Copyright © 2009 Peter MillerSome rights reserved.
These works are licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution Noncommercial Share Alike 3.0 License. You may use this material if you fully comply with the license conditions.
Some rights reserved.
These works are licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution Noncommercial Share Alike 3.0 License. You may use this material if you fully comply with the license conditions.
This is another trip out to Saint Helena Crater mapping the extent of the blackberry infestation. This is the Saturday, the Sunday is also available.
On this trip I took a number of 360° panoramas, so that those of you who have not been to the crater can see just how bad the blackberry situation is.
Most of the links below are immersive panoramas, that will display in an environment that allows you to pan left and right, zoom in and out, and even look up and down.
In all of the photographs, note the complete absence of living eucalypt samplings. The 2002 fire, and the enduring drought, has killed many of the eucalypts, including all their saplings. The blackberry is now out-competing the wattles and the eucalypt saplings, breaking the normal growth and recovery cycle.
 Large 27MB |
Composite of 6 images, hand-held.
Looking towards the south west.
Head waters of Goonaroi Rill. The cliff opposite is not on the topo. This panorama was very challenging, because of the huge variation in exposure between the images.
Time: 09:04 |
 LoRes PTViewer 1.4MB (dl 4 min) LoRes QT 1.3MB (dl 4 min) HiRes QT 27M (dl 1¼ hr) |
Composite of 40 images. Tripod.
Near the camp site.
Time: 11:57 |
Large 3.1MB
|
The crater is overrun with Cobblers Pegs Bidens pilosa, it wasn't
possible to more around the crater without picking up one or two.
Even so, the Bidens pilosa isn't our most pressing problem, it isn't a landscape transforming weed like blackberry is. Time: 12:38 |
 LoRes PTViewer 2.4MB (dl 7 min) LoRes QT 2MB (dl 6 min) HiRes QT 26MB (dl 75 min) |
Composite of 50 images. Tripod.
Casuarina gully. This is a small gap between a huge infestation upstream (south east) and and huge infestation downstream (north west). For orientation, the sun is in the north west. Note how the blackberry goes all the way into the bed of the gully, which in places is slot-like and about 3m deep. There was a gentle breeze blowing, which may explain why the top row of images appears unevenly rotated relative to the rest of the images.
Time: 13:29 |
 LoRes PTViewer 1.6MB (dl 4½ min) LoRes QT 1.4MB (dl 4 min) HiRes QT 18MB (dl 50 min) |
Composite of 40 images. Tripod.
Junction of Casuarina gully to the south and Eastern gully to the east. The old dam is to the west, but not visable. For orientation, the sun is in the north west.
Time: 14:10 |
 Avi Video 32MB (dl 1½ hr) |
Video of where I think the old log bridge
is hiding under a huge pile of blackberry.
Location: 33.7555575 S, 150.5606532 E |
 Preview 344kB (dl 1 min) Full Size 27.7MB (dl 77 min) |
Composite of 4 images.
Wombat burrow. Judging from the freshness of the paw prints, he was working when I came along and disturbed him.
Time: 14:19 |
 Preview 1024x768 (357kB), Full Size 3264x2448 (4.3MB) |
Another wombat burrow.
Time: 14:20 |
 Preview 331kB, Full Size 25.5MB |
Composite of 4 images.
Yet another wombat burrow.
Time: 14:27 |
 LoRes PTViewer 1.4MB (dl 4 min) LoRes QT 1.3MB (dl 4 min) HiRes QT 18MB (dl 50 min) |
Composite of 67 images. Hand-held.
This is what a hectare of blackberry looks like, and it isn't even the biggest patch in the crater! Casuarina gully to the south east, Eastern gully to the east, and the dam to the west. The black willow is clearly visable. For orientation, the sun is in the north west. The stitching problems with this panorama are because (a) I'm not using a tripod, and (b) the trunk keeps bouncing up and down under my weight as I turn (making it a poor source of automatic control points).
Time: 14:37 |
 LoRes PTViewer 963kB (dl 2½ min) LoRes 1MB (dl 2½ min) HiRes 12MB (dl 35 min) |
Composite of 45 images. Tripod.
For orientation, the sun is in the west north west.
Field in the south east of the crater. I'm standing in chest-high Cobblers Pegs Bidens pilosa. These gums have very thin crowns. This is not unusual when Eucalypts are stressed, but only with a full canopy will the weeds slow down. But as the gums die, one by one, there are no salpings growing to take their place.
Time: 15:54 |
