Bellingen and The Flying Foxes

For our Christmas 2010 holiday we drove to Queensland in a campervan. We were planning this trip for a number of months, intially in a VW Combi, but luckily enough, at some stage we upgraded to a Cheapa Campa with electricity, a fridge and a cooker. Just about every time we talked about the trip my boyfriend mentioned how he wanted to go to Bellingen to see the Flying Foxes.

Our Cheapa Campa Van in prime position

Now what is a Flying Fox you ask. Well in his words – “a cross between possum and a bat” (a possum, if you are wondering, is like a bit squirrel but fatter and likes to nest in house roofs).

Now Bellingen, about half way between Brisbane and Sydney, has been famous for many things including red cedar trees, forming part of the Waterfall Way (very picturesque I might add) and is the setting for many of Peter Carey’s novels. But for my better half it was all about the Flying Foxes that migrate every day at dusk from a forest of a tiny island, to feed on fruit, pollen and nectar up to 40 miles away and unlike other species of bats have good eyesight.

A Fuzzy Flying Fox

Excited about being able to try out my new fandangled camera with its gazillion settings that I still can’t use, I’m only good with close ups of jewellery, I figured this would be a good occasion to practice some low light moving shots.

We arrived around 5pm to ensure we secured a prime position, in the line of sight of the island and the river, and after checking out our options opted for across the river but close to the bridge which is suggested to be the best vantage point. So we settled down and enjoyed dinner on the river bank and waited for dusk to arrive to signal the flight of the Flying Foxes. Three long hours later the sun finally disappeared behind the mountains and soon after the Flying Foxes began emerging from Bellingen Island.

The smudges are the Flying Foxes!

Now call me unprepared, but what with spending 10 days in a campervan, I didn’t happen to take any binoculars with me, so didn’t get a particularly close look at these Flying Foxes, plus I was busy twiddling the dials and testing the settings on aforesaid new camera. But to be honest, to the untrained eye at a distance, these Flying Foxes look exactly the same as the bats that fly from the Botanical Gardens to Hyde Park every night in Sydney, in fact they are nothing like possums or even foxes and are more commonly known as Fruit Bats.

After some 100 photos (and the above is the cream of the crop) I decided that getting a photograph with all the bats in focus and some nice light was near on impossible for me at least, the little things move so fast that even in ‘sports’ mode I couldn’t lock the focus on them. I had to settle for trying to capture the essence of a beautiful evening with hundreds of bats flocking over the Bellinger River.

If you should happen to be in Bellingen, or indeed wish to photograph low light moving images here are the best tips I’ve found since returning home with my somewhat disappointing shots.

• Increase the ISO which will allow more light into the camera. This will however make the photos grainier.
• Shutter Speed – depending on the effect you require a faster shutter speed will freeze the motion of your subjects whilst a slower speed will capture a blurred image and give the impression of movement.
• Finally experiment and re-read your camera manual with your intended shot in mind.

Tags: australia, nature, photography, travel