Bridgewater Bay Blairgowrie for Water H2O Thursday

 

Beyond the much-photographed stone arch of Bridgewater Bay at Blairgowrie, the exposed seabed revealed a quieter magnificence—its wet rock and tidal contours lending themselves exquisitely to long-exposure photography, where time itself seems to soften and dissolve into silk and shadow.

I remain, even now, in a lingering festive temper, tempered by the prospect of days ahead marked by oppressive heat, with temperatures forecast to exceed forty degrees. In such conditions, the impulse is not toward movement or travel, but toward stillness: a contented inclination to remain at home, allowing the glare and fervour of summer to pass beyond the threshold, while memory and reflection provide their own, gentler occupation.

Sony A7RV

FE 20-70mm f4 G

Linking Water H2O Thursday

Hosier Lane Mural Melbourne for Sign2

 

On my recent visit to Hosier Lane, there was, at first glance, little of note to arrest the eye. The lane, once celebrated as a lively and evolving canvas of Melbourne’s street art culture, now feels markedly diminished. Where there was formerly wit, provocation, and a sense of creative dialogue, there is increasingly a visual clutter that leans toward the careless and the coarse, as though expression has given way to excess.

Yet amid this decline, a single phrase stood out with unexpected force: “you exist.” In its stark simplicity, it carried a quiet authority that much of the surrounding graffiti lacked. Unlike the louder, more aggressive markings that now dominate the lane, these words required no explanation and no spectacle. They spoke directly, almost intimately, to the passer-by—an affirmation of presence and worth in a space that has grown visually hostile.

Hosier Lane’s transformation mirrors a broader tension within graffiti street art itself. What begins as rebellion and creative freedom often risks degeneration when novelty supersedes intention. The lane, once a showcase of layered skill and social commentary, has in many places turned rather ugly—less a gallery of ideas than a battleground of tags competing for dominance.

Against this backdrop, the phrase “you exist” felt like a reminder of what street art can achieve at its best: clarity, humanity, and resonance. In a lane overwhelmed by noise, it was this quiet assertion that endured, suggesting that even in decay, meaning can still surface—briefly, but powerfully.

Sony A7RV

FE 20-70mm f4 G

Linking Sign2

Sydney Harbour Bridge at night for Treasure Tuesday

 

On my most recent journey to Sydney, I found myself once more compelled to photograph the city by night. As ever, the train bore me across the city to the bridge, that great span from which Sydney reveals itself most eloquently after dark. Yet the experience proved unlike my previous visits; the familiar scene appeared altered, as though the city had chosen to show me a different aspect of its character, quieter and more reflective, yet no less commanding.

The bridge itself, the Sydney Harbour Bridge, stands as one of the defining works of Australian engineering and civic ambition. Conceived in the early years of the twentieth century, it was born of a pressing need to unite the northern and southern shores of the harbour, which until then were linked only by ferry. Designed by Dr John Bradfield, whose vision shaped much of Sydney’s modern infrastructure, the bridge took form under the engineering firm Dorman Long and Company of Middlesbrough, England. Construction began in 1923 and employed thousands during the difficult years of the Great Depression, becoming both a source of livelihood and a symbol of national resolve.

Completed and opened in 1932, the bridge is the world’s largest steel arch bridge of its kind, its vast curve rising with austere grace above the harbour waters. Built from more than 52,000 tonnes of steel and held together by millions of rivets, it was assembled from both shores toward the centre, the two halves meeting with remarkable precision high above the water. Its opening was marked by ceremony and controversy alike, famously interrupted when a ribbon was cut prematurely in political protest, an episode now woven into the bridge’s lore.

Since that day, the Harbour Bridge has carried trains, vehicles, cyclists, and pedestrians, serving not merely as a crossing but as a constant presence in the life of the city. By night, when its arch is traced in light and reflected upon the dark water below, it appears less a feat of industry than a great, luminous gesture—binding shore to shore, past to present, and the restless city to its enduring harbour.

