La La Creek and waterfall for Sunday Best

 

La La Creek is one of those places that seems to reveal a new face every time I return. On the way up to the origin of La La Waterfall, the creek winds quietly through dense foliage, slipping around bends and over rocks, creating little cascades and hidden waterholes along the way.

The waterfall itself is surprisingly tiny—not nearly as impressive as the creek that leads to it. For me, it is the five bends along La La Creek that hold the real magic. Each has its own character: different shapes of rock, little falls, deep pools and ribbons of water threading their way through the forest. I have posted some photographs from here before, but over the years I have taken more than 300 images at this one location. Somehow, I never seem to tire of it.

Photographing these creeks is not easy. Beneath the dense canopy, light is scarce, and the white water can almost disappear into the shadows. I often turn to ultra-long exposures, letting the water gather itself into a single, luminous movement. The individual threads of the falls lose their definition, dissolving into a soft, milky-white veil. What the eye sees as countless little streams becomes, in the photograph, something almost ethereal—a flowing brushstroke of white moving through the darkness of the forest.

Perhaps that is what keeps bringing me back: not the waterfall itself, but the endless shapes and moods of the creek, quietly changing with the light, the seasons and the movement of water over stone.

And, of course, Joel is always beside me, every step of the way. His wife calls me his “man wife,” which, after all these years of wandering together through forests and chasing waterfalls, is probably not entirely inaccurate. 😂

Sony A7RV

FE 50mm f1.2 GM

Linking Sunday Best

La La Creek in Warburton Melbourne for Water H2O Thursday

 

The journey from Melbourne to La La Creek in Warburton is oftentimes a test of patience. Each township en route enforces a strict speed limit of 50 kilometres per hour, and the frequent deceleration through these settlements serves only to prolong the wearying passage. Yet, upon arrival, all such inconveniences are swiftly forgotten.

La La Creek, nestled within the tranquil folds of the Yarra Ranges, offers a quietude that soothes the spirit. In winter, the air is brisk and pure, and the perennial murmur of the creek weaves through the forested glen like a thread of silver sound. The absence of mosquitoes during the colder months renders the experience all the more agreeable, allowing one to linger undisturbed by the banks of this gentle watercourse.

Once a source of life and sustenance for the Wurundjeri people and later a site frequented by timber-cutters and bushwalkers alike, the creek now flows in peaceful retirement, its mossy stones and fern-fringed edges recalling a natural history both rich and enduring. Here, beneath towering mountain ash and alongside trails softened by fallen leaves, one finds a serenity rare in the modern world.

Sony A7RV

FE 20-70mm f4 G

Linking Water H2O Thursday

Waixi Creek Taipei for Water H2O Thursday

 

Waixi Creek winds quietly through the misty hills of Pingxi, its water a shade of deep green that seems to hold the reflection of the forest itself. Upstream, I crossed a semi-abandoned bridge, its timbers darkened by age and softened by moss. The air was still, save for the low whisper of water and the faint creak of wood beneath my steps. Ahead, a small fan-shaped waterfall spilled gracefully over rocks, its delicate spread catching the morning light. I lingered there, letting the sound of the water wash over me, not yet in sight of the great Shifen Waterfall but already feeling its presence—somewhere ahead, where the creek gathers itself into strength.

Shifen Waterfall lies deep within the Pingxi Valley of northern Taiwan, where the Keelung River winds through layered stone and forest. The name “Shifen” dates back to the Qing dynasty, when ten families settled in this fertile gorge and divided the land into ten equal portions. Over the centuries, the river shaped the valley into what it is today: a landscape of cliffs, pools, and narrow ravines, where countless tributaries like Waixi feed into the main flow. The region’s bedrock slopes against the direction of the water, forcing it into a magnificent arc as it drops nearly twenty meters across a span of forty. When sunlight pierces the rising mist, a rainbow sometimes forms across the pool, and locals call it the “Rainbow Pond.”

The Shifen area once thrived as a coal-mining settlement during the Japanese colonial period. The Pingxi railway line was built through the valley to carry black coal to the port cities, and its narrow track still runs alongside the river today. Over time, as mining faded into memory, the valley’s rhythm returned to one of water and forest. The old bridges, tunnels, and stone paths remain, quietly reclaimed by moss and vines, linking the past to the present with every weathered beam and rusted nail.

