Jennifer Marohasy

a forum for the discussion of issues concerning the natural environment

jennifer

Vax-ed as Sick as Unvax-ed, Amongst My Friends

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I live in a seaside town with a surf culture, attracting many seeking an alternative lifestyle, with probably an unusually high percentage of Covid-19 unvaccinated – at least amongst my friends.   We have lived free of Covid until recently, until New Year’s Eve.  It was four days after that that I first heard about it spreading amongst my friends and acquittances here in Noosa.

For the last decade I have spent most New Year’s Eves at the local surf club.  This year I choose to stay home – and play scrabble with my husband and mother.  I have been waiting for Covid to arrive, and I have feared it.

I got vaccinated against Covid-19 because I understood that it would reduce my chance of falling ill – of being hospitalized – that was after I was told that it was not clear whether being vaccinated would stop me getting it.   I have come to understand that being vaccinated against Covid-19 is more like being vaccinated against the flu, than say smallpox.  With a smallpox vaccination you are protected for life, but with a Covid vaccine, well some of my friends are asking why they bothered.  Because it doesn’t seem to have made any difference.

Amongst my friends here, and in Cairns where it is also spreading, the vaccinated and unvaccinated seem to be ill for a day or two and then better within three or four.   Some of the unvaccinated are taking the alternative medicine Ivermectin with zinc, but not all of them.

This is not how it was meant to be: vaxed as sick as un-vaxed!

I understand that I am not meant to be writing this.  That if I was patriotic, I would be lamenting Covid.  I know I am meant to still fear it.  We see pictures on the news at night, increasingly of children in hospital dying from Covid-19.

I emailed a couple of professionals yesterday, including a relative with a master’s degree in public health, asking about the extent of the testing of the vaccines efficacy, and also its safety.  I’m concerned about its safety because the vaccination of children in the 5 to 12 age bracket is about to begin in earnest here in Australia, and with the Pfizer mRNA technology. I can’t find which studies were used by the Therapeutic Goods Association (TGA) to determine the vaccine to be safe for this age group?  I am interested.  I am always interest in data.  I am a scientist and I have an inherent distrust of government and bureaucracies.

There is an open letter from the Queensland Health Practitioners Alliance, and others, explaining:

It is widely recognised and not contested that children are at low risk of serious illness from Covid-19. Children are vulnerable to myocarditis from mRNA vaccines. In addition, now that we have new information on novel gene-based vaccine adverse events, this provides significant warnings and safety signals.

The risk/benefit ratio in children, which was not in favour of Covid-19 vaccination originally, is now very likely to be very negative by any reasonable assessment. A Physicians and Medical Scientists Declaration lists 38 scientific papers as supporting evidence for this view (Attachment 4).

For small subgroups of children who might be at higher risk of serious illness from Covid-19 due to comorbid conditions, the need for vaccination is present but the risk/benefit ratio is likely to be more favourable with Covid-19 protein-based and attenuated virus-based vaccines. These vaccines are based on decades of known technology, and the Australian Government has purchased a supply of protein-based vaccines.

Anyway, the reply to me from the health professional is perhaps typical of those who want to preserve the status-quo and our respective for medical science, no matter the evidence and no matter the risk to our children.  She wrote:

I am not interested in debating the science related to vaccination. I know many of vaccine experts personally and would put my trust in their expertise and my life or the life of a loved one over some random click bait internet propelled and generated merchant of doubt*.

We are in the middle of a deadly pandemic, vaccinating the globe is part of our way out of it. This is merchant of doubt territory and it’s dangerous. It will only prolong the misery which will be disproportionately experienced by the poor, vulnerable and immune compromised.

We all benefit from getting people vaccinated. We can trust our health system including its experts.  No matter how much I read about it they would know more – and so I put my trust in them.

Really? Trust the experts. Unconditionally.

Just yesterday I read that Professor Mark Smyth is a fellow of the Australia Academy of Science, which describes him on its website as “the most highly cited immunologist in Australia.”

According to an article published yesterday by the Australian Broadcasting Corporation (their ABC) this professor has been found to have fabricated scientific data used in support of grant funding applications and human trials.   Specifically, and I will quote from the article:

An independent panel, led by retired Queensland Court of Appeal judge Robert Gotterson and which included three eminent scientists, found Professor Smyth had seriously breached codes relating to the responsible conduct of research and the use of animals in research.

