

And, almost as pressingly, we need a couple of doughnuts. Since spotting them a few weeks before at the Bakers Hill Pie Shop and NOT getting one, my wife Virginia has been craving this very special kind of health food.

Today’s the day.

Indeed, we go “savoury and sweet” at the famous pie shop on Great Eastern Highway east of Northam, with a pie-and-sauce, a long jam and cream doughnut and coffee to wash it down. (And, I must reveal, there are more doughnuts in a box “for later”).

We’re only an hour from the centre of Perth, but it feels a world away. Locals in check shirts, footy shorts and thongs drop by for bread and snacks. Gleaming motorbikes have lined up. They are ridden by members of both the Joondalup Ulysses Club, “a fun-loving group of mature aged riders” (as their website says) and the BMW Motorcycle Club of WA, “a social club made up of like-minded men and women who enjoy riding BMW motorcycles”. Some riders appear just a little less agile than their machines, and there’s a bit of talk about getting home “before the weather”.

But we have another plan, and a couple of kilometres east of Great Eastern Highway, we turn off north onto Coates Road.

This takes us alongside Woondowing Nature Reserve, and then it’s just a case of picking your moment; picking your track.

A little way down Coates Road, turn right onto Sims Road, which is a good starting point for the reserve, on the right and covering more than 3100ha.

We walk a little track through a rise of wandoo trees — hardwoods with slightly powder-white trunks made amber by the damp day.

Another of the day’s strolls is through jarrah and grass trees — some of them getting on for 300 years old, using the “centimetre of growth every year” rule.

Some bushes are in flower and birds sing and chase high in the trees.

And finally we stop by a big, cutoff stump, which serves as our table for afternoon tea … tea from a flask and a just a nibble more doughnut.

We could have heeded the warnings. We could have stayed home. But taking your chances and just getting outside never seems to fail to deliver a nice day out.

PHOTO TIPS

+ Try a vertical panorama picture, as I did for the wandoo tree with bandings of growths. Turn the phone on its side, start the pano, track smoothly up the tree, and stop when you’ve got just a bit of blue sky to frame the top of the image.

+ Don’t forget “practical” photos like the one of the Woondowing Nature Reserve sign. They help to locate and ground your set of images. A picture like this is straightforward, but still be careful to frame and take it well.

+ So often we get caught up in colourful details and textures — but don’t forget to take “scene setting” pictures that show the whole environment. Give enough ground for the picture to “sit on” solidly, and enough sky for it to “breathe”.

+ I like to have practical pictures like this in the set. It’s good to not only see where you’ve been, but how you got there. I have used the shadow in the foreground to make a more dramatic picture, and to draw attention to the surface of the track.

+ Backlighting helps to make more dramatic plant and flower shots. This is where the plant is between you and the sun. You might need to adjust the exposure by touching the phone screen on an iPhone, and dragging your finger up and down the screen to lighten or darken. This motion is side-to-side on an Android phone.

+ Don’t forget people (Virginia) and other family members (Livingstone). This massive stump made our afternoon tea table.

+ Close-ups of flowers add to the collection. Get close so your macro kicks in. It is very important for a picture like this, to touch the screen at the exact spot that you want to be in focus.

+ Good pictures are all about good light. If flowers draw the eye, for example, they are pretty well sure to make good pictures. In the example here, I have made sure the flowers are framed by darker leaves and the bush behind.

+ A tight splash of colour helps a set of pictures, so I purposely got in very close to the red flowers as I didn’t want the bush, just its bright flowers. Be sure to touch the screen and focus.

+ In the picture of the banded wandoo tree, I have positioned the trunk mostly against the blue sky as it is the main subject of the picture. This helps it to stand out. And then just wait. There is sun, but there are clouds about, too. Don’t just snap the picture. Wait for it to be fully lit … and I waited several minutes for this shot.