Joan and I have just returned from Victoria where we spent a week touring the great ocean road and Melbourne. We flew down and hired a car. Happily the i30 was offered by the car hire company but by the time we got there it had turned into a Mitsubishi ASX. This turned out to be an OK touring companion despite the preference for the i30.
We headed out to Cape Bridgewater via Ballarat and Warrnambool, and then returned to Melbourne. This was to avoid the weekend traffic out of Melbourne around Lorne and Geelong on the run back to Melbourne and this proved to be the case as we had a quick and uneventful cruise back. Of course the roads are magnificent in Victoria anyway, there's lees chance of congestion compared to Queensland roads which tend to be goat tracks by comparison.
Accommodation was, on the whole, not too bad although the prices were highly variable for no apparent reason. Port
Wenn Campbell for example was ridiculously expensive for something last renovated in the 80's, but being the heartland of the GOR monuments, one should expect to be gouged I suppose.
Melbourne Tullamarine Airport to Melbourne VIC, Australia - Google MapsMelbourne to BallaratBallarat is about 90 minutes south west of Melbourne famous as part of the goldfields in the 1850's and more famous as the scene of the eureka rebellion in 1854. We had lunch at the Museum of democracy adjacent the location of the eureka stockade. This turned out to be an unremarkable location with a few plaques here and there. An interpretive sculpture was placed conveniently near a car park in the distance.
The remains of the flag which has become an iconic symbol have been conserved and are on display in the museum. I say remains since it was the tradition of the day for those involved to take a souvenir and so there's not much left. It was in fact fairly large, much larger than I anticipated.
Being a goldmining town Ballarat features many fine buildings, many of which still exist including a pretty serious Victorian era railway station. Much is made of the heritage aspects of the town and I would like to go back another time and photograph it properly.
Ballarat to Cape BridgewaterThis was an uneventful drive southwest through Warnambool, Port Fairy and Portland. On this day the weather was magnificent but there were no delays for taking photos other than a pause at Warrnambool for lunch. Surf clubs are typically good places for lunch and there we dined at the window taking in a grand view, the first glimpse of the famous coastline.
On the drive through its easy to see the reason for the bushfire danger than exists in Victoria right now. Its incredibly dry there now after the recent heatwave.
Another interesting feature of the region are the extensive drywalls which line the road for kilometres around Mt Elephant.
Dry Stone Walls ยป KanawinkaCape Bridgewater turns out to be a remote place with a few guesthouses and holiday accommodation, a surf club and a cafe that sporadically opens. Dinner is in Portland about 14km back. We explore the cape famous for its geology, views and the less well documents phenomena of flies. Thousands of them, large and small. This detracts from the experience a little and is a feature found at other places along the great ocean road as well. For some reason we cannot buy insect repellant.
Cape Nelson from Cape Bridgewater shot from our accommodation.
The car park at Cape Bridgewater - before the extent of the fly issue became apparent. The geology of the region is fascinating, it would have been nice to be able to take the time to fully appreciate it.
Cape Bridgewater to Port Wenn CampbellPort Campbell is the epicenter of the iconic great ocean road monuments. I called it Port Wenn after our encounter with the accommodation there. There was no belligerent doctor or gaggle of giggling girls, but there were a lot of tourists. Its a small place built alongside the port with is really an inlet into the great cliffs along the coast there. Its reminiscent of a fjord on a mini scale and a really lovely place.
I have one camera with a serious metering issue that's badly overexposing images. Unfortunately its affecting all the images taken with the long lens and I don't discover the problem until the following day when the reflex mirror parts company with the camera. Its going to take some time to recover the images taken with that camera so until that's sorted you will have to make do with the ones taken with the other camera.
The following day I've returned to the 12 apostles at the crack of dawn for the sunrise shoot. No flies but the place is crawling with photographers. I've jumped right in and being olde skool I use filters for controlling the light rather than HDR, the stacking of images of a number of images of different exposures in software. In photographing the sunrise itself the filters started fogging up, something I have never encountered before.
Predawn facing west. The deep blue is a feature of predawn light but those relying on software will never capture a shot like this.
Sunrise
Once the sun came up I immediately turned around and started shooting to the west. A few minutes later I had people shooting between the legs of the tripod once they realised what was going on behind them with the sun starting to touch the peaks of the cliffs.
I've shot many sunrises, mostly in solitude and in spectacular locations. This one was not as enjoyable as most I would have to say owing to the
rabble horde that had descended on this location. It was well worth doing however. Tick.
I'll pause there for now but invite you to visit my gallery here:
http://gallery.heinrich.id.au/great-ocean-road#gallery/2870/1503/0This will be changing over the next week or so as I add new pictures and tag them. Enjoy.
