January 2007

The nice weather on Australia Day turned out to be a temporary aberration; the rest of the weekend weather was as is usual here: Yesterday, heavy rain, cold, extremely windy. Today, cloudy with some sunshine, cold, gale-force winds. World of Warcraft had much better weather, so that's where we hid for a considerable part of the weekend. However, one does have to poke one's nose out sometimes, irrespective of the weather, so we spent a little time photographing sea birds in a wetlands reserve outside Williamstown. Turns out that black swans have white wings. It's not possible to see this unless they are flying.

Today is Australia Day so it's a public holiday. For once the weather was a lovely summer day and all of Australia went to the beach. We took our bikes and went from Williamstown to Altona and back, about 20km. The cycle path takes in a wetland reserve, where we saw this royal spoonbill. I had never seen one before. Look at its beak and you see where it gets its name from.

This pelican was hunting. I caught it in the act of swallowing a fish.

After days of moaning about the perpetually cloudy sky we finally saw the comet! It is beautiful. This picture was taken more in hope than with the expectation of getting a proper photograph but considering the completely standard equipment and lens I am delighted with the way it turned out. Pleased, we are.

Considering that I had all the equipment out anyway I also tried some shots of the moon. This one is interesting less for its photographic merit than for the fact that detail on its dark side is clearly visible in reflected Earth light.

Today, more sailing races. Rather than post more pictures of boats, today's subject is the exuberance of Australian Art of which there are many examples. This photo was taken at the pier in Altona, 20km west of Melbourne.

Regarding the weather, also more of the same. Gale-force winds and rain. Is this city ever going to have a summer?! This is worse than the UK.

Most of yesterday's pretty yachts went out to race in the bay today. A horrible, rainy, windy day that would not be considered out of place in November in the UK. Well, except for the temperature in the high 20s. We took the car to Williamstown to watch. This is the start of the race.

A group of seagulls was sitting on the pavement, all facing into the biting wind.

These trees had their shape moulded by constant high winds.

Meanwhile, Wild Thing, being double the size of anything else on the water, pounded through the rest of the fleet, on its way upwind to round the mark a second time while everybody else still had their kites up, going the other way.

Talking of kites, this is what a kite should look like.

This is what a wrapped kite looks like. I expect someone was busy explaining how this came to happen to the skipper.

This picture of a gorgeous sunset was taken a few days ago. It turns out that we haven't had any nice sunsets since. Especially the kind of clear sunset that would allow us to see the comet. Pictures taken of the comet in Sydney and New Zealand look stunning. Melbourne, on the other hand, seems determined to keep the cloud cover on until the comet has melted. Not pleased.

Today marks the start of Docklands Invitational, a Skandia-sponsored event of sailing races around the bay prior to the Melbourne to Geelong race. As a result, lots of racing yachts are currently moored around Docklands. This one is Wild Oats and it's my favourite because I think it's the prettiest. Also, it's quick. This picture does not really do justice to the size of the yacht.

The only way all of Wild Oats would fit in the picture was by taking it so that the mast went along the diagonal.

Compare to a Hobbyhorse-sized yacht that happened to be going past.

There are other supersize racing yachts in the harbour, too. This one is Goldfinger. James Bond, anyone?

Wild Thing is even bigger than Wild Oats. A bit too big and macho, perhaps.

These catamarans are in an entirely different class. They are a little bigger than a Hobie 15. I could sail them.

Today was the start of the Australian Open Tennis Championships. As they are conveniently held in Melbourne we got ourselves ground tickets for after work and went to soak up the atmosphere. We were very lucky to get the chance to see a fairly-evenly matched pair of players, Thomas Johansson (Sweden) against Marco Chiudinelli (Switzerland), resulting in great tennis to view. The Margaret Court Arena has only unreserved seating and we had no trouble finding a shady seat. It was fairly full, especially later on, but not packed.