Sony A7RV

FE 20-70mm f4 G

Linking Treasure Tuesday

Dame Edna Place Mural for Mural Monday

 

I have passed this laneway, Dame Edna Place, many times over the years. For all that while, the wall bore no likeness of him—or her—no portrait to fix the passing gaze. There came a season, too, when his name was clouded by rumours of old transgressions, whispered and unresolved. After that, he withdrew into silence, retreating from the public ear, until at length he died, quietly, and was heard from no more.

Sony A7RV

FE 20-70mm f4 G

Linking Mural Monday

Pearses Bay Sunset, Blairgowrie for Sunday Best

 

It is a rare comfort to pause after the labours of New Year’s Eve, for the mind does not surrender its haste at once, but asks for several quiet days before it can truly come to rest. The season has been marked by fierce heat and an unrelenting sun, so that the daylight hours press heavily upon the body and make any venture outdoors an exercise in endurance rather than pleasure.

Joel, meanwhile, is carrying his family northward on holiday to New South Wales, chasing a change of air and scene. I shall remain closer to home, content to trace a series of small, wandering excursions through the reaches of the Melbourne Fringe, finding interest in familiar streets seen at a gentler pace.

What follows is another image from my Pearses Bay sunset collection, completed over the course of 2025—a quiet record of evenings when the light softened at last, the heat loosened its grip, and the day surrendered, with a certain grace, to the calm of night.

Sony A7RV

FE 20-70mm f4 G

Linking Sunday Best

Bug macro for Saturday Critter

 

I do not know the name of this insect, yet I am taken by the way its red and green are set in vivid contrast within the frame, as though nature herself had paused to compose a small, living harmony of colour—spotted in the Melbourne Botanic Garden, a place usually rather unremarkable, but here briefly redeemed by this quiet flourish of colour.

Linking to Saturday Critter

Bridgewater Bay Sunset Blairgowrie for Skywatch Friday

 

This, the final frame, was taken ere I departed the bay, ere darkness fell and made perilous the walk upon the exposed sea-floor. Bridgewater Bay, with its sands laid bare by the retiring tide, bears the memory of countless ages—fishermen of old, skiffs gliding over these waters, and the early settlers of Blairgowrie, who first tamed these shores. Even as the light waned, the gentle murmur of the sea seemed to recount their stories, and I lingered, mindful of the history written in every ripple and grain of sand. 

Sony A7RV

FE 20-70mm f4 G

Linking Skywatch Friday

Bridgewater Bay Blairgowrie for Water H2O Thursday

 

As the new year turns, I have resolved to lay down two moderator roles on photographers’ Instagram pages. The labour has grown too heavy, and after five years of steady commitment—begun in the long shadow of the COVID period—it is time to relinquish those duties and reclaim some quiet measure of balance.

This photograph was taken at an old, familiar vantage point overlooking Bridgewater Bay in Blairgowrie. The infrared rendering, for all its interest, could not summon the same atmosphere or grace. Even so, the journey itself was not ill-spent. If anything, I was tempted by excess—hoping to draw two distinct visions from a single visit, and learning, perhaps, that one honest frame is sometimes enough.

Sony A7RV

FE 20-70mm f4 G

Linking Water H2O Thursday

Signs in Causeway Melbourne for Sign2

 

The section of the Causeway in Melbourne’s central business district has long been the object of public attention, having languished under construction for the better part of two decades. At last, the work is complete, yet the outcome provokes little in the way of wonder or admiration; the finished streetscape presents nothing particularly remarkable. One is left to ponder the motives behind such prolonged endeavours. Perhaps the authorities, in their desire to bolster employment figures, have directed labour to tasks of marginal utility, creating the appearance of productivity where purpose is diffuse.

Nevertheless, some shops have reopened, their signage presented simply as chalk on blackboards—a modest and understated flourish amid the otherwise ordinary thoroughfare. Remarkably, the area has so far been spared any acts of violence, a relief in a city that has elsewhere contended with such concerns.

