St Kilda Pier sunset sky for Skywatch Friday

 

St Kilda has changed so much over the years that I sometimes feel as though I am visiting a place caught between memory and reality. I was glad, at least, to find the old pier still stretching into the water, a familiar landmark holding its ground against the passing of time. Beyond it, Melbourne’s skyline continues to grow wider and taller, its ever-expanding collection of buildings reshaping the horizon I have known for decades.

Time really does change everything. I have lived in Melbourne for more than 36 years now. When I stop to think about it, that is a substantial part of a lifetime. Yet, people still occasionally ask me when I jumped off the boat, as though I have only recently arrived on these shores. Perhaps it is my accent that gives me away, an unusual blend that belongs neither exclusively to Mandarin nor to any of the other Chinese dialects I speak. What makes it rather amusing is that I completed my medical training entirely here in Australia, working my way through the local system from beginning to end, much like any other locally trained doctor. Apparently, even three and a half decades are not always enough to convince people that you have been here for a while.

St Kilda, too, has lost some of the little things that once made it familiar. My favourite café, where I used to indulge in its excessively sweet ice cream and decidedly overpriced fish and chips, is no longer there. Perhaps the food was never quite as good as I remember it, but that was never really the point. Some places become part of our lives through the simple repetition of ordinary pleasures, until one day we realise that we have been collecting memories without knowing it.

The old pier remains, the skyline keeps rising, and the familiar streets continue to change their faces. I suppose Melbourne has been moving forward all these years, just as I have. Yet, standing in St Kilda today, I cannot help feeling that a little piece of the place I once knew has quietly slipped away.

Perhaps that is what time does best. It leaves enough behind for us to recognise, but takes just enough away to remind us that we can never truly return to the past.

Sony A7RV

FE 20-70mm f4 G

Linking Skywatch Friday

Flinders Blowhole Cape Schanck for Water H2O Thursday

 

The waves and layers of rock in this image seem to create their own sense of movement, almost as though the volcanic basalt at Flinders Blowhole, Cape Schanck, is flowing rather than standing still. The textures rise and fall like frozen waves, giving the rock an unexpected rhythm and a sense of motion.

Recently, I received some thoughtful feedback from an old acquaintance about my photography blogs. He suggested that perhaps I should start thinking in terms of smaller, more focused projects rather than always trying to photograph the landscape as a whole.

The idea has stayed with me.

Photography has always been something I can become slightly obsessed with—perhaps a particular kind of wave motion in the ocean, the way water threads itself through rocks, or the old fascination I once had with searching for abandoned sea caves and photographing their entrances from the inside looking out. These little obsessions seem to give my photography a purpose beyond simply finding another beautiful landscape.

Perhaps that is what I need now: small projects with very narrow themes, enough to stimulate the creative part of my brain again. After all, I have spent decades photographing Victoria's landscapes. I know many of these places almost too well. I have returned to the same coastlines, rocks, beaches and forests so many times that sometimes I wonder whether I am discovering anything new—or merely revisiting what I already know.

Maybe the answer is not to keep looking for bigger landscapes, but to look more closely.

A micro project can begin with something almost ridiculously specific: a particular form of wave movement, a certain texture in basalt, forgotten entrances to sea caves, weathered concrete, or the strange relationship between water and rock. The subject itself may be tiny, but the possibilities within it can be surprisingly deep.

And that is what appeals to me about this photograph. At first glance, it is simply a piece of volcanic rock at Cape Schanck. Yet I have never really seen another photograph from this particular location that explores the rocks in quite this way. It is not the iconic Flinders Blowhole that I am photographing, but a small, overlooked detail within a place I have visited many times.

Perhaps this is where my photography needs to go next.

Not necessarily farther, but deeper.

After decades of photographing the landscape, perhaps it is time to stop trying to photograph everything—and start becoming obsessed with something very small.

Sony A7RV

FE 20-70mm f4 G

Linking Water H2O Thursday

Gouger St Adelaide Bench mosaic sign for Sign2

 

A solitary mosaic bench rests against the pavement, a vibrant tapestry of fractured blues cradling tiles shaped like forgotten stamps. Across its heart, script loops in elegant ceramic cursive: Gouger St, Adelaide—a sudden, artistic compass pointing the way for a traveler lost in a fruitless hunt for the city's hidden murals.

Yet, the romance of the discovery quickly curdles. The bench is not granted room to breathe; instead, it is closely besieged by a grim garrison of overflowing rubbish bins. The brilliant, hand-placed glass and whimsical shapes find themselves drowned out by a thick, inescapable stench, turning a brilliant pocket of street art into a casualty of the city's discarded excess.