We had hoped that the Swiss player would win, largely because the Swedish supporters were so rowdy (Wimbledon seems so much more restrained by comparison), however, the Swedes got their way, admittedly deservedly since Johansson was the better player on the day. It was a hard-fought match and enjoyable to watch. Final result, 3:2 to Johansson.

This contraption was set up near our office, presumably for kids to have some fun in the summer holidays. This girl was about six years old and had no trouble swinging upside-down from a great height. Of course, they made her wear a safety belt so she couldn't fall, and there was a net as well, just in case.

Half-way reasonable summer weather having finally arrived we decided to go to Williamstown for some seaside entertainment. Some of us even got their toes wet. The water was unexpectedly lovely and warm.

At the pier in Williamstown proper we were lucky enough to see this sea plane just preparing to take off.

This motorbike was just too fantastic to ignore.

We photographed yet another glorious sunset on the way home from the pub yesterday.

Since I have still not fully recovered from my epic face plant two weeks agp, today we went to Lysterfield Lake Park sans my bike. The idea was that I would do some photography and general chilling out on a nice (!) day while The Obsessive Cyclist went off to do the Olympic Mountain Bike Trail, at the same time trying out his spiffy new toy (hand-held GPS). This dragonfly obligingly sat still right next to my seat for minutes, allowing me to play with different exposure times. This truly great shot is the result.

Another dragonfly. It was huge. If I hadn't had the green dragonfly I'd have considered this shot a great success.

When there were no dragonflies around I watched the preparations for the sailing. Members of the Lysterfield Sailing club, I presume. Today was a lovely day for sailing -- about 28 degrees, sunny, force 4. I'm guessing here.

As in any race, some go faster than others.

Having postponed yesterday's planned trip to Marysville because of the weather we set out today as planned, even though the weather looked even less promising than yesterday. But it's a two-hour drive north-east so given the chaotic weather patterns here we figured by the time we got there it might have cleared up. This is the first scenic lookout point we reached. We had almost forgotten what lush, green mountains looked like -- everywhere around Melbourne is a desert.

We saw signs directing us to Steavenson Falls just outside Marysville so we followed them. By this time the weather had shown absolutely no signs of clearing up, and spots of drizzle had been appearing on and off. At the Falls car park we trudged the 350m to the waterfall. The drizzle was becoming a downpour. Some People, who very kindly lent their wide-brimmed hat to me, got very wet. It was, however, an impressive waterfall and well-worth the visit. Though we decided to postpone the 40-min steep climb to the top as well as the 4km hike through the mountains until summer. Erm, what am I talking about, it is the middle of summer. Until the weather is more amenable, then.

Predictably, soon after we had managed to secure shelter in the car again, the downpour reduced to a drizzle. The tourist road climbed higher and higher.

Soon we were driving in and out of clouds, with varying visibility. Varying visibility is not what you want when the road is characterised by a series of tight turns barely preceded by signs advising a top speed of 25km/h.

Sometimes it rains in Melbourne, too, allowing us to take pictures like this at sunset.

It was a beautiful, hot summer evening today so we went to the Night Market. This turned out to be a mistake as it was overcrowded and seemed to consist largely of fast food stalls and tourist trinkets. It also turned out that Yarra Trams think Christmas lasts three weeks and are still running public transport on a Saturday schedule, until the end of next week (!). So it took rather longer than we thought to get to the market and back again.

Docklands also are still on a Christmas schedule, hence the statues along the harbour are lit up in colour, looking even prettier than normal.

Not wishing to waste the evening, we walked along the harbour to the nearest establishment selling good, unpretentious pub food. This turned out to be a pub so we had some beer as well.

On the way back we noticed this gorgeous, orange, full moon. It looked better in reality but this isn't a bad picture, considering the tiny camera it was taken with (a Canon Digital Ixus i).

A very happy New Year to everyone!

The weather has decided that maybe it's summer after all, and has been nice and sunny all evening. Maybe there is hope yet.