In this unassuming completion of the Causeway, one discerns both the quiet persistence of municipal endeavour and the subtle absurdities of governance. The street stands renewed, practical yet uninspired, a testament to the sometimes tedious interplay of civic ambition, economic policy, and the rhythms of everyday urban life.

Sony A7RV

FE 35mm f1.4 GM

Linking Sign2

More infrared images from Bridgewater Bay Blairgowrie for Treasure Tuesday

 

In continuation of the Sunday post, I have shared three images from Bridgewater Bay, Blairgowrie, including the renowned arch for which the location is famed. Victoria is home to three Bridgewater Bays, yet this particular one remains the most readily accessible from suburban Melbourne.

Joel had his compact camera modified to capture infrared at a wavelength of 720 nanometres, while I entrusted my Sony A7RIV to conversion at 520 nanometres—a process that cost approximately seven hundred Australian dollars and required three months to complete. Though I acknowledge the expense and delay, I found myself more drawn to the aesthetic of the 500-nanometre wavelength, whose results possess a strikingly unconventional and almost otherworldly character.

I visit Bridgewater Bay with such frequency that I welcome variation in its portrayal; indeed, the coloured renditions captured on that day, close to Christmas, proved particularly remarkable.

Of particular note, the residence depicted in the third image commands a market value exceeding ten million dollars—a striking testament to the extraordinary ‘sea change’ phenomenon and the remarkable surge in coastal property values.

Sony A7RIV

infra red converted

FE 16mm f1.8 GM

Linking Treasure Tuesday

Leunig Mural in pink found in Brunswick Street Melbourne for Mural Monday

 

Michael Leunig, one of Australia’s most celebrated cartoonists and cultural commentators, passed away in December 2024 at the age of 79. Renowned for his whimsical line drawings and deeply reflective social commentary, Leunig’s work has touched generations of Australians through newspapers, galleries, and public exhibitions. Characters such as Mr Curly and the recurring symbolic ducks became emblematic of his gentle yet poignant worldview, combining humor, philosophy, and humanity in a distinctive style.

Traditionally rendered in black and white, Leunig’s illustrations have now found a renewed presence in Melbourne’s urban art scene. On Brunswick Street, long-standing merchants’ wall murals, once monochrome, have taken on vibrant hues under the guidance of Leunig’s daughter. These murals, painted in shades of pink, reinterpret the classic imagery and carry forward her father’s artistic vision, blending his legacy with contemporary street art.

Leunig’s daughter, an accomplished artist in her own right, has been actively involved in translating her father’s aesthetic into public spaces. Her work on the Brunswick Street murals demonstrates a fusion of familial heritage and urban creativity, preserving the spirit of Leunig’s illustrations while adding a fresh, colorful dimension to Melbourne’s streetscape.

Through these murals, the public continues to engage with the humor, insight, and tenderness that defined Michael Leunig’s career. His legacy endures not only on the page but in the vibrant canvas of the city itself, a living testament to the enduring power of art in everyday life.

Sony A7RV

FE 20-70mm f4 G

Bridgewater Bay Blairgowrie for Sunday Best

 

On Christmas Eve, Joel and I returned once more to Bridgewater Bay, moving with an unspoken attentiveness. I carried an infrared camera, its built-in sensor paired with an N520 filter, tuned to a spectrum beyond ordinary sight. Through it, the bay was reimagined: leaves flared into luminous cyan-green, the sky softened into an unexpected wash of yellow, and the stones along the shore gleamed silver-white, as if polished by an unseen hand. What was familiar dissolved into a quiet, otherworldly clarity, the landscape rewritten in light that exists just outside human perception.

Joel, meanwhile, wore a full lumberjack’s beard—dense, deliberate, and carefully tended. He watched over it with the same devotion one gives a toddler, adjusting and smoothing it as we walked. Against the surreal palette of infrared colour, his presence felt grounding and intimate, a reminder that while the camera translated the world into unseen wavelengths, we remained firmly, warmly human within it.

Sony A7RV

FE 16mm f1.8 GM

Linking Sunday Best

Grasshopper for Saturday Critter

 

I had very limited opportunity to photograph nature, let alone insects or animals. As a result, I revisited my personal archives and selected this image, which was taken nearly twenty years ago. At the time, it was captured using a very early and relatively basic Pentax DSLR.