As I followed Waixi upstream that morning, I felt that mixture of age and renewal in every sight—the rustic bridge standing like a remnant of an older world, the creek’s green current alive and changing, and the fan-shaped waterfall fanning out in a quiet gesture of welcome. The larger Shifen Waterfall waited farther down, roaring and majestic, but here in the upper stream there was a gentler beauty. It was a place of pause, where time moved as slowly as the drifting ripples on the water’s surface.

Walking toward the main falls, I realised that what draws one to Shifen is not only the grandeur of the waterfall itself, but the quiet journey toward it. The bridges, the green pools, the minor cascades—each holds a story, a small breath of history and nature intertwined. In that gentle space before the thunder of the falls, the world feels balanced between motion and stillness. The creek, the valley, and the waterfall together form a kind of living memory—Taiwan’s heart reflected in water, stone, and light.

Sony A7RV

FE 20-70mm f4 G

Linking Water H2O Thursday

Wulai Creek in Taipei Taiwan for Water H2O Thursday

 

Wulai Creek was not always this emerald ribbon winding through the mountains. For years its waters bore the scars of pollution, dulled and burdened by neglect. Yet patient restoration slowly unveiled what had been hidden beneath. Today the creek glows with a luminous green, clear and refreshing, its surface catching fragments of the forest above. Reflections of overhanging foliage ripple across the water, blending leaf and stream into a single tapestry of living colour.

Meanwhile, Joel remains quite unwell, and we have already postponed his birthday dinner once. As the days pass, I find myself hoping more than anything that he recovers soon, so that the celebration can finally take place—not as a compromise, but as the joyful occasion it was always meant to be.

Sony A7RV

FE 20-70mm f4 G

Linking Water H2O Thursday

Sailor's falls Daylesford for Sunday Best

 

Not far from Melbourne, in the old goldfields country near the village of Sailors Falls, lies Sailors Falls—a modest cascade tucked within a quiet fold of bushland. The journey down is as memorable as the water itself: a timber boardwalk, gently descending in patient tiers, leads visitors through stands of eucalyptus and wattle. The wood underfoot creaks softly, as though it remembers the boots of miners and the measured steps of those who came seeking fortune rather than scenery.

The falls take their name from Sailors Creek, a tributary that threads through this part of Victoria. In the 1850s, when gold fever gripped the colony, this valley stirred with restless ambition. Tents and rough-hewn huts once dotted the surrounding hills; pans clinked against stone; men traced the creek’s bends in hope of colour in the gravel. Daylesford itself rose from that era, its prosperity drawn from both gold and, later, the mineral springs that still define the region. Though the fever subsided, the landscape retained its layered memory—of extraction, of settlement, of gradual return to quiet.

Today, Sailors Falls belongs less to industry and more to contemplation. In winter and spring, rainfall gathers its resolve and sends water spilling over the basalt ledges in a pale, silken veil. Ferns flourish in the cool spray, and the creek speaks with a clear, unhurried voice. Yet summer in Victoria can be exacting. The same cascade that shimmered months before may dwindle to a faint trickle, or fall silent altogether, leaving behind darkened rock and the memory of motion. It is a gentle disappointment, perhaps, but also a reminder of the continent’s austere climate—of abundance and absence held in seasonal balance.

Even when the water retreats, the boardwalk still guides the way, and the valley keeps its composure. Sailors Falls does not overwhelm; it endures—an echo of gold-rush tumult, a refuge of timber and stone, and a small testament to how landscapes outlast the urgencies of those who pass through them.

Sony A7RV

FE 16-35mm f2.8 GM

Linking Sunday Best

WuLai Creek, Taipei for Water H2O Thursday

 

Wulai Creek lies just beyond the bustle of Taipei, close enough that one can slip away for a moment of quiet without a long journey or a demanding hike. The water moves with a gentle insistence, its surface brushed with a faint green tint that seems borrowed from the surrounding hills.

Here, photography becomes an easy pleasure. A camera is lifted, the shutter held just long enough to soften the restless current. The exposure is brief—only a whisper of time—yet sufficient to coax the water into silky motion while preserving its lively flow.

It is a place where effort is minimal and reward immediate: the creek gliding past, light touching the water, and the simple satisfaction of capturing movement without ever straying far from the city.

Sony A7RV

FE 70-200mm f4 G

Linking Water H2O Thursday

Creek in Gippsland, Victoria, Australia

 

Water can be so soothing. Xmas is truly a silly mad season. After a spiraling runs of various health issues affecting mum and me, my buddy is going through a crisis in marriage...

