St Kilda Cafe St Kilda for Skywatch Friday

 

The pavilion dispensed its ritual of overpriced coffee and indulgent desserts, yet every table was claimed and the queue never thinned. I sat there with a grumbling Joel, who would have much preferred a simple walk to the nearby Greek souvlaki shop, muttering that it would have been quicker and far more satisfying. Parking, as always, was an exercise in futility — endless circling, narrowing gaps, quiet frustration. By the time we reached the jetty, we found ourselves wondering why we had bothered at all. The inner-city bustle felt contrived and wearying, a stark contrast to the ease and honest calm of a true coastline, where the sea asks nothing and the day unfolds without effort.

Sony A7RV

FE 20-70mm f4 G

Linking Skywatch Friday

Pearses Bay Blairgowrie for Water H2O Thursday

 

Joel rang and let his thoughts spill across the line — weekend protests swelling through the city like a recurring tide, workplace grievances layered with the quiet fatigue of routine. I mostly listened, content to be an attentive harbour. These conversations have become windows into a world I now touch only lightly. My own days move more softly, more inward; the only steady human encounters are with frail elders in care homes, their stories measured, their needs immediate, their pace far removed from the clamour Joel describes.

The image above captures a frame I have kept hidden until now. Water unfurls across the surface in a radiant fan — pink, orange, and violet dissolving into one another — as though the sea itself were exhaling colour. At Pearses Bay, such moments can only be wrestled from the cliff face, where the wind claws at the tripod and the salt spray seeks to fog every lens. Long-exposure work there is an exercise in patience and stubbornness: balancing shutter speed against shifting light, calculating the rhythm of waves that refuse predictability, waiting for that rare convergence when the sea smooths into silk yet retains its shape. A fraction too long and the water becomes lifeless mist; too short and the magic fractures into restless ripples.

Perhaps Joel and I will seek another beach this weekend — another edge of land where time slows, where the camera forces stillness, and where conversation can stretch out like the tide itself, lingering between the quiet roar of the ocean and the slow turning of the sky.

Sony A7RV

FE 20-70mm f4 G

Linking Water H2O Thursday

Sydney Cheap Eat Sign for Sign2

 

Tucked within the living pulse of Sydney’s Chinatown sits a modest place that once felt like a quiet sanctuary at the break of day. I remember it as the only doorway open to the hungry and the sleepless at six in the morning — a refuge for early workers, night owls, and wanderers drifting between darkness and dawn. The streets outside would still be half-asleep, neon signs fading against the pale blue of morning, while inside the small shop the air carried the deep, comforting perfume of simmering broth.

Bowls arrived steaming, humble yet generous, their warmth spreading through chilled hands. The signature dish was a duck offal soup — rich, earthy, and unapologetically traditional. Each spoonful held layers of flavour shaped by long hours over a gentle flame: the depth of duck bones, the subtle sweetness of herbs, and the quiet resilience of ingredients often overlooked yet profoundly nourishing. It was a meal that belonged not to fashion or trend, but to memory, migration, and the endurance of culinary heritage.

Around me, conversations murmured in multiple dialects, chopsticks tapped against porcelain, and the city slowly awakened beyond the doorway. In that early hour, the restaurant felt less like a business and more like a communal hearth — a place where nourishment was both physical and cultural, where stories travelled as easily as steam rising from the bowls. Even now, recalling it, I remember not only the taste of the soup but the sense of belonging that lingered in the soft light of morning.

Sony A7RV

FE 20-70mm f4 G

Linking Sign2

Safety Beach Melbourne for Treasure Tuesday

 

Joel’s son marked his birthday over the past weekend, and amid the quiet margins of that family celebration I set out alone for a brief drive toward the city’s shoreline, drawn by the promise of sunset and the reflective stillness that accompanies the day’s last light. The roads gradually widened and flattened as they approached the coast, the air acquiring that faint mineral scent of salt and seaweed long before the water itself came into view. It was a small pilgrimage — not merely to witness a sunset, but to stand in a place where the rhythms of the city yield to the older, more patient cadence of the ocean.