Linking Saturday Critter

Montforts Beach Blairgowries for Skywatch Friday

 

It was only a quick shot, taken mid-ascent as I climbed the stairs toward the carpark, already half turned toward home. Yet the moment held me. The sky had thickened into a dense yellow, as if the light itself had been steeped too long, heavy and saturated. Below, the sea breathed upward, its air swollen with moisture, rich and almost tangible, clinging to skin and clothing alike.

Everything felt suspended in that brief pause between leaving and lingering—the day not quite finished, the weather not yet broken. The stairs rose behind me, the ocean remained at my back, and the world seemed steeped in colour and breath, quietly insisting on being noticed before I went.

Sony A7RV

FE 20-70mm f4 G

Linking Skywatch Friday

Bridgewater Visit before Christmas for Water H2O Thursday

 

Joel and I gifted ourselves a pause, tucked close to the Christmas season, a quiet agreement to step away and wait for the land to open again. For seven long weeks, Saturdays—the day we reserve for wandering—were washed out by relentless rain, the kind that pins you indoors and dulls the edges of anticipation. But at last, the weather shifted. The tide fell to its lowest breath, and the forecast promised storms by the following day, the sort that, by our own well-tested superstition, paint the sky in bruised reds and ember tones before breaking.

On Christmas Day, we will walk toward Bushranger Bay, answering that long-held pull toward open air and salt wind. It feels earned, this return to movement, to rock and water and horizon, after so much stillness.

Nearby, Bridgewater Bay at Blairgowrie holds its own quiet authority. Sheltered and wide, it is a place where pale limestone meets calm, glassy water, where the bay softens the force of Bass Strait into something contemplative. The shallows reveal ribbons of seagrass and pale sandbars at low tide, and the headlands stand watch like old sentinels, weathered and patient. Even when storms loom offshore, Bridgewater Bay often rests in a deceptive calm, as though holding its breath while the sky gathers itself.

After weeks of watching rain stitch the windows shut, the thought of standing there—boots on stone, wind lifting the scent of salt, the sky tinged red with coming weather—feels almost ceremonial. A return to the outdoors, to the quiet drama of coast and tide, and to the simple, sustaining act of going out together again.

Sony A7RV

FE 20-70mm f4 G

Linking Water H2O Thursday

Signs around Darling Harbour Sydney for Sign2

 

By day, Darling Harbour performs its duties efficiently—ferries arrive and depart, cafés hum, families drift between museums and promenades. But it is after dusk that the place reveals its true temperament.

When night settles, the harbour exhales. Glass towers loosen their grip on the sky and begin to speak in reflections, their lights unspooling across the dark water like careful calligraphy. Neon signage, garish in sunlight, softens into something theatrical, glowing with intention rather than insistence. The waterfront paths become ribbons of light, guiding footsteps past palm silhouettes and quiet eddies where the water holds the city’s colours without complaint.

The air feels warmer at night, even in cooler seasons, carrying the mingled scents of salt, food, and river damp. Conversations drift more slowly. Laughter echoes off pylons and under footbridges, lingering longer than it does during the rush of daylight. Boats glide through the harbour like deliberate thoughts, their wakes briefly breaking the perfect mirror before the water gathers itself again.

Here, Sydney’s modernity is at its most persuasive. The entertainment precinct—so exposed and crowded by day—turns intimate, almost reflective. Light installations and illuminated signs do not compete; they converse, tracing the harbour’s edges and framing the skyline beyond. The city does not overwhelm the water at night; instead, it learns to share the space.

Darling Harbour after dark is not merely a brighter version of itself—it is a different place altogether. Less functional, more lyrical. A harbour that waits for the sun to disappear before showing how beautifully it knows how to shine.