“The institute referred the findings to Queensland’s Crime and Corruption Commission, in line with its legislative obligations,” QIMR Berghofer said in a statement released on Tuesday.

“The findings against Mark Smyth included fabrication of research data, which was used to support grant funding applications and clinical trials.”

The institute said while there was no indication that participant safety had been compromised in any human trials using Professor Smyth’s research data, it had taken “decisive action” to notify the clinical studies involved.

Statistician John P.A. Ioannidis published a review of medical research back in 2005 entitled ‘Why most published research findings are false’ (Plos Medicine, https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pmed.0020124 ).   It included comment that:

The majority of modern biomedical research is operating in areas with very low pre- and post-study probability for true findings.

The review by Professor Ioannidis is a devastating critic of the sad state of biomedical research; and it this same profession, biomedical research, that developed the new Covid-19 vaccines that do not seem to be working – at least not amongst my friends and acquittances either in Cairns, or here in Noosa.

***************

The feature image is of Professor Mark Smyth who headed the team at QMIR Berghofer studying immunology. His work was featured in the Brisbane Times a few years ago:  https://www.brisbanetimes.com.au/national/queensland/promising-new-treatment-could-target-a-range-of-cancers-20191107-p538i2.html

*This was specifically in response to an article I sent her quoting Dr Robert W. Malone, an American virologist and immunologist who’s work has focused on mRNA technology, pharmaceuticals, and drug repurposing research.

Incarceration Nation: Frightened of Ivermectin, and Dihydrogen monoxide

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When plain old water is called ‘dihydrogen monoxide’ – an accurate description of its chemical composition – people tend to be frightened of it.   Particularly so when some of its potentialities are listed including causing suffocation (drowning).  Yet, water is fundamental to life on Earth.

I would argue that the medicine Ivermectin is fundamental to my community effectively dealing with Covid.  Yet because a campaign has been run against it, people are now frightened of it.

There is a documentary entitled ‘Incarceration Nation’ about the speed with we jail people here in Australia, especially people of colour – and for the pettiest of crimes.   After receiving an exemption from Covid vaccination, the greatest tennis player in the world, Serbian Novak Djokovic, flew into Australia.  He is now being held in a detention centre; the relevant government Minister says he is free to leave our country at any time – but he is not free to leave the detention centre to play tennis, because he is unvaccinated.

Australians were initially told that they needed two injections, sometime apart, to be protected from the Covid virus, and that vaccination rates needed to reach 70 percent of the population to contain outbreaks.    With the emergence of a new and very different strains of the Covid virus we are now being told that we must get a booster shot to be protected.   In the beginning there were two very different vaccines available one known as AstraZeneca and the other Pfizer.  Initially we were told that it was important that the two injections be from the same product, Pfizer and Pfizer or AstraZeneca and AstraZeneca.  It is now the case that all boosters will be Pfizer.

Yet my doctor, a registered General Practitioner in Queensland, advised me against Pfizer on the basis it was very much an experimental vaccine using a new technology and that the risk of Pericarditis from a Pfizer vaccination, while rare, was a real possibility – particularly for young men and boys.

While arranging for me to be vaccinated with AstraZeneca, my doctor also prescribed what is known in anti-vaccination circles as ‘The Triple Therapy’ against Covid: Ivermectin, zinc and an antibiotic.   He advised me that should I get covid, even after being vaccinated, I should immediately begin the treatment.   Covid, he advised me, was a potentially terrible disease, and there was no guarantee that the vaccine would remain effective against new strains, but that the triple therapy: Ivermectin, with zinc and the antibiotic would.

Within a week of my doctor writing that prescription, Ivermectin was banned from sale in Australia for the treatment of Covid – by the government.

The unofficial advice has been that the Australian government wants everyone vaccinated rather than relying on medicines.