City beaches in Australia carry layered histories that extend far beyond their modern role as recreational landscapes. Long before promenades, car parks, and lifeguard towers appeared, these shores were gathering grounds for Indigenous communities whose connection to the coastline was ecological, cultural, and spiritual. The intertidal zones provided shellfish and fish; dunes sheltered native grasses and birdlife; tidal pools became quiet classrooms of observation and respect for the living sea. With European settlement came a gradual transformation: jetties constructed for trade, bathing pavilions erected in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries as seaside leisure became fashionable, and eventually surf lifesaving clubs — uniquely Australian institutions — formed to patrol waters that were both alluring and unforgiving.

As I arrived, the tide was easing outward, exposing stretches of wet sand that mirrored the sky like darkened glass. The urban skyline behind me seemed to dissolve into silhouettes, while the ocean absorbed the shifting colours of evening — ochres, pale violets, and the deepening copper of a sun sinking toward the horizon. Gulls circled in uneven arcs, their calls punctuating the low percussion of waves collapsing onto the shore. Families lingered with takeaway coffees, runners traced steady lines along the water’s edge, and solitary figures paused as if caught between the urgency of city life and the timeless pull of the sea.

The sunset unfolded gradually rather than theatrically — a patient dimming that rendered the beach both intimate and expansive. Each grain of sand, each ripple of tide, felt like part of a much older narrative, one that long predates birthdays, buildings, and passing weekends. Standing there, watching the light dissolve into dusk, the day’s small obligations seemed to soften. The city receded; the shoreline remained — a threshold between histories, between human stories and the enduring, elemental presence of the ocean.

Sony A7RV

FE 70-200mm f4 G

Linking Treasure Tuesday

Brighton Beach, Melbourne for Skywatch Friday

 

At the same stretch of Brighton Beach, where the horizon usually softens into pale blues and orderly pastels, the sunset arrived transformed. The sky did not fade so much as ignite. Persistent bushfires burning through the rural hinterlands had filled the air with smoke fine enough to filter the light, and the sun, lowered to the edge of the world, surrendered its usual brilliance to something deeper and more elemental.

The evening unfolded in layers of orange and molten gold. Smoke scattered the shorter wavelengths of light, leaving behind a spectrum that felt both sumptuous and unsettling. The sea mirrored this altered sky, its surface burnished, as if the day itself were being smelted into colour before it disappeared. What might have been a routine coastal dusk became a spectacle born of distance and destruction—fire shaping beauty far from its source.

There was a quiet tension in that moment. The sky’s richness carried the knowledge of burning forests, of heat and wind moving through rural valleys, of lives and landscapes under strain. And yet, standing on the sand, the light was undeniably arresting: a reminder of how intimately connected city and countryside are, how the atmosphere carries stories across hundreds of kilometres. Brighton’s sunset that evening was not just a closing of the day, but a visible trace of fire, climate, and land—an amber testament to a season that refuses to stay in the background.

Sony A7RV

FE 70-200mm f4 G

Check out Skywatch Friday

Brighton Beach, Melbourne for Water H2O Thursday

 

I have taken countless photographs along Brighton Beach, but lately the calm it is known for feels almost theoretical. On this day, the shoreline was thick with people—towels pressed edge to edge, voices layered over the surf, the beach transformed into a living, shifting mass. Brighton remains one of Melbourne’s most affluent seaside suburbs, but in summer it opens itself to the city, and privilege briefly shares space with everyone willing to endure the heat.

The heat was still lodged in my body. Only days earlier, Swan Hill had been brutal, the temperature pushing toward 50 degrees, the kind of heat that leaves no room for relief. I had been there moving between nursing homes, consulting in slow, airless afternoons where time seemed to stretch and the sun bore down without mercy. Brighton, despite the crowd, felt different—salt air cutting through the heaviness, the bay offering a promise of reprieve even as the sand burned underfoot.