Sony A7RV

FE 35mm f1.4 GM

Linking Sign2

Charlton town with Avoca River for Treasure Tuesday

 

The Avoca River has known both erasure and excess. There were years when its bed lay bare, a pale ribbon of stones and dust, the water reduced to memory and promise. At other times it has risen without restraint, spreading across paddocks and roads, reminding regional Victoria that absence is never permanent and that return can be forceful.

I had intended to stop in town, to step inside the renowned heritage general store where time is measured in ledgers and worn timber floors. Instead, the river detained me. Beneath the bridge, I paused, and there the Avoca offered something quieter. Trees leaned toward the water, their reflections drawn long and patient, doubling themselves in the slow current. Eucalypts, hardened by drought and fire, softened in the mirror below, leaves trembling between sky and stream.

This river is an old traveller. Rising in the Pyrenees, it winds north through box-ironbark country, sustaining red gums, reeds, and the careful lives of birds that wait for water as others wait for seasons. Long before bridges and stores, it shaped paths for people and animals alike, a corridor of nourishment in a land that demands resilience. Even now, its flow is uncertain, shaped by rain, heat, and the long human habit of taking more than is returned.

Standing there, camera lifted, I understood why the Avoca refuses to be merely useful. It dries, it floods, it pauses in reflective stillness. Under the bridge, with trees duplicated in its surface, the river held both its history and its warning: that survival here has always been an act of patience, and that beauty often appears when plans are gently undone.

Sony A7RV

FE 20-70mm f4 G

Linking Treasure Tuesday

Hosier Lane Murals Melb for Mural Monday

 

The lane narrows and breathes in blue, brick sweating history through layers of paint and intention. One wall holds a figure half-remembered, chalked in pale blues and bruised whites, a body leaning forward as if listening to the city through the masonry. It is not heroic, not monumental. It is tentative, almost apologetic, as though the mural knows it will be overwritten, flaked away, revised by another hand tomorrow. Graffiti cuts across its flank like a muttered aside, the city interrupting itself.

Across the lane, an eye watches. Large, unblinking, impossibly blue. It floats inside a rough black field, surrounded by drips, tags, stickers, and half-erased names. The eye does not judge; it simply observes. It has seen tourists pause, cameras lifted, and locals pass without looking up. It has seen rain turn pigment into rivulets and sun harden fresh paint into permanence that never truly lasts. Someone has scrawled over its face, someone else has added color at the edges, and still the eye remains, alert and calm amid the noise.

Hosier Lane is never finished. These murals speak to each other across the narrow stone corridor: the fragile human form and the enduring gaze, the body that fades and the eye that remembers. Strange, yes, but honest. They accept interruption. They accept decay. They accept that meaning here is provisional, layered, and communal.

Sony A7RV

FE 20-70mm f4 G

Linking Mural Monday

Long Teng Broken Bridge revisited for Sunday Best

 

In the heart of Taiwan, the remnants of the Long Teng Broken Bridge stretch across three distinct locations, each telling a story of resilience and memory. Once a proud railway crossing, the bridge bore the weight of trains and travelers, linking communities and carrying whispers of the past through its iron arches. Today, its skeletal remains stand as silent witnesses to time, a monument to both industry and the forces of nature that reshaped the land.

Surrounding each fragment, nature and human care intertwine. Walking tracks meander along the rusted steel and weathered beams, inviting visitors to pause and imagine the bridge in its heyday. Picnic areas emerge amidst the greenery, softening the echoes of history with laughter and quiet repose. In some locations, the bridge’s ruins are embraced within carefully designed garden parks, where flowers bloom alongside remnants of rails, offering a contemplative space where past and present converge.

The Long Teng Bridge’s story is not contained in a single place; it is scattered across the middle of Taiwan, each section reflecting a chapter of the nation’s development, the ingenuity of its engineers, and the unpredictability of the natural world. As sunlight glints on twisted metal and walkers trace the paths beneath its arches, the bridge lives again—not as a conduit for trains, but as a bridge between memory and the present moment.