Sony A7RV

FE 20-70mm f4 G

Linking Sign2

Suupaa Korean Fusion Cafe in Richmond for Treasure Tuesday

 

Joel is becoming more of a gourmet than I am these days. This time, he wanted me to venture with him to Suupaa Café in Richmond, a place he had apparently decided was worthy of our culinary curiosity.

Getting there was an adventure in itself. Parking around Richmond was almost impossible, while the traffic seemed to conspire against us at every intersection. Somehow, though, we managed to find our way in, and once inside, the little café felt rather bougie—stylish, intimate, and just a little too polished for two photographers who were mostly there to see what all the fuss was about.

I ordered the bolognese udon, an unexpected marriage of Japanese noodles and Italian comfort food, generously buried beneath a mountain of Parmesan cheese. Joel, naturally, chose something different—a dipping-sauce ramen, because apparently he now has considerably more adventurous culinary instincts than I do.

The menu was Japanese at heart, but with an unmistakable Italian accent here and there. It was an unusual combination, but perhaps that was exactly what made the meal interesting. We weren't there for any grand gastronomic revelation. We were simply trying something new together.

And sometimes, that is enough.

Afterwards, we wandered next door to Baker Bleu, where a long queue had already formed for their much-talked-about tarts. Naturally, we joined the ritual and brought some home with us.

Perhaps the best part of the outing was never really the food. It was the simple pleasure of going somewhere neither of us had tried before, discovering a little corner of Richmond together, and allowing an ordinary afternoon to become another small memory shared between us.

You can see the website here Suupaa Cafe

Sony A7RV

FE 20-70mm f4 G

Linking Treasure Tuesday

Dragon Mural in Adelaide CBD for mural Monday

 

Tucked away in the quiet geometry of an Adelaide laneway, the city's morning hum softens into the background, leaving only the steam rising from a breakfast cup and the sudden, fierce geometry of a hidden wall.

Here, a dragon breaks through the brickwork—not in a whisper, but in a deafening shout of crimson, scarlet, and blood-orange. It is a creature born entirely of fire and focus, coiled tightly around the architecture of the alley as if it grew from the stone itself. Its scales twist like cooling magma, vibrant and heavy against the dark recesses of the street.

The beast’s face looms large, defined by curved white horns and eyes wide with ancient, knowing mischief. A long, pink tongue lolls past jagged teeth, playfully tasting the cool morning air just above a modern fire door that it seems to guard. Yet, for all its coiled power, a delicate grace tempers its fury: pale pink cherry blossoms drift across the composition, softening the dragon's sharp claws and anchoring the fierce, red spectacle in a moment of fleeting, poetic balance.

Sony A7RV

FE 20-70mm f4 G

Linking Mural Monday

Rabbit Rock Sunset Montforts Beach for Skywatch Friday

 

Rabbit Rock would surely make an iconic Easter image — if only it weren’t September. Yet the season seems almost incidental beneath that dark, brooding sky, where the golden sunset burns through the clouds with a quiet, dramatic splendour. It is a scene both moody and magnificent, as though the day itself were reluctant to surrender to night.

Sony A7RV

FE 20-70mm f4 G

Linking Skywatch Friday and Skyview Blog

Balnarring Pylons in Cape Schanck for Water H2O Thursday

 

This was one of nearly 200 frames I made at Balnarring, each one an attempt to find a slightly different rhythm in the water. After spending so much time chasing that particular kind of silky, flowing motion, I wanted to show another interpretation—water curling and breaking around the weathered remains of the old pylon.

Eventually, I found the shutter speed I was looking for. The sea softened without losing its character, wrapping itself around the broken timber in long, restless threads. It was one of those small moments when the camera finally seems to see what I had imagined in my head.

Last weekend, though, the weather had other plans. Storms rolled through, and Joel and I decided to take a quiet break rather than head out. My teeth are still giving me grief, nearly three weeks after the extractions, which is becoming rather tedious. Sometimes the best photographic decision is simply to stay home, let the weather pass, and wait for both the sea and oneself to settle down.

Sony A7RV

FE 70-200mm f4 G

Linking Water H2O Thursday

Plain Jane in Adelaide for Sign2

 

Apparently, Plain Jane is quite a popular little restaurant tucked away on Leigh Street in Adelaide’s CBD, known for its tapas, drinks, live music and wood-oven pizzas. Plain Jane Its current description rather proudly promises “Tapas. Woodoven Pizza. Good Times,” which seems fitting for a lively little laneway venue.

