Mount Gillen

Mt Gillen is situated on the Heavitree Range, south of Flynns Grave in Alice Springs. The location is a popular day walk for Alice Springs locals and offers a nice view of the town. Further east towards Heavitree Gap is one of my favourite photography locations, partly because it's pretty much my backyard but mostly because there is some great wildlife to be seen and photographed. Black-footed rock wallabies (BFRW) are one of the regularly viewed residents but one that i haven't really managed to do photographic justice.

Yesterday after work I climbed the range and came across this really healthy looking adult male up near the radio towers. BFRW's tend to be pretty flighty in this area (probably because there is less human contact than in more heavily visited areas) but this one was really quiet and allowed me to photograph it at close quarters until sunset.

I tend to travel as light when exploring this range so I can cover as much ground as possible and I only had my 400mm f5.6L with me. This meant some pretty tight framing (none of the photos in this post are cropped) which, although probably not ideal, I think worked ok. These shots are with about 15 minutes to go until sunset. They really can be beautiful animals.

A major downside of minimising weight was that I didn't pack my tripod! The sun briefly ducked behind a cloud and then popped out for the last minute or two before hitting the horizon and produced this light. Unfortunately, even with maximum aperture and ISO800/1000, these (the better shots) are still a bit fuzzy. To add insult, the wallaby yawned just after the second frame just as I'd filled the CF card! Might try again this afternoon.