Here is where I will blog all about the parks of Australia.
You can make a blog on your website by creating a category to write you blog posts in (this one is called Park Blog). Each blog post will be an article in that category. If you make a category blog menu link with 1 column it will look like this page, if you display the category description (this part) displayed.
To enhance your blog you may want to add  extensions for comments, interacting with social network sites, tagging, and keeping in contact with your readers.   You will also enable the syndication that is included in Joomla! (in the Integration Options set Show Feed Link to Show an make sure to display the syndication module on the page).
These are my photos from parks I have visited (I didn't take them, they are all from Wikimedia Commons).
This shows you how to make a simple image gallery using articles in com_content.
In each article put a thumbnail image before a "readmore" and the full size image after it. Set the article to Show Intro Text: Hide.