Sea Kayaking on the Shoalhaven River, NSW Australia

This weekend Melanie and I had two free days and the weather called for rain. We decided the best avenue for exploration was to see some new country from our sea kayaks.  Melanie and I headed south from Sydney 2 hours to paddle the Shoalhaven River Gorge in Morton  National Park.

Paddling a kayak on the quiet reservoir waters of Lake Yarrunga past stands of dead trees is not normally my idea of high adventure, but we have wanted to check this place out since last year when we paddled the Kangaroo river, the major tributary to the Shoalhaven. This was an overnight trip, but it took only a

few hours to paddle the 15 kilometers from the Tallowa Dam through the gorge to the running waters of the Shoalhaven River.

We had an idea at the start of this trip that we might be able to paddle a little ways up the moving waters of the Shoalhaven River, but we only made it through one "rapid" before we had to turn the boats back to make camp.

The next morning dawned with a steady rain and fog. The cool temps and drizzle created the perfect weather conditions for a steady slow paddle along the shore checking out the water dragons and trees on the lake shore.

             

 We have already hatched plans to return again to the Shoalhaven this time with our little packrafts to explore the whitewater river below the Tallowa Dam.

Of course I use these outings to check out any new camera gear I have purchased recently. What follows is the photo tech section of this blog.

On this trip I wanted to try out some really inexpensive Chinese photo products I bought on the HongKong web site Link Delight . The photo above was taken using a couple of Link delights products including their $21.00  wireless flash/camera trigger (Meike MK-RC7)and the  B-2 tripod ballhead $52.

The ballhead looks and works very much like a small version of a $300 Arca Swiss ball head. It locks down my D-300s or even my big D-3s firmly with no problem. The wireless trigger had no misfires and I was triggering the camera from a 100 meters away. It is advertised to work at 100 meters, my Pocket Wizard is good for 400 meters. These units are 1/3 the size of Pocket Wizards. The build quality on the RC7 seem solid. I did try them out with my flash and I need to figure out how to get the trigger to wake up the flash with me having to shoot a couple of frames. Back to the instruction manual I go.

I have ordered from Linkdelight a couple of times and they always ship by the next day and deliver with no hassle. As usual I am not paid or encouraged to promote any products on this blog, but if I find something that works I'll spread the good word.

 

Comments

[Darren]

Nice pics as always Bill. Looking forward to reading about the packraft trip if you get back down that way.

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