By Ellen
One of the more interesting afternoons that we had while stranded in Tibooburra was the chance to go up in a helicopter with Heath McRae from the Australian Plague Locust Commission. He and helicopter pilot, Tim Turner, made room for us and our cameras in the 'copter and off we went…flying high above the Tibooburra area looking for locust swarms.

You have to love this photography stuff!

Tim pulled the doors off of the helicopter so that we could get a clear shot from above with our F5's. It is interesting, to say the least, to be strapped into a 'copter with no doors, with Locusts darting in and out.

We got higher elevation views and the guys also dropped us down to as low as ten feet above ground for miles on end as they evaluated the crop damage being done by the locusts. At one point we even landed on an outpost tract so that Heath could capture some locusts with a net. He then pulled a sampling of them apart to evaluate whether they had produced eggs yet or not, and to see how much fat they had, etc. Then they charted the swarms that they observed for later spraying purposes.

They spotted fox, feral pigs, emus and many roos for us, including a rarely seen albino kangaroo. And they swooped and swerved left and right for us so that we both got good shots.

FUN stuff. I recommend this kind of photography highly. Of course, I didn't tell anyone that my seat buckle actually came loose during the flight…my second F5 hit it just right, it seems…but I caught it in time and quickly re-buckled it, and I learned from that to keep better track of where my camera bodies where dangling.

Thanks, guys!