Yet if you read the peer reviewed literature – The Science – Ivermectin has a real role to play in both the treatment and as a prophylaxis against Covid.  For example, the conclusions from a review of Ivermectin trials published in the American Journal of Therapeutics (volume 28, pages 434 – 460) is that given the evidence of efficacy, safety, low cost, and current death rates, Ivermectin is likely to have a positive impact on health and economic outcomes of the pandemic across many countries.  The same review article explains that Ivermectin is not a new and experimental drug with an unknown safety profile. It is a WHO ‘Essential Medicine’ already used successfully to treat other diseases and very safe at correct doses.  The review article also states: ‘Ivermectin is likely to be an equitable, acceptable, and feasible global intervention against COVID-19. Health professionals should strongly consider its use, in both treatment and prophylaxis.

Yet the Australian government has banned my doctor from now prescribing Ivermectin for use as either a prophylaxis or treatment against Covid.

There is no avoiding the reality that the Australian government’s approach to the management of this pandemic has been unscientific.   Rather than empowering doctors to sift through the available information as it is published, the Australian government has tried to force us all to be vaccinated.

Anyone who has refused has been ostracised, and many have been forced to close their businesses.   For example, my friend Patrick ran a very successful restaurant (Sushi Monster) here in Noosa for 12 years, but he chose to close the day before the vaccine mandate was introduced – he closed his restaurant on December 16, 2021 rather than have his 16-year-old son who worked in that business vaccinated with Pfizer.   The mandate decrees that to legally work in a restaurant in Queensland that provides table serve and/or that serves alcohol you need to be vaccinated.

It is the case that Patrick, and perhaps also Novak Djokovic, are more frightened of Pfizer than they are of Ivermectin – and perhaps for good reason.

Of concern, the information relied on to license the Pfizer-BioNTech Covid-19 vaccine has never been made public.   On Thursday, the very same day that Novak Djokovic’s lawyers were arguing for his right to play tennis in Australia despite his vaccination status, a judge in the U.S. ordered that Pfizer’s pre-licensure safety data be all released and within the next eight months.  It had previously been argued in court that this was impossible because there was so much documentation, apparently it needs to be released at a rate of 55,000 pages a month for it to be all released within the next eight months!  This would suggest to me that the safety of Pfizer is dependent on many ‘ifs’ and ‘buts’.

When I asked Patrick, as he closed-up his shop on the last day, what his hopes and fears were for the future he replied that he just hoped he could stay out of jail.

I initially thought he was joking, but there was no smile on his face.

Afterall, like Novak Djokovic, Patrick is not the type to agree to 9pm curfews or keeping his boys from visiting playgrounds.  Yet if you didn’t agree to these imposts and you were a resident of Melbourne this last year, and you weren’t prepared to pay fines, you risked jail.

Australia is no longer a free nation – if it ever was.

Each of us today, has a choice.

We can choose to hate Novak and Patrick because they have the arrogance and intelligence to go against what has been decreed and what is popular.  The alternative is to stand with them and for science, and for choice.

****

Additional Information

  1. About the Journal that published the review study about Ivermectin

The American Journal of Therapeutics is a bimonthly medical journal covering advances in drug therapy, comparative effectiveness research, and post-marketing surveillance. The journal was established in 1994 by John Somberg MD and is published by Wolters Kluwer.

The journal has been part of the Web of Science Core Collection since 2010, with an impact factor of 2.688. The journal is included in the Index Medicus(Medline).

  1. Why we need boosters

An additional “booster” dose of Moderna or Pfizer mRNA-based vaccine is needed to provide immunity against the Omicron variant of SARS-CoV-2, the virus that causes COVID-19, according to a study by researchers at the Ragon Institute of MGH, MIT and Harvard. The results of this study, reported in the journal Cell, indicate that traditional dosing regimens of COVID-19 vaccines available in the United States do not produce antibodies capable of recognizing and neutralizing the Omicron variant.

  1. Why the Pfizer safety data is not public

A federal judge on Thursday ordered the U.S. Food and Drug Administration to produce, at a rate of 55,000 pages per month, the documents it relied on to license the Pfizer-BioNTech Covid-19 vaccine.

The case was brought by the Public Health and Medical Professionals for Transparency (PHMPT), which said the data should be made public quickly because the FDA took just 108 days to review the data before granting the Pfizer-BioNTech COVID-19 vaccine full approval.