Sony A7RV

FE 20-70mm f4 G

Linking Sunday Best

Mount Dandenong Wallaby for Saturday Critter

 

Among the weeds and soft, ungoverned grasses of Mount Dandenong, a wallaby paused—small enough to seem newly arrived in the world, its movements tentative, its attention alert. The young animal stood half-concealed by green growth, as though the mountain itself were teaching it how to remain unseen. There was something quietly disarming in the sight: a reminder that, even here, life continues on its own careful terms.

Mount Dandenong has long drawn people upward from Melbourne, away from the ordered grid of the city and into cooler air and taller trees. Tourists arrive for the forest drives, the lookouts, the gardens arranged with deliberate beauty, and the promise of escape contained within an easy distance. Cafés line the ridges, and cars pull over for views that frame the city far below, softened by haze. It is a place marketed for its charm and calm, its sense of elevation—both literal and emotional.

Yet encounters like this wallaby quietly resist the polished narrative of tourism. Beyond the paths and signposts, the mountain remains a working landscape of lives largely unnoticed. The grasses and weeds shelter creatures who do not pose for photographs, who move through the margins left between roads and picnic grounds. The presence of a young wallaby, still learning its place, gives the area a deeper texture: not just a destination, but a shared ground where human curiosity and older, ongoing patterns of life intersect.

In Mount Dandenong, tourism may set the stage, but moments like this supply the meaning. The mountain offers more than views and refreshment; it offers brief, unguarded glimpses into a continuity that predates and outlasts every visit.

Olympus E520

150mm f2

Linking Saturday Critter

Pearses Bay Sunset Blairgowrie for Skywatch Friday

 

No clouds—only a brief, transient wash of cyan and pink in the sky, lingering for a moment before the light gives way to complete darkness. At Pearses Bay, dusk arrives cleanly, without ceremony, as though the day knows it has said enough.

For Joel and me, this small bay has always been the easiest pause from the city: a place where the air feels older, less disturbed. Long before it became a convenient refuge, the shoreline carried other lives and rhythms. The water remembers them. The bay once fed and sheltered people who read tide and season as instinct, who left no monuments except paths worn into the land and stories held in memory. Later came boats, industry, and the measured ambitions of settlement, each leaving its own faint mark—names, pylons, remnants half-claimed by salt and weed.

Standing here now, the past feels close, not dramatic but persistent. The hush after sunset seems layered, as if the quiet itself has been used before. Footsteps fade, conversations soften, and the bay resumes its long habit of waiting. In that waiting, Pearses Bay offers more than fresh air; it offers continuity—a reminder that the city is only the most recent chapter, and that even in a brief moment of color before night, the land is still telling its older story.

Sony A7RV

FE 20-70mm f4 G

Linking Skywatch Friday

Stingray Bay aerial images from Warrnambool Victoria for Water H2O Thursday

 

Yes, it is Stingray bay images from the time I worked in that town of Warrnambool Victoria Australia. I have taken over 2k shots at this location which is only 1 km from where I stayed during the locum assignment. Many people asked if there were any stingrays here. The answer is that I dont dive in this area. In fact, the water is choppy with many undercurrents and rips. over 3k shipwrecks happened here for early settlers as well. 

A good place to work out as well

Linking Water H2O Thursday

Signs 2 in Melbourne

 

In the first, the elevated frame opens onto a quiet exchange: a couple seated in unguarded ease, absorbed in the gentle theatre of people passing by. They watch the world as it unfolds below them, and in turn I watch them, a second layer of observation settling over the scene. The moment holds a calm reciprocity—seeing and being seen—where nothing is posed, yet everything feels composed.

The second image shifts tone. Here stands the grey man, the familiar spectre of every parked car’s unease. Muted and indistinct, he inhabits the edge between presence and authority, a figure defined less by personality than by consequence. His neutrality is his power. Where the first scene lingers in leisure and quiet curiosity, this one carries a low, practical tension—the reminder that order, time, and limits are always quietly enforced.

