Inverloch Cave Gippsland for Skywatch Friday

 

A severe heatwave has settled across Australia, rendering the sun not merely oppressive but actively hazardous. The air itself seems to press downward with weight and glare, driving people indoors in search of shelter. My friend Joel, currently holidaying in New South Wales, has found his respite reduced to retreat; even leisure demands concealment, and the motel room becomes a necessary refuge rather than a convenience. News broadcasts underline the extremity with almost surreal demonstrations—eggs reportedly boiling in a saucepan left beneath the open sky—an image both faintly absurd and deeply unsettling, emblematic of a climate moment that borders on the unreal.

Against this backdrop of heat and confinement, the image at hand offers a contrasting meditation on endurance and restraint. It depicts one of the remaining sea caves at Inverloch that has not yet succumbed to collapse. At high tide, this cave is ordinarily submerged, claimed by seawater and shadow. Here, however, the perspective is from within the cave, looking outward—a framing that emphasises both shelter and exposure, enclosure and release. The rock walls bear the quiet authority of geological time, shaped patiently by water and pressure, indifferent to the urgencies that dominate human experience.

The photograph itself is the product of multiple stacking, a technique that lends depth and clarity while softening the transient. This method mirrors the subject matter: layers accumulated over time, each contributing to a single, coherent form. The resulting image feels less like a moment seized and more like a duration distilled, as though the cave has briefly agreed to reveal its inner stillness.

In a season defined by excess—of heat, of light, of urgency—this image stands as a study in measured survival. The cave endures not by resisting the sea, but by yielding to it rhythmically, disappearing and re-emerging with the tides. It reminds us that persistence is not always loud or triumphant; sometimes it is quiet, shadowed, and patient, waiting for the waters to recede and the light to return at an oblique, bearable angle.

Sony A7RV

FE 16-35mm f2.8 GM

Linking Skywatch Friday

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.

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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.

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FE 20-70mm f4 G

Linking Sunday Best

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. 

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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

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

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.

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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.

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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

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

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.

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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