The group which bought the case comprises public health professionals, medical professionals, scientists, and journalists, includes Dr. Harvey Risch, a professor of epidemiology at the Yale School of Public Health, Dr. Aaron Kheriaty, who was until recently a professor of psychiatry at UC Irvine’s School of Medicine, and Dr. Peter McCullough, a cardiologist, epidemiologist, and internist.

4. A guide to treating Covid, at home

I’ve been asked various questions on Facebook that need context, so I have uploaded a guide popular with the unvaccinated.

 

Not Washed Away, On the Highest Tide

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It has been an exciting start to the year where I live, because the highest astronomical tide was forecast for 3rd January and there was a cyclone tracking towards us.

On the highest tide each year, I wonder if the waves will reach to the wave cut notch at the bottom of the cliff face, below Boiling Pot Lookout in Noosa National Park that is about halfway down the east coast of Australia, just near where I live.

I have been going around and standing there on the lower platform (Platform 1) for some years at the time of the highest tide.   These tides are in summer in the Southern Hemisphere because that is when the Sun is closest to the Earth, and they usually correspond with a New Moon or Full Moon.

Jen and friends towards the top of Platform 1 waiting for the highest tide for the year in 2020. It didn’t reach as far as us, we weren’t washed away.

This year, on the day of the forecast highest astronomical tide (Monday 3rd January 2022), Noosa was mentioned on the front page of the national newspaper – the story was about the huge swells: up to 4 metres high from ex-cyclone Seth lingering just offshore.

Was this the year I was going to be washed from the wavecut platform at the bottom of the cliff face on the highest tide?

The sea begins at the land’s edge.  Where the sea begins is the sea level – and there is concern that sea levels are rising.

But this platform must be a relic from a time of higher sea levels because even this year with a low pressure system off-shore that raised sea levels, and with the La Nina that further raised sea levels, sea-level didn’t reach the wave cut notch.

These platforms form just below sea level, in the intertidal zone, where the cutting action of waves will bring down great lumps of rock from above.  The debris is removed by the wash, beyond the intertidal zone; the headland recedes landward; the sea eats into the cliff-face; and so, cliffs are formed, with wave-cut platforms at their base.

This platform below Boiling Point Lookout, that I have stood on in past years: it is so wide.

When was it formed? How long were sea levels at that height – how long does it take to erode a cliff face to that width?

This year the waves, on the biggest swells, at the time of the high tide, they hit the cliff face!

Not the sea level, but the swells.

And yet I wasn’t washed away.  Because I wasn’t on the platform!

But my friend Jared was there, and he was not washed away.  You can see him in the drone footage that I have taken – so much footage that now needs editing – that shows the largest swells including as they hit the cliff face the day before (2nd January) with Cyclone Seth just offshore, and the next day (3rd January) which was highest tide day for the year.

Can you see him, my friend, Jared? In a white tee shirt, waiting for the highest tide below Boiling Pot Lookout with the big swells from ex-tropical cyclone Seth.   You can see him and the waves smashing in the footage that I hope to make into a little film.  To know when the short film is released consider subscribing for my monthly e-newsletters.

I was flying my drone (the wonderful Skido) from a ledge beyond the platform into the winds and out to sea so I could get the feature image looking back at the cliff face at the time of the highest astronomical tide, as shown in the feature image at the top of this blog post.

This year I dared not venture below the cliff face at the time of the highest tide, but Jared did – and he was not washed away.   You will see him in the short film that I hope to make about this cliff face and climate change.  To be sure to know when it is uploaded to the internet or ready for showing in the wonderful local Pomona Theatre subscribe for my monthly e-newsletters.

A photograph of Platform 1, taken by Bruce with his phone, just before the highest tide on 3rd January 2022. He also braved the conditions and saw it all with his own eyes.

Update 

Much thanks to Charles for republishing at WhatsUpWithThat.  I really appreciate the comments in the thread including from Rud Istvan and John Tillman.  They are suggesting the platforms could date to the Eemian high stand that was 120,000 years ago.  Apparently during the Eemian period the Southern Dome of the Greenland Ice Sheet melted about 25% more than now, and temperatures were 6 to 8 degrees warmer.

