My original plan was to go to the Wings Over Illawarra air show this weekend, but all the good seats were taken. Instead, I decided to plan a trip toward the south coast.

The first stop was a café in Gerringong for an excellent breakfast with an excellent view, looking out over the coastline and the rolling green hills on the land side.

From there we headed south toward Nowra on the Shoalhaven River where you will find the Shoalhaven Zoo. We spent about an hour just wandering before our pre-booked animal encounter was on... specifically, an encounter with marmosets.

Those are small monkeys from South America with a body length between 12 and 15cm (4.7") and a weight of between 300 and 400 grams (0.66lb). Marmosets live in rainforests, other forests, and woodlands. They dine on a variety of seeds, fruits, berries, tree sap and insects. They also have an excellent thrust to weight ratio and can go flying across their enclosure in the blink of an eye, and they're happy to use your body as one part of their route if you happen to be in the enclosure.

In any case, they're cute... even the one who tried (unsuccessfully) to reach into my shirt pocket to grab my zoo map so that he could have some fun tearing it up.

The enclosure is small; it fits only 2 people and the keeper at the one time, but to the marmosets it probably feels like the Palace of Versailles because as I mentioned... they are rather small themselves. I did, however, make some mistakes. I took in the 8mm f/1.8 fisheye because obviously the range would often be too close for standard lenses. Hey, f/1.8, thinks I, I can turn the ISO all the way down and minimise graininess! Then I noticed the times were much slower than I had anticipated. Why I didn't take the time to move up to at least ISO 200 and get all those juicy 1/4-figure exposure times, I have no idea... oh wait, yes I do, I had monkeys hanging off every part of me so flipping the switch then rotating the dial was a little... awkward.

The second problem only really became obvious afterwards - because I was so close to the marmosets, or more precisely they were so close to me, including the one who had his face shoved right next to the lens so that the shot features only a nose and a pair of eyes with a tuft on top staring down the barrel - f/1.8 wasn't giving me enough DOF in a lot of cases. This one I got away with, with the ultra-shallow DOF creating what was, IMHO anyway, a nice effect. With other shots, I didn't. I really should have mixed it up a bit.

After fun with the marmosets we wandered a bit further, fed some of the animals including a very, VERY demanding goat, then headed off to the Mountain Ridge Winery and Restaurant for most excellent lunch, also with a most excellent view.

So I missed the air show, yet again. But on the drive back, an aircraft was pointed out to me in the sky. I looked up and... wait, what? Inverted gull wings?? IT'S A CORSAIR!!! Yes indeed, one of my most favouritest (sic) planes in the world, the F4U Corsair! Specifically it was VH-III which is an F4U-5N, post-dating the Second World War, but still... it was manufactured in 1951 and had previously served with the Honduran Air Force.

Well, at least I got to see it. Maybe next year it'll be my PESO.

But for this year, it's my little friend here who decided to take a break from jumping all over me by visiting the food bowl.