I headed up the mountains with Albert – our aim was to visit some showcase canyons and concentrate on photography. Our plan was to first visit Rocky Creek Canyon. We arrived at the carpark at Galah Mountain and were surprised to find no other cars. As it turned out – we were the only party visiting the canyon that day.
We walked through the nice rainforest gully to the start of the canyon. Then after changing into wetsuits, we climbed down into the canyon. The day was generally sunny with quite a few clouds. Rocky Creek Canyon can be good in the sun – as long as you use indirect lighting. But in the first part of the canyon, the lighting was quite poor – too much sunlight was coming in and making photography no good. It may be better in this section later on with the sun a bit lower?
We continued on. Lower down, after climbing down the small waterfall and reaching the deep, dark section of the canyon, things improved. Some light beams were visible. It was starting to get quite nice. So cameras and tripods came out and we set up and started taking some photos.
Our intention was to continue to the end of the canyon, keep photographing and then retrace our path back up through the canyon.
MY favourite part of the canyon is a long very dark section where you need to wade or swim. A few years ago, with care you could wade all this section. Now, the sand has changed and it involves a lot more swimming. Photography here is usually very difficult or impossible. There are a few places were you could set up a camera and tripod on small sloping ledges on the side of the canyon. In other places setting up a tripod is impossible – the water us too deep. And this time – the lighting was very poor – mottled sunlight reaching the canyon floor. I have visited Rocky Creek Canyon many times and hardly ever been able to photograph this part of the canyon.
After this dark corridor, the canyon turns a bend into another more open, but still very deep and dark dark before it twists again into the final swim before the Budgary Creek junction. This is another very good part of the canyon and is often very photogenic. On our vista it wasn’t too bad – but you had to watch burnt out highlights in your photos. Again the softer reflected light was better.
Later we had some sunbeams enter the canyon. Nice! We then slowly headed back upstream. Some parts were better than earlier, other parts worse. The top section, however, was a lot nicer, and I was able to set up my trips and photograph the lovely small waterfalls here.
We then left the canyon and walked back to the carpark. 
Instead of camping the night at Barcoo Swamp, we headed to the Dry Canyon, further along the Glow Worm Tunnel Road. We set up our camp at the head of the valley and then walked down in the late afternoon to the canyon. We indulged in a little more photography in both the constrictions of this very nice canyon. The sun was low and the canyon was quite gloomy however – but its often like this. It is a very narrow and dark canyon.
I later left Albert and climbed up on the side to see if there was going to be a good sunset. It looked like the sun would be in the wrong place for good photos, but the view looking down into the slot of the canyon is always impressive from here.
Back at camp, we had dinner and I went to bed. Albert headed back down the canyon for some night photography. I woke up in the early morning – around 2 am for some astrophotography. I was a clear, dark, moonless night and I thought I may be able to see Comet C/2014 Q2 Lovejoy. When I tried looking for it in Sydney, it had been too cloudy. I did manage to find the comet and photograph it.
Comet Lovejoy
Orion
The Milky Way and Clouds of Magellan
More photos can be viewed on my website – Rocky Creek Canyon here, and The Dry Canyon here.