At Last, A Cyclone

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The Bureau has called the low-pressure system off the northeast of Australia as a category two cyclone.   Local weather reports are warning:

“Large and powerful surf conditions in the afternoon and evening are expected to be hazardous for coastal activities such as rock fishing, swimming and surfing.

With fair-sized waves rolling in from the north facing points, the local surfers were out early this morning, so the carpark at the main entrance to Noosa National Park was a traffic jam.    I was keen to see my cliff face* (below Boiling Pot Lookout) on the high tide with the big swells, but alas the traffic prevented it.  I should have walked!

This low-pressure system has intensified on a New Moon (1st January) at Perigee (2nd January).   These are conditions often associated with cyclones.

This cyclone, named Seth, is tracking south, as I would expect given the Moon will be heading south until midnight on Sunday, when it will reach maximum declination just to the north of Noosa and then turn.  I watch, and download data, on the Moon’s changing orbit from the NASA Jet Propulsion Lab.

According to the latest report from the Bureau, Seth was producing wind gusts of up to 110 kilometres per hour and was not expected to cross the coast.

Thanks to the Bureau for this track map.

We are so overdue for cyclones crossing the coast.   Last summer, the 2020–21 Australian region cyclone season was another ‘below average’ season, producing a total of just 8 tropical cyclones with just 3 of these categorised as severe. So, since official records began in 1970 it is a case of less cyclones and less severe cyclones.

Of course, all of this contradicts the official ‘climate action now’ narrative that falsely claims an increase in the incidence of cyclones in accordance with the illusionary climate change catastrophe reported nightly on the news by all the ‘useful idiot’ journalists. (Don’t be one of the useful idiots, join the resistance by subscribing to my regular e-newsletter.)

I’m going to be out tomorrow morning (Sunday morning) to try and record the second highest tide at the cliff face, and, also on Monday morning for the highest tide.   I’m hoping to put up my drone, but if it’s too gusty Skido will refuse to take-off.  It would be so good to have a professional with a long lens across the other side of Tea Tree Bay looking back to the cliff face, to catch the highest tide with the big swell.   You don’t have to get on the platform, there will be lots of opportunities looking back from the main track.

**** More information on how to get to my cliff face is at my sea level change page, click here.

The image below was taken on the highest tide two years ago looking back to the rock platform below Boiling Pot Lookout in Noosa National Park.  Can you see me within the red circle to the bottom left?  There was a low pressure system off shore that year.  It will be more intense this year so the tide should be even higher, but will it reach the bottom of the cliff face?  Will I be washed away?

Come Celebrate High Tide on the Rocks – Weather Permitting

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I have been waiting for catastrophic sea level rise to wash me from the rock platform a few headlands around from where I live at Sunshine Beach in Noosa Shire about halfway along the east coast of Australia that is on the edge of the western South Pacific Ocean.

I like to stand on that platform of sandstone, sandstone that perhaps dates to the Jurassic – the time of the dinosaurs – and thumb my nose at all the catastrophe on the nightly news about global warming and rising sea levels.

The highest tide this year is forecast for 8.27 am on Monday 3rd January (2022) at 2.29 metres.

It just might happen this year, that I get washed away.   If there is a low-pressure system offshore and big winds, as forecast.

We were there on that platform for the very highest tide last year, but the waves never made it even to our ankles.  So, much for catastrophic sea level rise, I thought.

Bruce and Nick on the rock platform below Boiling Pot Lookout for the highest annual tide this last year, at 8.51 am on 28th February 2021.

The cliff face behind reaches up perhaps 30 metres to the famous Boiling Pot Lookout.

There is a wave cut notch running right around the base of the cliff face – where the rock platform begins.

The cliff face has been formed by undercutting: from waves swirling beneath until they bring down great lumps of rock, to be removed by the wash.

And so, the headland has receded landward, and the platform become wider.  But it’s not happening anymore, because sea levels are not as high as they used to be.

Logically, sea levels must have once been much higher because now even on the highest tide for the year the waves don’t reach the bottom of the cliff face, the notch.   On highest tides long ago, the waves must have smashed against the cliff face.

Drone photograph of us on 28th February 2021 on the rock platform in front of the cliff face waiting to be washed away.

According to the most recent Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change report (AR6) – temperatures are the warmest they have been for at least the last 125 000 years.

