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

Old Melbourne Goal for Treasure Tuesday

 

As I leafed through some of my old photographs, one image of the Melbourne Old Gaol caught my eye again, its composition strange and particular in a way I hadn’t noticed before. The gaol, standing with its weathered bluestone walls and iron-bound doors, exudes a peculiar, almost spectral presence—an air both solemn and unsettling. Built in the mid-19th century, it was a place meant to contain the restless and the condemned, a grim monument to law and order in a city still finding its shape. Over the years, its shadowed corridors and austere courtyards have absorbed whispers of history: convicts pacing in silence, the muffled clank of keys, and stories of lives paused behind stone walls. In my photographs, these echoes seem to linger, as if the gaol itself has become a keeper of memory, its eerie aura captured through the lens, awaiting the gaze of anyone willing to peer into its past.

Sony A7RV

Laowa 9mm f5.6

Linking Treasure Tuesday

Hosier Lane Mural for Mural Monday

 

Amid the narrow, paint-splashed alleyways of Hosier Lane, where layers of graffiti speak of decades of fleeting art and rebellious voices, I stumbled upon one mural that lingered in my mind. An ape, rendered with an innocence that seemed almost human, gazed softly from its wall, framed by a swirl of deep purples that bled into the brickwork. In this city alley where murals rise and fall with the whims of artists and time, this quiet creature held its ground—a peculiar presence in the ever-changing canvas of Hosier Lane. Here, every wall tells a story, every spray of color a fragment of Melbourne’s urban heartbeat, yet this gentle, purple-hued ape felt timeless, a secret whisper amid the riot of street expression.

Panasonic G9

Leica 12-60mm f2.8-4 

Linking Mural Monday

Butterfly for Saturday Critter

 

The scene glows with a quiet, luminous warmth—the kind of yellow that doesn’t shout but settles, like a secret whispered by sunlight. In the Melbourne Botanical Garden, colour never arrives alone; it drifts in with the breeze, pools at the base of old trees, lingers on petals as though reluctant to move on. But this shade of yellow feels deliberate, almost sculpted by the softness of the afternoon.

It is a colour that seems to hold its own weather: gentle, honey-warm, a counterpoint to the unpredictable moods of the city beyond the gates. It brightens the air without force, casting a mellow radiance along the winding paths and over the rippling lawns. You can feel it filling the space between leaves, turning shadows tender rather than sharp, as though the garden itself is taking a long, unhurried breath.

Nearby, the lake mirrors this gold—broken by the glide of a bird, a passing breeze, or the dip of a willow branch. The trees, old and knowing, seem to lean into the glow as if recalling seasons when the world felt slower. Even the faint hum of city life fades under this yellow hush, softened into something that feels almost musical.

Here, in this light, time loosens. Colours deepen. The ordinary becomes luminous.
It is the kind of yellow that lifts the heart without asking, the kind that finds you rather than the other way around—quiet, steady, and full of its own gentle grace.

Olympus E520 

150mm f2 

Linking Saturday Critter

South Bank Melbourne for Sign2

 

I have posted these two images on the other blog of mine Melbourne Street Photography

Both images were first taken in monochrome, their shadows and silences doing all the speaking. Yet earlier today, with time to spare before the cardiology conference at the Stamford Plaza, I wandered along South Bank in Melbourne and felt the city nudge me toward colour again. The river moved with its usual unhurried grace, reflecting fragments of sky and skyline; the breeze carried the faint scent of roasted coffee from nearby cafés; and the footsteps of passers-by echoed softly along the promenade like a gentle counterpoint to the hum of trams and traffic beyond.

On a whim, I decided to give the photographs a muted colour treatment—just enough for the tones to breathe without losing the quiet dignity of their original monochrome form. The results surprised me. Soft washes of colour settled into the images like memories returning after a long absence: the subdued blues of the Yarra, the mellow greys of the paved walkway, the faintest warmth in the late-morning light. What once felt stark now carries a subtle tenderness, a kind of understated calm that pleases the eye and lingers in the mind.