Sony A7RV

FE 20-70mm f4 G

Linking Signs2

Yayoi Kusuma exhibition for Treasure Tuesday

 

Joel and I stood inside the mirror room of Yayoi Kusama’s exhibition, enclosed by reflections that multiplied us into quiet infinities. Polished surfaces repeated every gesture, every pause, until the body seemed to dissolve into pattern and light. Points of illumination hovered and receded, appearing at once intimate and immeasurable, as though the room were breathing in slow, deliberate pulses.

Kusama’s Infinity Mirror Room offered more than spectacle; it was a carefully constructed meditation on scale and self. The mirrored walls erased boundaries, while the controlled choreography of light—dots, glows, and reflections—extended the space far beyond its physical limits. In that suspended moment, time felt elastic, and the act of looking became inseparable from being seen.

The room invited stillness and attentiveness, rewarding patience with fleeting alignments of light and reflection that felt uniquely personal, yet universally shared. For a brief interval, the exhibition distilled Kusama’s lifelong preoccupation with repetition, obliteration, and infinity into a single, luminous experience—one that transformed photography into an act of quiet witnessing rather than mere documentation.

Sony A7RV

FE 20-70mm f4 G

Linking Treasure Tuesday

Byron Bay Mural for Mural Monday

 

This mural, found on a brick wall in Byron Bay, NSW, is a striking example of the town’s long-standing embrace of street art as public storytelling. Painted directly onto the rough masonry, the work uses the texture of the bricks to animate the figure, allowing the seams and mortar lines to become part of the visual rhythm rather than an obstruction.

The central figure is a mythic, warrior-like woman, rendered with a contemporary, comic-inflected realism. Her gaze is direct and unwavering, framed by flowing hair and a crown that evokes classical iconography while remaining firmly modern. The palette is dominated by deep blues, aquas, and teals, suggesting oceanic movement and Byron Bay’s coastal identity, while warmer golds and flesh tones anchor the figure in human presence. The sense of motion—hair streaming, fabric and energy swirling around her—gives the mural a cinematic dynamism, as though the figure is emerging from water or storm.

At the lower right, the mural is signed, indicating authorship by a street artist active in the region. While Byron Bay hosts works by many visiting and local muralists, this piece reflects a style often seen in contemporary Australian street art: technically polished, mythologically referential, and consciously empowering in its portrayal of feminine strength.

Placed in Byron Bay’s urban fabric, the mural operates as more than decoration. It functions as a visual assertion of identity—creative, defiant, and imaginative—mirroring the town’s reputation as a place where art, individuality, and landscape intersect.

Linking Mural Monday

Broadford Motorcycle race images for Sunday Best

 

A few days past, a correspondent from the ABC wrote to me, requesting leave to use several photographs from my website. Only then did memory return with a certain clarity: those images were taken under special access, granted through a photographer friend who worked along the racing line. I recalled, almost with surprise, the sheer immersion of that day—how I stood at the edge of the track, the air taut with speed and heat, and captured more than three thousand frames.

I had been practising the art of panning, training my lens to follow those swift and thunderous creatures as they carved their way through the course. Each pass was a blur of motion, each shutter-click an attempt to catch grace within velocity. It was a day spent in pursuit of the perfect line, the perfect balance between steadiness and instinct—a quiet apprenticeship undertaken amidst roaring power and fleeting light.

Sony A7RV

FE 70-200mm f2.8 GM

Linking Sunday Best

Chimpanzee in Melbourne Zoo for Saturday Critter

 

At the Melbourne Zoo, many years ago, this moment unfolded in the quiet shade—an intimate tableau of ease and unguarded tenderness. A great dark form reclines upon the grass, limbs loosened in complete trust, as if the earth itself were a cradle. Against her chest, a newborn creature—small, frail, impossibly new—presses close, seeking warmth, rhythm, and the ancient reassurance of breath.

Her eyes, half-smiling beneath the canopy of fur, seem to hold a knowledge older than any wall or walkway around them: that care is instinct, that love requires no language, that even in a world of watching crowds, sanctuary is formed in the simple meeting of bodies—mother and child, curled into each other as though time were pausing just for them.

