I did spend a week in county Victoria helping out with a group of about 200 people completing various projects and helping out where they could with Bushfire Relief. It was a fairly emotional time, particularly in Marysville – to see the devastation in the town, had to be seen to be believed and felt. Look over the town from a nearby hill, it looks like a new estate with slabs the only thing really visible – sadly its all some people were left with. The terrain around the area is intriguing, I wont say nice because it is far from nice but it is interesting and makes you glad for what you have. It was cold and wet for the first few days we were up there, but we had a place to stay and a house to go back too, some people are still living in tents and caravans. The recovery will be long, houses can be rebuilt in time, but the scenery will be take a long time to repair. I would like to go back again, at least to drive through and see how it is going, and plan to do so on the way to or from the Winton V8 Supercar round next year I think.

Below are some of the photos that I took, didn’t take heaps, because it felt weird taking photos of people’s loss.

Also being quite busy getting my veggie garden happening, got all my plants in and dripper system in on the weekend of 17/18 October. I planted 4 Might Red Tomato’s, 8 Roma Tomato’s, 6 corn, 8 capsicum, 6 zucchini and some bok choy. The bok choy has been eaten by what looks like birds or caterpillars, same with some zucchini but not as bad and one roma tomato plant has gone missing. Hopefully by Christmas I will be picking home grown veggies. In a separate garden I have 4 new chili plants and a strawberry plant (which has sort of split into 3 plants) from last year. I will hopefully be picking strawberries soon – there is only a few but they are ripening – photo will come of gardens and the first fruits.

The idea behind these new batteries is to counter one of the downfalls of normal rechargeable batteries; if the traditional rechargeable NiMH batteries are unused they slowly discharge themselves. Meaning if you charge batteries after each use a week later they will be flat – of course this is useless if you want to then use them.

With limited testing so far I used my flash for about 50 shots then about a month later I was able to use the batteries in wireless microphones at church for 2 services totally about 4 hours of use including practise with no charging. I found this is quite remarkable, we use rechargeable NiMH 9V in some other wireless microphones and if used Friday night for 2 hours they are no good within an hour or so of use 36 hours later.

I personally bought them from Dick Smith instore, but there are a couple of other places that have them slightly cheaper online, but I wont link to them because I can’t vouch for their credibility.

Sanyo Eneloop

I am definitely feeling withdrawal from my camera, so much so that I have begun the hunt for the next big purchase. I am going to buy a Nikkor 50mm f/1.8 shortly probably form Camerastore.com.au but that is a relatively cheap acquisition – well compared with the other lenses I am looking at. The current list of potential purchases include:

• Sigma 50-500
• Nikon AF VR 80-400mm f/4.5-5.6D ED
• Nikon AF-S 300mm f/4D IF-ED

I think that is the current list – but I can be swayed. I like the flexibility of the zoom lenses but I am also interested in getting into the sharpness of primes. I am reading as much information as possible about the lenses, it wont be a purchase any time soon, maybe a birthday present in November.

Link to Early Morning Photos
Link to City Lights Photos

Album Link

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