It is easier to sit by the creek away from the world

Sony A7RIV

FE 16-35mm f2.8 GM

Linking Wordless Wednesday

Creek with silky flow

From the recent post on over use of neutral density filters, this was another example of over use of 3 filters here. Funnily, the overuse of filters does contribute to severe vignetting. The correction of that rendered the photo a little unreal. Still, this image somewhat gave that air of inspiration and energy!!

The shot taken at Mt Baw Baw a while back. It was very dark, broodingly wet when I visited a random creek in the region. A shot out of curiosity turned out not so bad when I viewed some time later!

Taken by Pentax Da* 16-50mm f2.8 -> The zoom with dodgy reputation for hunting autofocus and bad quality control from Vietnam!

Liffey Waterfall, Tasmania for Sunday Best

 

Last Sunday, I mentioned that trip to Tasmania with Joel, some thirteen years ago, when both of us were quietly going through a dip in our lives. It was only four days, travelling across the island on the Spirit of Tasmania with Joel’s car at the time, yet somehow we managed to chase down most of the places we thought were worth photographing.

One of those places was Liffey Falls and the creek.

There was nothing particularly elaborate about that day. We sat among the forest with our rather humble sandwiches—simple food, nothing fancy—and listened to the creek running through the trees. For a while, there was no need to talk about whatever troubles we had carried with us. The forest had its own conversation: water over rocks, leaves moving gently in the breeze, and the quietness of being somewhere far away from everything.

The first photograph is Liffey Falls itself. It looks rather subdued, almost as though the waterfall is holding its breath. That year was marked by drought, and the lack of water was impossible to hide.

The second photograph is a little more complicated. Looking at it now, I can see quite clearly how much I still had to learn. The long exposure blew out the highlights in the rushing water, while the greens were rendered rather strangely by the automatic exposure compensation. It was one of those photographs that probably taught me more through its mistakes than a technically perfect image ever could.

Digital photography was still a different world then. Cameras were nowhere near as forgiving or sophisticated as they are today, and much of what we now correct almost effortlessly had to be anticipated, understood, or simply accepted.

But perhaps that is why I still like these old photographs.

They are not perfect. Neither were we, back then.

We were two friends carrying our own uncertainties through Tasmania, stopping beside waterfalls and creeks, eating simple sandwiches and taking photographs as best we knew how. Looking back thirteen years later, the technical flaws seem almost incidental.

What remains is the sound of the water, the quiet forest, and the memory of having someone beside you while life was not quite going according to plan.

Canon 5D

FE 14mm f2.8 

Linking Sunday Best

Abandoned Holden Cars in Metcalfe Victoria for Black and white community

 

Metcalfe sits in a quiet fold of central Victoria, where the land loosens into low, weathered rises and dry gullies that remember older climates. It is not a town that announces itself; it accumulates—stone fences softened by lichen, stringybark and grey box eucalypts scattered in hesitant clusters, and paddocks that widen and narrow as if the earth itself cannot decide on straight lines.

This is country shaped by gold and forgetting. In the nineteenth century, prospectors moved through here on their way to richer strikes around Castlemaine and Daylesford, carving tracks that later became the faint grammar of today’s roads. Metcalfe never became a city of consequence; it became instead a relay point of aspiration—enough water in the Coliban River system to tempt settlement, enough soil for grazing, and enough timber to briefly feed the furnaces of early industry. When the gold faded, the population loosened its grip on the land, leaving behind a geography of partial occupation: farmhouses at distance, sheds leaning into wind, and long pauses between human signatures.

The hills around it are not dramatic so much as persistent. They roll with an understated patience, stitched together by dry stone walls and creek lines that only fully speak after rain. In summer, the heat compresses everything into a pale hush; in winter, mist settles in the gullies like an old memory refusing to leave.

And then there are the Holdens.

They appear in fragments rather than as objects of arrival—rusted shells half-swallowed by blackberries, utes resting in creek beds like exhausted animals, sedans stripped of glass and identity, their chrome reduced to dull punctuation. In Metcalfe and its surrounding backroads, these abandoned Australian icons seem less discarded than gently returned to the landscape. The Holden, once the emblem of postwar optimism and suburban expansion, here becomes something different: a study in entropy, in how national mythologies rust when left unattended.

There is an almost quiet obsession in the way they persist. Some sit for decades in the same angle of repose, bonnet slightly open as if mid-thought. Others are reduced to skeletal outlines—door frames, axle lines, the suggestion of a grille. Grass grows through floor pans; saplings root in back seats. In gullies, water occasionally reclaims them, polishing paint into mineral memory.