Has it really been that long since the ocean lapped at the base of this cliff below the Boiling Pot Lookout?   Is my favourite rock platform that old – 125 000 years old?  Has it been just so wide for that long?

There are marine potholes in the sandstone just two rock platform to the southeast, towards Tea Tree Bay.   The fracture around one of the rings suggests a pre-existing body, possibly a fossilised tree trunk.  A geologist emailed me two years ago: note the pattern of dimples around the pothole which, if it is a Jurassic age sediment could be due to the presence of roots of Taxodium; I’ve posted a picture of that swamp cypress at an earlier blog post, click here.

Drone photograph of my favourite marine pot holes and see the ‘dimples’ about it, taken on the very highest tide two years ago, on 10th February 2020.

Various texts on the geology of this area suggest that the sandstone was indeed laid down about 180 000 000 years ago.  Back then the east coast of Australia faced south and this region was far inland and an intact sedimentary basin – far from the waves and the sea tides.

That was a long time ago, 180 million years ago.

When did the ocean first reach the sandstone and begin eroding it, forming the cliff face below Boiling Pot Lookout?

This is just one of the questions that I will ponder as I face the ocean next Monday from my favourite wave-cut platform below the lookout, weather permitting.

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Standing on rocks is what rock fishers do, and it is considered one of the most dangerous sports in Australia with 158 deaths in the 13 years to 2017. To reduce the risk of injury it is advisable to:

  • Wear a lifejacket
  • Check tides weather and surf conditions
  • Take personal responsibility, think twice and assess my safety
  • Plan an escape route in case I am washed into the water
  • Wear the right gear i.e. lifejacket, appropriate footwear, lightweight clothing
  • Never fish/go alone, and make sure you tell someone where you are going and when you will be back
  • Look for Angel Rings or someone other floatation device to throw to someone in trouble
  • Call 000 if assistance is required.

There is more information at my sea level change page, click here.  If you like sharing, the short link to this blogpost is https://wp.me/p3uL4U-4Yf

**** UPDATE  31st December 2021

Thanks to everyone who promoted this blog post at Facebook. More than 6,000 saw it on that medium.

The Maverick Healer: Jesus

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It’s Christmas Day.  An annual event commemorating the birth of Jesus Christ.  He was a healer, and in the most empowering of ways.    Sometime just through simple touch.  He was also an outcast, decried by the elites of his time, he was sentenced to death by Pontius Pilate the Roman governor of Judaea under the emperor Tiberius.  Sentenced to death not because he stole something, or killed someone, but because he challenged their authority and more than anything else tried to bring people together.

Two thousand years later, and I’ve woken up this morning to a story in the Epoch Times about Fired Health Care Workers in the US.

Many health care workers, once hailed as heroes for working throughout the pandemic, now settle into the holiday season without jobs because of their personal medical decisions.

In North Carolina, Carlton DeHart was working as an advanced heart failure coordinator nurse for the Novant Health Presbyterian Medical Center in Charlotte when she was fired in September for not meeting the deadline to get vaccinated.

Because DeHart was undergoing fertility treatment, she told The Epoch Times, she decided against it, adding that she didn’t feel comfortable ‘adding a not-long tested unknown into my body.’

She chose not to file for an exemption because, she said, ‘it’s a form of compliance.’

She doesn’t regret the decision, she said, and with the reducing rates of efficacy, changing definitions of what it means to be fully vaccinated, increasing reports of side effects, and the censorship surrounding the COVID-19 vaccines, she’s ‘still determined not to comply.’

Though DeHart misses her team and her patients, she said doesn’t miss the ‘top-down draconian hospital politics’ that pushes allopathic treatment.

Her hope is that the firings will propel a new medical community forward that doesn’t lean into the heavily prescribed drugs, radiation, and surgery but into more innovations outside of orthodox medicine.

‘I think we were moving that way anyway because people weren’t happy with the corporate care they were getting, and this will hurry that along,’ DeHart said.

Today, on this Christmas Day, my heart goes out to all of those who have chosen to transcend the corporate and the mandated and to try a different way.

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I’ve extracted the feature image (at the very top of this blog post) from some drone footage shot by Stuart Ireland flying behind Russell Island from our little boat Kiama, with Rob McCulloch and me.