But, in typical photographer fashion, I wasn't there for the food.

It was the pizza oven that caught my eye.

There was something about the warmth, texture and slightly theatrical presence of it sitting within that laneway environment that made me stop and look. The restaurant itself has that sort of Adelaide CBD character I have been enjoying lately—tucked into Leigh Street, surrounded by old buildings, narrow spaces, signs, people and all those little fragments of urban life that become much more interesting when you slow down and actually look. Plain Jane occupies a two-storey building in the middle of the laneway, and it has been part of Leigh Street's dining and nightlife scene for several years.

I didn't dine there. I simply wandered past, saw something that caught my photographic eye, and stopped.

Perhaps that is becoming my favourite way of exploring a city.

I rarely go looking for the obvious postcard anymore. Sometimes it is a weathered wall, an eccentric sign, a strange mural, an empty shopfront—or, apparently, a pizza oven—that makes me pause.

Everyone else sees dinner.

I see a photograph.

Sony A7RV

FE 20-70mm f4 G

Linking Sign2

Balnarring Jetty in Cape Schanck for Treasure Tuesday

 

Balnarring Beach is only about 40 minutes from Melbourne, an easy drive that I have made more times than I can remember. Yet somehow, this ordinary stretch of coast became the setting for a rather long-running obsession.

For more than four years, I kept coming back to the same broken pylons and beams, trying to photograph the water in a particular way. I had seen the image in my head: the sea curling and stretching away from the timber, forming those creamy, almost string-like threads of water—soft enough to feel painterly, but still retaining the sense of movement.

It sounds slightly ridiculous when I put it that way. Four years of returning to a beach for a particular shutter speed.

But photography has always had these little obsessions for me.

The tide had to be right. The light had to be right. The waves had to arrive with just the right amount of energy. And then there was the shutter speed—too fast, and the water remained ordinary water; too slow, and the delicate strands dissolved into a featureless blur. I would come home with something close, sometimes very close, and think, perhaps next time.

And then I would come back again.

Looking back, I think that is what I remember most—not just the photograph, but all those earlier visits. The quiet drives down from Melbourne, the familiar coastline, the changing seasons, the times when everything looked promising and somehow refused to come together. Four years is a long time to chase a small idea.

Perhaps that is why finally getting the shot felt so satisfying.

For a few seconds, everything aligned—the tide, the light, the movement of the sea and that tiny decision about shutter speed. The broken old beams stayed exactly where they had always been, while the water finally did what I had been asking it to do for years.

There is something wonderfully nostalgic about that.

Places become part of our photographic memory. We return to them older, carrying different cameras, different ideas, different versions of ourselves. The beach hasn't really changed, but somehow we have.

And every now and then, after years of trying, the sea gives you the photograph you came back for.

Maybe that is the real obsession.

Not getting the picture.

Just having a reason to keep coming back.

Sony A7RV

FE 20-70mm f4 G

Linking Treasure Tuesday

Breakfast with a side of visual overload in Adelaide for Mural Monday

 

The pink and blue mural next door was almost as difficult to ignore as the one I photographed last week — although I have since discovered that my so-called gangster geisha may not have been a geisha at all.

Sitting on that little stool with breakfast in front of me, I had both walls competing for attention. This one is a riot of pinks, blues and cartoonish creatures, oversized sunglasses, strange expressions and layers upon layers of tagging. It has that wonderfully unruly language of Australian street art — part pop surrealism, part comic book, part graffiti, with every available inch apparently regarded as an invitation for someone else to leave their signature.

And perhaps that is part of the charm. The mural itself is carefully composed, yet the wall continues to evolve around it, each new tag and scribble becoming another accidental layer in the picture. In Australia, street art and tagging have long occupied this slightly uneasy space between public expression, vandalism and urban culture. Sitting there eating a very ordinary bacon-and-egg breakfast beneath all that visual noise, I found the contrast rather entertaining.

Another week to go before daylight saving arrives and once again decides that my circadian rhythm needs to be rearranged for the greater good. At least spring has already arrived, bringing longer days, softer light and the promise of getting out with the camera again.

I think I am ready for some landscapes.

After all the walls, faces, signs and concrete of Adelaide, I am beginning to crave something with a little more sky.

