Tuna fishing

On a recent trip to Port Lincoln for a patient, I had occasion to fly over a bunch of these rings on the water. I had only recently become aware of them and it was interesting to see modern tuna fishing in action. Because the local tuna stocks were in decline several years ago, and there were strong indications that the fishing was no longer sustainable, some clever folks got together to set up these floating nets and stocking them with tuna. They feed them three times a day and monitor their health for the entire time until they are big enough to "harvest". With the price of tuna being around $25.00 a kilo in the market, I guess it must be working for them.

Summer storms

On a recent trip to Marree in the far north, I had to weave in and out amongst a few thunderstorms. This picture of the weather radar shows part of the action, and it is one of only two photos I managed to get without blurring (I took about a dozen but there were so many bumps that most were of no use). Anyway, the magenta and red areas are large storm cells, with heavy rain and turbulence. The lightning flash indicates electrical activity, and at one stage I had these symbols all over the screen too. Funnily enough, by the time I got to Marree, there was no rain falling and the wind was no problem. However, there were large areas of raised dust as seen in the other photos.

More dust.....

I had a patient to pick up yesterday from "Prominent Hill" - just west of Coober Pedy. I must say that I didn't see any hills, but they have an open cut mine there so it may be that the hill is now gone..

Anyway on arrival, as I flew downwind I noticed a HUGE dust devil working its way towards the runway. It eventually went right across, and as I'd widened my circuit deliberately to avoid it, there weren't any problems. I didn't have the opportunity at that time to get a photo, but about fifteen minutes later I snapped a photo of a much smaller one doing the same thing. At that time I saw about four in the area.

Also interesting to note that the mine has HUGE tipper trucks for moving the gravel around and there is a track that goes past the end of the runway. As I approached, there was one waiting to cross under my approach path. I'm glad he waited because he's probably 40 feet high and would definitely have caused some consternation otherwise.