Joel and I navigated through the packed beach, looking for that familiar Instagram vantage point—the frame where the bathing boxes anchor the foreground, the water opens behind them, and the city skyline appears faint and distant across the bay. Finding it required patience: waiting for bodies to shift, for umbrellas to fold, for a brief clearing in the constant motion. The scene was all layers—heritage and leisure in front, the working city hovering far beyond, held together by light and heat.

Brighton itself has shifted with time. Once dominated by old money, restrained architecture, and quiet routines, the suburb now reflects a broader demographic mix. Young families, professionals, and newer migrant communities have reshaped its streets and rhythms. Grand houses have been expanded or replaced, cafés and fitness studios line once-sleepy strips, and the beach—once a symbol of exclusivity—has become a public common in summer, crowded and democratic.

Standing there with the camera, surrounded by noise, movement, and bodies, the contrast was striking. The bathing boxes remained orderly and unchanged, the skyline still distant, but everything in between was alive and pressing. Brighton, for all its polish, now absorbs the city in waves—accepting the crowd, the heat, and the constant redefinition of who belongs along its shore.

Sony A7RV

FE 70-200mm f4 G

Linking Water H2O Thursday

Centre Place in Melbourne Cafe for Mural Monday

 

From the narrow mouth of Centre Place, a mural leans outward as if curious about the street beyond, its colours catching the eye before the scent of coffee does. It is glimpsed rather than announced, half-hidden in the laneway’s shade, a reminder that in Melbourne, art rarely asks for attention—it simply waits to be discovered.

Centre Place is one of the city’s older pedestrian lanes, a slim passage running between Collins and Flinders Streets, layered with decades of reinvention. Once a service lane, it has become a vertical corridor of cafés, murals, stickers, and weathered signage, where walls are treated as communal notebooks. Every surface carries something: paint, paste, memory. The lane is narrow enough that voices and footsteps overlap, and the sky appears only as a thin ribbon above.

The coffee, as expected, is expensive, but it comes with theatre: baristas moving with practised confidence, cups placed down with ceremony, conversations drifting between tables barely an arm’s length apart. It is not merely a place to drink coffee, but to linger briefly within the choreography of the city. In Centre Place, even a mural seen from outside feels intentional, as though it has been positioned to reward those who pause, look sideways, and accept that in Melbourne, the smallest spaces often hold the most character.

Sony A7RV

FE 20-70mm f4 G

Linking Mural Monday

Little Flinders Lane sign for Sign2

 

A rustic sign such as this impresses precisely because of what it says and how little it needs to say. Sprinkler stop valve inside. The words are plain, functional, and unadorned, yet they carry the quiet authority of purpose. There is no invitation here, no flourish—only instruction, rendered permanent by material and time.

Set along Little Flinders Lane, the sign belongs to the working grammar of the city. It speaks from an era when buildings were designed to be understood by those who maintained them, when safety and utility were marked clearly and left to do their work without spectacle. Its weathered surface bears the accumulated patience of years, the grain and fading evidence of a life spent outdoors, watching the lane change around it.

There is a classical restraint in such honesty. The sign does not pretend to be art, yet it achieves a kind of unintended poetry through endurance. In a city now saturated with curated surfaces and clever interventions, this simple notice remains grounded, a reminder that Melbourne was once built from instructions as much as ambitions.

“Sprinkler stop valve inside” reads almost like a quiet aside to the initiated—a message meant for hands rather than eyes, for responsibility rather than admiration. And yet it draws attention precisely because it has survived. In the narrow light of Little Flinders Lane, it stands as a modest relic of civic care, where even the most utilitarian object was made to last, and in lasting, acquired grace.