Sony A7RV

FE 20-70mm f4 G

Linking Mural Monday

Inglewood night sky for Black and White Community

 

A long while ago, beneath the quiet skies of Inglewood, Victoria, I found myself looking up at a night I still remember.

In those earlier days, I used to travel out to the hostel for home visits, when medicine was still shaped by the warmth of a face-to-face conversation, and a doctor’s journey often led through sleepy country towns and open paddocks. The work took me there, but sometimes the landscape offered its own quiet reward.

That night, the darkness was almost absolute — a vast, unbroken field scattered with hay bales, their pale forms resting like forgotten stones beneath the heavens. With so little light to disturb the sky, the Milky Way emerged in all its quiet splendour, a river of stars flowing above the sleeping countryside.

I remember the stillness of it all: the scent of the paddocks, the deep country silence, and the feeling that time had briefly slowed down.

Some photographs preserve a landscape. Others hold a small fragment of a life that has since moved on. This one brings back those old journeys, when the road was longer, the nights were darker, and the stars seemed just a little closer.

Sony A7RV

FE 24mm f1.4 GM

Linking Black and White Community

Bridgewater Bay Blairgowrie for Skywatch Friday

 

You’re probably getting a little tired of seeing sunsets from Bridgewater Bay, Blairgowrie. But perhaps the sunset was never really the reason we came.

This was from a few months ago, one of those evenings when Joel and I simply needed to get away for a while. He had a lot on his mind and needed someone to listen, and I was happy to be that person. There are times when friendship is nothing more complicated than walking beside someone while they empty their thoughts into the open air.

We talked, wandered along the coast, stopped now and then, and watched the day slowly surrender to night. The sea was restless, but somehow the evening itself felt gentle. Five minutes before darkness settled completely, the last light turned everything purple and pink, and the long exposure softened the turbulent water into something dreamlike—a mirage of sea and cloud.

I took the photograph almost incidentally.

What I remember more clearly is having Joel beside me.

Perhaps these are the moments I value most in friendship—not the grand adventures, but the quiet hours when you can simply be there for each other, sharing the same horizon, listening without needing to fix anything.

The sunset eventually disappeared, as all sunsets do. But the companionship stayed.

And sometimes, that is the photograph worth keeping.

Sony A7RV

FE 20-70mm f4 G

Linking Skywatch Friday

Blairgowrie sunset at Bridgewater Bay for Water H2O Thursday

 

At Bridgewater Bay, the evening seemed to lose its edges.

Mist drifted through the last hour of light, softening the horizon until sea, sky and distant rock began to melt into one another. Everything was reduced to a quiet blur, steeped in the gentlest golden glow — a sunset less seen than felt.

Perhaps that was why I didn’t feel like reaching for my phone. Some evenings seem to ask for nothing but slowness: to stand still, let the world blur a little, and watch the light leave without trying to hold on to it.

I stopped updating Instagram this week. Then again, I haven’t updated the site for a few months either, lol. Life has been catching up with me, and perhaps I’ve been learning to let it.

I still prefer the slow web of Blogger to the hurried rhythm of Instagram. There’s something more intimate about it — a small, personal corner where photographs can linger, quietly, without needing to be seen by everyone.

And, of course, I don’t have to pay a subscription for it. That helps too.

Sony A7RV

FE 20-70mm f4 G

Linking Water H2O Thursday

Say Cheese Sign in Adelaide Central Market for Sign2

 

Last week, I came across the Smelly Cheese sign while browsing the Sign2 theme, and then stumbled upon another one right beside the store at Adelaide Central Market.

This one was wonderfully weird: two little rats sitting side by side, one proudly posing with a chunk of cheese while the other happily devours it. There was something almost tender about their strange little companionship—two rats sharing cheese as though this were the most perfectly normal arrangement in the world.

Cute? Absolutely. Weird? Completely. And somehow, that combination made it rather irresistible.

Sony A7RV

FE 20-70mm f4 G

Linking Sign2

Bridgewater Bay Blairgowrie for Treasure Tuesday

 

This was probably one of the most unusual scenes I have ever managed to capture at Bridgewater Bay, Blairgowrie, over the past twenty years. There was something almost painterly about it—an unexpected oil-painting quality, with a touch of impressionism woven into the frame. I absolutely love it.

Joel was around another corner, attempting his own experiment on the same view, though his version didn’t quite come together. I think I may have caught this one a little better than he did, lol.

The foreground water was silky and dreamlike, wrapping softly around the exposed sea-floor rocks, while beyond, the waves fell into a loose rhythm, their movement drawing the eye towards the distance. Above, the sky was steeped in a warm golden brew, with the distant arch quietly anchoring the horizon.

