GREAT SUCCESS

Thanks to everone who came to he exhibition on Friday and Saturday. It was a great success. The feedback was great, more people came than I could have hoped for, and people bought prints. It was a bit of a rush to get everything up on time, and to be honest a few people arrived while the labels were still going up!! But it would have been much worse if I did not have the amazing help of Marc, Danna and Julia. A HUGE thanks to them all!! Thanks again to Rhiannon for organising the venue. It was a great space for an exhibition. Thanks to Cas and Spies for the loan of the spots as well! The wine was kindly sponsored by Bruce Jack from Flagstone, Thank you!!

I'm sure the money raised will be enough to see us throught the trip, even if it costs R700 to fill up a bakkie these days.

So now its just doing the final preparations for the walk and the data collection.

Lucky to have had such good rain this winter, it promises to be a great flower season.

I am planning to leave Cape Town on the 7th of August and start walking on the 8th.

I will update the blog with progress as often as I can, so keep checking....

Track and Field Party and Matjies Warm-up

Just to let you know about the Matjies “Show ’n’ tell”

“Show ’n’ tell” is a platform for your creative explorations. The aim is for everyone to contribute in the old fashioned way: perform, play and present in Matjiesfontein The next "Show 'n Tell" will be 19 &20 Sep 2008.

The Matjiesfontein organising committee will be down at the Kimberley Hotel on Friday at the Track and Field Party. Come for a drink in the downstairs bar beforehand (9pm onwards) as this will be the perfect opportunity to discuss contributions and have any questions regarding accommodation answered.

A big thanks to Julia from the organising committee for helping to get wine for the fundraising exhibition. Yes, there will be wine!!

Fundraising Exhibition

In order to raise more funds for the trip, there will a photography exhibition of some of my work.

The BHC School of Design at The Old Biscuit Mill in Woodstock has kindly offered their space as a venue. There will be a variety of prints on display, some mounted and some not, some for sale and others not. But lots of beautiful pictures for good prices.

Venue:

BHC School of Design, Unit 207, 1st Floor,

The Old Biscuit Mill, 375 Albert Rd, Woodstock

Date & Time:

Friday 18th July 18h30
Saturday 19th July 11am - 3pm

Thanks to Rhiannon Ried for organising the venue

Geotagging Photos

In order to map the localities of the rare and endangered plants along the route I will be using "Geosetter". Geosetter is a free software package links photos to their lat/lon co-ordinates. To do this you need a GPS that can track your route and a camera. The GPS (I have a Garmin GPSMap 60CSx) and the camera (Canon 400D) have their clocks set to exactly the same time. After downlaoding the photos and the GPS track Geosetter links each photo to its appropriate co-ords using the time to match them up. I have been looking into such technology for a while and Geosetter seems to be the easiest free way to achieve successful 'geotagging'.

The image shows the easy to use interface. On the left are the photos (you can navigate through your folders to find the pics you want), after selecting the photos you link them with the GPS file and like magic the google map shows up on the right to show you where you were.

This image is from a walk in the Cape Point Nature Reserve.

Spotted in the N7 Road Reserve

On a recent trip trip to Garies, I saw these beauties in the road reserve. The Amarylid Hessea stellatus and the succulent Conophytum subvenustratum.

Funding from THE PLANT CONSERVATION UNIT

After getting in touch with Timm Hoffman from the Botany department at UCT to discuss the possibility of making the N7 Road Reserve walk into a formal study, his organisation (The Plant Conservation Unit - PCU) offered to financially suport the walk. They have pledged R10 000 towards the project which is very generous and ensures that it will happen. Through discussions with Timm I have also decided to register at UCT with the PCU to make the project into a Masters Thesis in Botany. This is also very exciting and adds a new dimension and structure to the project.

Sponsorship from CASABIO

CASABIO is an NGO dedicated to the conservation of the earth's species. The concept is simple: you take photos of organisms you see and using easy and efficient software, give them a locality. The result: a collaborative database of species and their localities which can be used for conservation, education and research. CASABIO is run by David Gwynne-Evans who has kindly donated some funds to the N7 Road Reserve Walk!

About the Project

The N7 National Route is the primary road access to flower viewing destinations in Namaqualand and the West Coast. The road reserve along much of the route still supports patches of relatively undisturbed vegetation and during the spring months parts of it provide fine displays of wildflowers that no longer survive beyond the fence line in cultivated land.

In order to raise awareness about this important biodiversity corridor I will be walking from the Namibian border to Cape Town in the N7 road reserve. The aim is to map the rare and endangered plants found in the reserve and assess the condition of the vegetation at regular intervals on the entire route. This data will inform future management of the road reserve and through media attention will raise public awareness about the floral assets found in the road reserve. The walk is planned for August/September 2008.