Sony A7RV

FE 16mm f1,8 GM

Linking Sign2

2026 lamb commercial made me laugh again 

Brighton Beach, Melbourne for Skywatch Friday

 

It had been a long while since my last visit to Brighton Beach, long enough for memory to soften its edges and for familiarity to turn almost abstract. The drone footage, hovering calmly above the shoreline, arrived as a quiet reminder of why this place is so deeply lodged in Melbourne’s collective imagination. From above, the geometry of sea and sand resolves into something deliberate and ceremonial, as though the coast itself had been composed rather than eroded. I realised, watching the footage, that my drone had sat idle for years—updated rarely, flown infrequently—despite the fact that it was built precisely for moments like this. Perhaps it is time to return to it, and to the habit of looking again, from a little higher up.

Brighton Beach is not merely scenic; it is storied. Long before it became an emblem on postcards and calendars, the shoreline was part of the Country of the Boon Wurrung people, who understood the bay not as a boundary but as a living system—provider, pathway, and presence. European settlement in the mid-nineteenth century redefined the beach’s meaning, transforming it into a site of leisure and retreat for a growing city eager to escape its own density. By the 1860s and 1870s, Brighton had become a fashionable seaside destination, its calm bay waters offering a gentler alternative to the wilder surf beaches further south.

The bathing boxes, now so inseparable from Brighton’s identity, began as modest, practical structures—simple timber sheds designed to preserve modesty in an era when sea bathing was a regulated and ritualised act. Over time, these huts evolved into expressions of personality and privilege, painted, rebuilt, and embellished across generations. Today, their bright façades form a disciplined yet playful procession along the sand, a gallery of private ownership displayed in public space. From the air, they appear almost architectural in their precision, a neat punctuation between land and sea.

What the drone reveals—what the ground conceals—is scale and continuity. The gentle arc of Port Phillip Bay, the ordered repetition of the boxes, the city skyline hovering faintly in the distance: all of it speaks to Melbourne’s long negotiation with its coastline. Brighton Beach is not dramatic in the way of cliffs or headlands; its power lies in restraint. It offers calm, rhythm, and a sense of return. Generations have walked this sand, entered these waters, and looked back at the same horizon, each time believing it their own discovery.

To revisit Brighton Beach, even indirectly through a lens, is to be reminded that some places do not demand reinvention. They wait. And when we finally look again—whether with a drone lifted into the air or simply with renewed attention—they give back more than nostalgia. They offer continuity, and a quiet invitation to re-engage with the tools, the habits, and the seeing we once valued but set aside.

Linking Skywatch Friday

Collins St Block and Arcade at night for Sign 2

 

Collins Arcade has always held a quiet magic for me—a heritage corridor tucked into the pulse of Melbourne, where time seems to fold in layers. On a humid, stifling evening just before Christmas, I slipped into its cool, shadowed embrace, camera in hand. I chose the FE 14mm f1.8, a lightweight prime lens, knowing I wanted freedom to move, to catch fleeting moments without being weighed down by bulk.

The arcade is more than just a passageway; it is a living memory of the city. Collins Block, the structure that cradles it, dates back to the late 19th century, a time when Melbourne was stretching upward and outward, a city buoyed by gold-rush fortunes and the optimism of civic growth. Its façade, a meticulous blend of classical proportions and restrained ornamentation, hints at the ambitions of the architects who sought to fuse elegance with utility. Pilasters rise subtly along the frontage, and delicate cornices crown the windows, while wrought iron balconies peek out as if whispering the lives of those who once walked above the bustling streets.

Stepping inside the arcade is like entering a miniature urban cathedral. The glass canopy above filters the last of the day’s sun, turning dust motes into suspended jewels. The tiled floor, intricate and deliberate, echoes footsteps from generations past, each step a gentle percussion against the calm of the evening. Shopfronts, framed in timber and brass, carry the weight of history with a quiet dignity. The design is not ostentatious, yet it is purposeful—every line, curve, and reflection crafted to invite a slow, appreciative walk rather than a hurried commute.