For once, the sea, the rocks and the sky seemed to forget they belonged to nature and decided, just for a moment, to become a painting.

Sony A7RV

FE 20-70mm f4 G

Linking Treasure Tuesday

Adelaide Sino Mural for Mural Monday

 

The mural of a heavily tattooed geisha stood beside me as I sat on a humble stool outside a tucked-away café, a bacon-and-egg breakfast plate resting in front of me, almost absurdly ordinary beneath the high-rises of Adelaide’s CBD.

She was turned sideways, her gaze cast elsewhere, yet the whole image had something strangely confrontational about it—the elaborate tattoos, the stark expression, the sheer intensity of the composition. Against the quiet ritual of breakfast, it felt almost too forceful, too pungent for my taste.

Sony A7RV

FE 20-70mm f4 G

Linking Mural Monday

Bridgewater Bay Blairgowrie from cliff for Skywatch Friday

 

This was taken last weekend with Joel, when we finally managed to catch up after some time apart. I was still recovering from my wisdom teeth extraction, which had left me in surprisingly severe pain even two weeks afterwards. Eventually, I asked a colleague to prescribe a course of antibiotics, and the pain cleared almost immediately. In retrospect, it seemed that infection had been the problem all along.

It was a rather sobering reminder of the increasingly cautious world in which medicine now operates. With practitioners facing ever greater scrutiny and the possibility of audits, prescribing can sometimes become an exercise in hesitation rather than simply responding to what is in front of you. It feels like a sad reflection of the times we live in.

Yet, as often happens, photography offered a small escape from all of that.

The view that afternoon was unusual. A thin sheet of mist had settled across the landscape, and several hours before sunset the low sun slipped in from the side, filtering through the haze and quietly transforming the scene. The light was neither dramatic nor flamboyant; it was softer, stranger, almost suspended in the air.

For a brief moment, the landscape seemed to exist between two worlds—mist and light, distance and shadow. I simply lifted the camera and took the shot.

Sometimes the most memorable photographs are not the ones we go looking for. They are the ones that appear quietly before us, at exactly the right moment.

Sony A7RV

FE 20-70mm f4 G

Linking Skywatch Friday

Cape Schanck Beach at Mornington Peninsula for Water H2O Thursday

 

A quiet army of stone stands at the threshold of the sea, where the tide retreats to expose a sprawling bed of smooth, dark pebbles. Balanced with impossible precision, these gray towers rise like modern monuments against the soft, golden blush of the twilight sky, right where the dark volcanic headlands of Cape Schanck meet the churning ocean. Born from human hands seeking a fleeting online trend, these geometric spires wait silently for the next wave, but their stillness hides a deeper disruption to the fragile shore.

Beneath each displaced pebble lies a broken home, as lifting these stones destroys the cool, damp micro-habitats essential to the crabs, lizards, and shorebirds that rely on them for shelter and protection from predators. By pulling this natural armor from the earth, eager hands unwittingly strip the beach of its defenses, leaving the coast vulnerable to accelerated erosion from wind and crashing waves. What lives online as a harmless visual aesthetic ultimately imposes a heavy human footprint on the wilderness, dismantling the pristine, untouched beauty that visitors travel so far to find.

Sony A7RV

FE 20-70mm f4 G

Linking Water H2O Thursday

The Mettwurst Shop Sign for Sign2

 

The Mettwurst shop tucked inside Adelaide Central Market has become my little morning ritual. Each time I visit, I am greeted with a generous tasting tray—a few savoury morsels offered almost like a daily gift.

It is hard to imagine a better way to begin the morning: good food, good protein, and a little taste of the market’s lively spirit before the day properly begins.

Who said getting your protein had to be boring?

Sony A7RV

FE 20-70mm f4 G

Linking Sign2

Adelaide carpark mural for Mural Monday

 

I posted the larger view of this mural a few weeks ago. This time, I have moved closer, zooming into the middle-lower section, where the details begin to reveal themselves in a different light.

Hidden within the vast composition is this smaller world of colour, texture and movement—another story tucked into the larger one. The mural sits quietly in an Adelaide CBD car park, transforming an otherwise ordinary concrete space into something far more curious and alive. From a distance, it is a single sweeping vision; up close, it becomes a collection of fragments, gestures and little surprises waiting to be noticed.

The previous post is here Adelaide carpark mural

Sony A7RV

FE 20-70mm f4 G

Linking Mural Monday