As I stood by the river, watching the city move at its own measured pace, I realised how these gentle hues mirror the mood of the day—unrushed, contemplative, suspended somewhere between duty and leisure. The photographs now hold that feeling too, quietly echoing the simple pleasure of a solitary stroll along South Bank before the formalities ahead.

Sony A7RV

FE 14mm f1.8 GM

Linking Sign2

Bi Shan Yan Temple, Neihu, Taipei for Sign2

 

I have shared photographs of this temple before, and now I have posted a few new ones. It stands not far from where I once lived in Taipei, a familiar presence along the mountainside. This place is woven tightly into my childhood memory. I often climbed the mountain with my father, step by step, until the red roof of the temple came into view. Those walks were quiet lessons in patience and wonder, the air scented with earth, incense, and the faint echo of bells drifting on the wind.

The first sign simply reads Bi Shan Yan — just that. Yet the name carries the weight of centuries.

Bi Shan Yan sits on a high ridge overlooking the basin below, a vantage point that feels both protective and timeless. Its origins stretch back to the early years of settlement, when a small shrine was first erected on the rocky slope. What began as a modest shelter of stone gradually grew into a full temple complex as generations added halls, terraces, and carved adornments. Over the years it has been rebuilt after storms, expanded by devoted hands, and shaped by the quiet resilience of the community around it.

The temple is dedicated to the revered protector known as the Kaizhang Holy King, a guardian spirit brought from the Fujian region by early migrants. His two loyal generals stand at his side, their presence carved into wood and stone with the solemnity of old devotion. These figures have watched over the hills and valleys for centuries, their legends mingling with the land itself.

Approaching the temple, one passes through a long ascent of stone steps, each bordered by greenery that shifts with the seasons — cherry blossoms in spring, thick shade in summer, the clear sharpness of winter air. The architecture is richly layered: sweeping rooflines adorned with dragons and phoenixes, bright ceramic tiles catching the sun, and columns carved with scenes from myth. The incense coils inside burn slowly, releasing a soft haze that turns the light golden.

From the upper terrace, Taipei stretches out like a living map — rivers winding, buildings rising, mountains holding the horizon. At night, the city becomes a tapestry of lights, and the temple feels like a silent guardian set high above the world.

For me, Bi Shan Yan is not merely a historic site but a place where memory settles gently. Each visit recalls those childhood climbs with my father, the warmth of his hand guiding me, the sense of arrival when the temple finally appeared above the trees. It remains a place where history and personal memory meet — steady, enduring, and filled with the quiet beauty of the past living on in the present.

Sony A7RV

FE 20-70mm f4 G

Linking Sign2

Kisume Birthday Dinner for Treasure Tuesday

 

My cocktail before the meals 

Toro sandwich 

Sea Urchin in egg chawan 

4 different sorts of fish nigiri 

There are, in all, thirteen dishes in the course — thirteen small revelations arriving one after another like chapters in a quietly extravagant tale. Each plate is a whisper of colour and temperature, of textures that startle gently and flavours that linger as if unwilling to leave. The food is, quite simply, exquisite: composed with the kind of precision that feels effortless, and yet carries the unmistakable weight of deep craft. And surprisingly, almost disarmingly, it is priced with a humility rare in a city where fine dining often comes wrapped in hauteur.

What elevated the evening, though, was the chef’s table at Kisumé in Melbourne — that slender crescent of seats where you are close enough to see the breath of the kitchen as it moves. From there, you witness not just cooking but choreography: knife flashes, a small brush painting soy across a gleaming fillet, a bowl lifted and turned as though it were something delicate and living. The chefs speak softly among themselves, attentive to rhythm and timing, but every now and then one catches your eye and offers a quiet explanation of a garnish or a coastal origin of a fish no larger than your palm.

You taste the ocean in a curl of sashimi, the smoke of a charcoal kiss in a morsel barely warm, the brightness of sudden citrus over rice that has been coaxed into perfect tenderness. The sequence feels intimate — a series of personal offerings from people who love their craft without ceremony or arrogance. Time slows. The restaurant hums dimly behind you, but at the chef’s table you inhabit a small world of clarity and intent, where the boundary between diner and maker dissolves.