I wandered down the arcade with my lens, capturing the candid gestures of passersby, the way light pooled in corners, the reflections that danced along polished surfaces. The air was heavy, thick with humidity and the anticipatory energy of the season, yet the arcade offered a gentle reprieve, a measured rhythm that contrasted with the chaos of the streets outside. Each shot I took felt like a dialogue with history: a small, modern act contained within a space that had already witnessed decades of life.

Collins Arcade is, in a way, a meditation on continuity—a reminder that architecture, when done with care and reverence, can hold stories, tempering the rush of the present with the weight of memory. That evening, walking through its cool corridors, I felt connected to those layers of the city: the ambitions of 19th-century builders, the quiet persistence of shopkeepers, the casual footsteps of strangers, and my own small act of noticing.

And so I walked, lens in hand, carrying not just a camera but a reverence for the arcade’s enduring elegance—a narrow, luminous path through Melbourne’s collective memory.

Sony A7RV

FE 14mm f1.8 GM

Linking Sign2

Bushrangers Bay Cape Schanck for Sunday Best

 

Bushrangers Bay is one of the new frontiers we have set for ourselves in 2026, a place that demands both patience and return. Reaching it requires a deliberate walk—close to fifty minutes along a largely flat coastal trail that slowly eases you away from the ordinary world. With each step, the signal fades completely; reception disappears, and with it the low hum of obligations. What remains is distance, time, and anticipation.

The path itself offers little drama, yet this restraint sharpens the senses. Low coastal scrub leans into the track, shaped by years of salt and wind, and the ground carries a quiet firmness underfoot, as if it has learned endurance. The bay does not announce itself early. It waits. Only near the end does the sound of the sea begin to overtake your thoughts, a deeper, more insistent rhythm than anything the city can produce.

Bushrangers Bay opens abruptly, raw and uncompromising. The water sits heavy and dark against pale rock, the shoreline carved with geological patience. Wind moves through the cove without apology, pressing hard against the body and pulling heat from the skin even as the sun bears down relentlessly. On our first visit, the air was thick with heat, yet the wind never relented—an exhausting, elemental contradiction that left no room for comfort.

This is not a place for quick work or casual visits. The bay reveals itself slowly, changing with light and tide. We already know we will return several times, particularly for the long, slanting hours of golden light, when the cliffs soften, the water begins to glow, and the severity of the landscape briefly turns generous. In those moments, the bay feels less like a destination and more like a conversation—one that cannot be rushed, and that insists on being met again and again, on its own terms.

Sony A7RV

FE 20-70mm f4 G

Linking Sunday Best

Indian Cabbage White butterfly for Saturday Critter

 

The Indian cabbage white butterfly, Pieris canidia, is a modest yet familiar presence in Taipei, particularly in gardens, riverbanks, and the cultivated edges of the city where human life and vegetation quietly intersect. Neither rare nor ostentatious, it belongs to the everyday ecology of Taiwan’s urban and peri-urban landscapes, moving with an ease that suggests long accommodation to human habitation.

In appearance, the butterfly is restrained and elegant: pale wings suffused with milky white, lightly marked with charcoal-grey tips that catch the eye only in flight. It is often mistaken for its close relatives, yet its movement—unhurried, almost deliberate—distinguishes it from the more erratic dancers of the insect world. In Taipei’s warmer months, it drifts low over cabbage patches, roadside weeds, and school gardens, seemingly indifferent to traffic noise and concrete heat.

Its life cycle is closely bound to cruciferous plants, many of which thrive in Taiwan’s subtropical climate. What might be considered an agricultural nuisance in rural contexts becomes, in the city, a quiet marker of seasonal continuity. The butterfly’s presence signals not disruption but balance: a reminder that even in a dense, modern capital, older biological rhythms persist beneath the surface of daily life.

There is something gently instructive in observing the Indian cabbage white in Taipei. Amid rapid development and constant motion, it embodies a form of resilience that is neither forceful nor dramatic. It survives not by spectacle, but by adaptability—accepting the city as part of its habitat, and in doing so, offering a small, living testament to nature’s capacity to endure alongside us.

Linking Saturday Critter

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

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

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

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

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

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