Locals and passersby speak of them indirectly, as if direct acknowledgment might disturb their slow transformation. They are landmarks of a kind, but not navigational ones—more like emotional markers of what remains when utility, pride, and ownership have all dissolved into the same rust-colored quiet.

So Metcalfe becomes a composite landscape: geological patience, colonial residue, agricultural pause, and automotive decay. A place where trees gather in small conspiratorial clusters, where roads taper into suggestion, and where even the most manufactured symbols of mobility eventually learn stillness.

Sony A7RV

FE 24mm f1.4 GM

Linking Black and white community

Warburton Creek

 

A bit Zen, right?

Love the tone in this place. In summer, this spot would be filled with fierce mosquitoes everywhere. 

Sony A7RIV 

FE 14mm f1.8 GM

This place is so dark I dont even need a neutral density filter

Creek

Arthur's Pass Creek in New Zealand for Treasure Tuesday

 

The hike to Devil's Bowl Falls follows a trail alongside the creek.

Sony A7RV

FE 20-70mm f4 G

Linking Treasure Tuesday

Warburton Creek for Water H2O Thursday

 

Last Saturday was pretty much cloudy overcast. So picking a random creek in Warburton again.

Sony A7RV

FE 14mm f1.8 GM

Joel in the background for infrared test

Linking Water H2O Thursday

Wulai creek fruit mural, Taipei for Mural Monday

 

Last week, I wrote about the Wulai Creek region in Taipei. Recently, I came across a mural there depicting an assortment of fruits. The entire artwork has fallen into decay, its surface mottled with mould and weathered by time. Yet, in its deterioration, I found it hauntingly unique and strangely beautiful.

Sony A7RV

FE 20-70mm f4 G

Linking Mural Monday

Creek at Lorne, Victoria, Australia

Black and White conversion for a creek beneath Erskine Falls

Smugglers Creek Inn, Ireland for Sunday Best

 

The sea winds whispered of smuggler secrets and ancient stone, where cliffs of Donegal look down upon the crashing foam. High above the wild Atlantic wave, there sits a legendary inn—a historic crown of the Irish North West, where timeless tales begin.To this rustic haven on the edge of the world, the mighty and the famous fly, as spinning blades descend from the Irish sky. Here, Hollywood stars and statesmen leave the clouds behind, touching down on the helipad to leave the restless world behind. They step through heavy wooden doors, seeking warmth from the biting breeze, joining locals and travelers alike, all brought to their happy knees.Inside, the shadows dance to the rhythm of the crackling fire, offering every weary soul their deepest culinary desire. We sat amid the storied timber, tasting the magic of the coast—a velvety bowl of rich seafood chowder, a dish of which the angels boast. Then came the sizzle of a premium Irish steak, perfectly seared and bold, paired with a dark, cascading pint of black beer, creamy, deep, and cold.It was a feast of old-world wonder, an unforgettable, sacred bite, where history, royalty, and the wild, wild sea collide into the perfect night.

Canon 6D

EF 14mm f2.8 L 

Linking Sunday Best

Warburton Creek

 

Long exposure in this waterway turns out quite rewarding 

Sony A7RIV + FE 16-35mm f2.8 GM

Long Exposure shots

Killen Falls Ballina NSW for Sunday Best

 

I have visited this waterfall on several occasions, primarily during my locum postings in either Ballina or Lismore, New South Wales. While I have previously shared several images of the falls, I had not, until now, revealed the singular perspective from within the cave behind the cascade. On that particular visit, the conditions were exceedingly damp, the air thick with mist and the roar of falling water echoing within the hollowed rock.

Killen Falls, part of the Emigrant Creek catchment, is a vestige of the region's ancient volcanic history—its basalt cliffs formed by lava flows from the long-extinct Mount Warning shield volcano. The waterfall plunges over a semi-circular basalt overhang, allowing one to stand within the cave and behold the curtain of water from behind, a rare and immersive vantage point in nature.

Following this wet and awe-filled exploration, I ventured to a nearby township where I partook in a traditional Jewish breakfast—an experience that remains warmly entwined with the memory of that elemental and storied place.

Sony A7RV

FE 20-70mm f4 G

Linking Sunday Best

Warburton creek river flow for Sunday Best

 

I lost my 50mm f1.2 . I bought the lens again for its special rendition it has. 

Sony A7RV 

FE 50mm f1.2 

Linking Sunday Best

The cascade, Metcalfe, Victoria

 

Normally this creek is dried out completely. When it fills up, it is nice to do a long exposure

Sony A7RIV

FE 16-35mm f2.8 GM

Sony A7RIV shots