When the final dish arrived — the thirteenth note of the evening — it felt more like a benediction than an ending. I left Kisumé with that quiet fullness one experiences only after meals that feed both hunger and imagination, grateful for a night that was not merely delicious, but deeply, surprisingly memorable.

Sony A7RV

FE 16mm f1.8 GM

Linking Treasure Tuesday

Vivid Signs light up Sydney for Sign2

 

These photographs, taken during my visit to Sydney in May this year, capture moments I had not yet shared — fragments of a city transformed beneath the luminous spell of Vivid Sydney. Each evening, as twilight descended upon the harbour, the city awakened into a living tableau of light and imagination.

The familiar landmarks of Sydney assumed an otherworldly grandeur. The Opera House, that timeless symbol of grace and geometry, stood resplendent as its sails came alive with shifting hues and intricate projections — a celestial dance of pattern and story. Images of oceanic depths, constellations, and dreamlike abstractions swept across its curved façade, as though the building itself drew breath from the tides below.

Along the harbour’s edge, the spectacle deepened. Sculptures and installations of light rose from the darkness, some bold in stature, others delicate as whispers. Neon phrases glowed like poetry suspended in air, while radiant structures pulsed and shimmered in measured rhythm to unseen music. Even the most familiar forms — the bridge, the quay, the promenade — seemed reborn, veiled in an ethereal luminance that rendered the ordinary sublime.

The city skyline itself became a symphony of colour and reflection. Towers mirrored the hues of the harbour, and the water carried back those same tones, multiplying the beauty until it seemed the heavens had descended to mingle with the sea.

Crowds moved as one body through the illuminated avenues — children with faces upturned, couples strolling hand in hand, and solitary wanderers pausing in reverent stillness. There was, in that mingling of light and humanity, a rare harmony: the sense that for a brief season, Sydney had transcended its material self to become a city of pure light, where art, architecture, and imagination converged in radiant accord.

Sony A7RV

FE 20-70mm f4 G

Linking Sign2

Princes Pier Pylon Port Melbourne for Treasure Tuesday

 

The photograph was taken at Port Melbourne’s historic Princes Pier, though not during the golden hour that so often bathes the sea in honeyed light. Rather, it was a spontaneous shot—one of those unplanned moments that arise when the day’s itinerary dissolves and the camera remain the only faithful companion. Joel and I had wandered aimlessly that afternoon, having run out of places to go, when the glimmer of light on the water caught my eye. The air was mild, tinged with the scent of salt and timber, and the long-weathered pylons stood solemnly like sentinels of the past. I pressed the shutter almost absentmindedly, more out of habit than expectation. Yet, to my astonishment, that very image would later win a prize in a national photography competition. It felt strange and humbling that a fleeting, almost casual moment could be recognized amidst so many crafted works.

Afterwards, Joel and I drove to St Kilda, that lively seaside district known for its old amusement pier and cosmopolitan charm. We found a small souvlaki joint tucked between the shops, the sort of place that greets you with the aroma of grilled lamb and oregano before you even step inside. The lamb chops were extraordinarily juicy, glistening with their own fat, charred just enough to release a whisper of smoke. We ate in companionable silence, watching the slow descent of twilight over the esplanade—the sea turning from steel to violet, the city lights beginning their nightly shimmer.

In retrospect, that day feels like a quiet meditation on chance and reward—the way beauty can appear without warning, and how memory often attaches itself to the simplest acts: a photograph taken without intention, a meal shared without ceremony. Princes Pier, in its weathered grace, seemed to speak of time’s patient endurance, the lamb in St Kilda, of life’s earthy pleasures. Between them lay the essence of the day—an unassuming harmony between art, friendship, and the small felicities that make an ordinary afternoon unforgettable.