The grass stirs faintly; a twig shifts; somewhere above, a bird calls. Yet within this small circle of connection, everything is still. The tenderness is unadorned, unselfconscious, almost sacred—a reminder that even in captivity, life continues its quiet, primal rituals. And years later, the image remains: a soft-lit moment where vulnerability rests safely in the arms that first carried it.

Linking Saturday Critter

Bridgewater Bay Blairgowrie for Skywatch Friday

 

Not much cloud gathered above Bridgewater Bay that day in Blairgowrie, just a clean, pale sky opening toward the horizon — but the sun dipped at the perfect angle, and I managed to catch a tight little sunstar flaring between the rocks. I kind of love it: that quiet brilliance, the way it sharpens the whole scene, turning the shoreline into something both wild and tender at once.

To get there from Melbourne’s CBD, the journey itself becomes part of the story. You slip onto the M1, heading south-east, and let the city gradually fall away behind you. At Frankston, the road becomes the Mornington Peninsula Freeway, carrying you through rolling stretches of coastal scrub and pockets of vineyard country. As you reach Rosebud, the landscape softens — tea-tree thickets, dunes, and glimpses of back-beach light. You turn onto Boneo Road, then onto Melbourne Road, and finally wind your way through Blairgowrie’s quiet streets until the sea begins to whisper its presence.

From the carpark near the end of St Johns Wood Road, a sandy path leads you through heathland and low coastal shrubs. The air smells of salt and sun-warmed limestone. Then the land suddenly opens, and Bridgewater Bay reveals itself: rugged rock shelves, tidal pools gleaming like hammered glass, and that western horizon where, if you’re patient and a little lucky, the sun breaks into a star just for you.

Sony A7RV

FE 20-70mm f4 G

Linking Skywatch Friday

Westgate Park Sunset with reflection for Water H2O Thursday

 

This was taken just before my locum assignment a month ago, when Joel and I returned for a second attempt—chasing the kind of light that makes a place feel briefly enchanted. The air was thick with rye grass, that familiar sting already prickling at Joel’s eyes and, soon enough, at mine. We became reluctant pilgrims, hiding in the car with the windows sealed, watching the world sway in golden dust until the sun softened enough for us to brave it.

When the sunset finally unfurled, it felt like an invitation. The sky melted into tones of peach and ember, and the bridge stood against it like a quiet sentinel. As the light dropped lower, its reflection stretched across the water—long, trembling strokes of fire—so that bridge and sky and river seemed to echo one another in a single, shimmering breath. The water caught every hue, turning the surface into a sheet of warm glass where the silhouette of the bridge repeated itself, darker, deeper, almost more true in its reflection.

For a moment, the allergies, the waiting, the whole month ahead vanished. It was just the two of us, the bridge, and a sunset sinking gently into water—an image worth every second of hiding and every breath held against the grass.

Sony A7RV

FE 70-200mm f4 G

Linking Water H2O Thursday

Signs in Melbourne Central for Sign2

 

Life has been a whirl in this silly season—days slipping past before I’ve even had the chance to reach for the camera. Street photography, once a quiet pause in the rush, has become something I crave rather than claim. Yet even in the hurry, the streets offer their own language, and the signs scattered through the images—literal and symbolic—seem to speak perfectly to the theme of Sign2.

In Melbourne Central, the crowd moves like a restless tide. Commuters weave between clusters of shoppers, each person carrying their own urgency, their own small orbit of intention. Neon directions pulse along the walls. A busker’s guitar threads music through the air, but it gets swallowed by footsteps, trolley wheels, and the rising chatter of people planning, buying, rushing, hoping to beat the next deadline or the next tram.

Above it all, the famous glass cone catches the sun and scatters it over the moving bodies like a blessing they don’t notice. People glide under storefront lights and shadows, past bold signs telling them where to look, what to want, what to feel. Some follow; others ignore; most simply keep walking, eyes on a destination still two escalators away.

And in that crowd—briefly, beautifully—there is the longing to lift the camera again, to turn the chaos into stillness, to let the signs tell their quiet stories before they’re swallowed by the season’s rush.

Sony A7RV

FE 50mm f1.2 GM