Sony A7RV

FE 16-35mm f2.8 GM

Linking Treasure Tuesday

Little Lonsdale St Mural for Mural Monday

 

I did not know who painted this mural, yet it caught my eye as I wandered up the street with my camera in hand, seeking candid moments of the city. Upon the corner wall, a vivid portrait emerged — a young woman with two braids falling neatly over her shoulders, her gaze direct and luminous, reminiscent of the youthful glamour of pop icons. The interplay of magenta, turquoise, and tangerine hues lent the work a pulse of energy, as if the very air around it shimmered with rhythm. There was something refreshing in its presence — a burst of colour and spirit that seemed to awaken the quiet street, reminding me that art often finds us when we least expect it.

Sony A7RV

FE 20-70mm f4 G

Linking Mural Monday

Christchurch signs in New Zealand for Sign2

 

I remember well the nightly strolls I took after the conference that week in Christchurch, New Zealand — quiet wanderings through streets alive with renewal and the soft pulse of evening light. The city, still bearing the echoes of its trials, has a spirit both gentle and resilient, and I was drawn to its mingling of history and reinvention.

The first image I captured shows the weathered shell of a vintage car, its surface adorned with signs and words — a collage of memory and message, like a poem written upon metal. It stood as both relic and artwork, a testament to the city’s creative soul that transforms what once was into something enduringly expressive.

In the second image, a barber works beneath the glow of lamplight, his shop modest yet full of life. Outside, a sign reads New York — an echo of distant dreams set within the quiet streets of Christchurch. Together, these scenes spoke to me of place and passage: how cities, like people, gather stories in their scars, and how beauty often lingers most where time has touched it deeply.

Sony A7RV

FE 20-70mm f4 G

Linking Sign2

Christchurch Mural in New Zealand for Mural Monday

 

The mural, an impressive and expansive work, first caught my attention when I visited Christchurch earlier this year for a conference. Revisiting the photograph now for Mural Monday, I am struck anew by its vibrancy and significance — a fine testament to the city’s enduring spirit and creative renewal in the years following the major earthquake.

Sony A7RV

FE 20-70mm f4 G

Linking Mural Monday

Fitzroy St Murals and Graffiti for Mural Monday

 

It has been quite some time since I last took a leisurely stroll through Fitzroy. Today, I managed to find a parking space in the car park depicted in the first image—a structure whose interior proves no less forbidding than its stark exterior. There is, however, a certain raw charm in its decay, a sense of urban history etched into the walls. Amid the gloom, a large mural—an expressive portrait splashed with bold strokes of colour—graces one of the concrete surfaces, lending the place an unexpected civility and artistic spirit so characteristic of Fitzroy’s creative soul.

Nearby, a vivid depiction of Sonic the Hedgehog caught my eye—a playful echo from the 1990s that stirred a quiet nostalgia. Its bright hues and carefree energy stood in delightful contrast to the rough textures of the surrounding walls, as though childhood memory itself had been painted onto the heart of the city’s grit.

Sony A7RV

FE 20-70mm f4 G

Linking Mural Monday

Spencer St urbanscape Melbourne for Sunday Best

 

I have previously featured this striking staircase, though not in full detail. Recently, I noticed a resurgence of interest in it across various media outlets, prompting me to revisit my archives and showcase these images once more.

This elegant spiral staircase is located on Spencer Street in Melbourne, within the precinct of the Southern Cross Station redevelopment area. Designed as part of Melbourne’s wave of contemporary architectural renewal in the early twenty-first century, it exemplifies the city’s commitment to blending form with function. The structure’s sinuous curve and contrasting textures—smooth white surfaces against the warmth of timber and the industrial coolness of steel—embody the modernist dialogue between art and engineering.

Despite its architectural merit, the staircase has long drawn both admiration and controversy. Many photographers have been captivated by its sculptural beauty, though the building’s security personnel were often less enthusiastic—reportedly instructing photographers in no uncertain terms to leave the premises. Yet, as with much of Melbourne’s modern design, its appeal endures, quietly asserting itself as an icon of the city’s evolving urban landscape.

Sony A7RV

Laowa 9mm f5.6 

Linking Sunday Best