Unlike the northern hemisphere where it could be snowing at Christmas and New Year, in Australia we are usually at the beach during the festive season.

This year was no exception, with New Year’s being a particularly fine day to spend in the sun, sand and surf.

Potato Point Beach

At around this this time of year much of the population across Southeastern Australia heads for the coast. Even during summer the cold currents coming up from Antarctica can keep the water a touch cool on a hot day, but this doesn’t stop everyone from young to old trying to getting wet.

Father and baby: everyone gets wet on New Year’s Day

When not in the water, there is plenty of time to play with new toys in the sand, have a nap out of the sun in a shade shelter, or under a beach umbrella.

New Year’s Day on…

While packing my camera bag for the weekend, I discovered that I had lost or misplaced a Grafmatic film holder. After trying to remember when I had it last, it occurred to me that I might have set it down on a rock by the Sholhaven River at Oallen Ford a week earlier.

It was a long shot, but I decided to head down to Nerriga and try to find it. Of course it rained heavily over the last week, so it could have been washed away, but nothing ventured..

In hindsight it was a feeble excuse for photography at some of my favourite places. The film holder was not found, so I instead went to the old ford at the Corang River, downstream from the new bridge, and made several photographs standing in the cool waters.

Driving back to Nerriga, I stopped at the old footbridge at Bindi Brook…

Water finds its own course passing ever downwards.

Although it is easy enough to imagine that rivers and stream might have a spirit that guides water in its meanders, or path over falls and rapids, it is driven by gravity. Unlike individuals, or groups, that might try to find the path of least resistance, water has no such motive or even consciousness of an intention. When a river rises and falls, it might find the memory of tracks it had carved before, or discover new trajectories.

On a hot summer’s day, it is just fine standing momentarily absent from cares in cool waters, watching gentle ripples on the surface catch the glistening sun, or be refracted into patterns on the sand beneath.

Sometimes I wished on reflection for an absence of consciousness like water, or perhaps, an easier path to the sea.

Smooth flowing waters

Soft summer reflections

Ripples, refractions…

After rain rivers rise.

Sometimes it might be by a few inches, but at others, rivers will rise by feet.

It is not unusual along the south coast rainforest escarpments of New South Wales for a storm to dump a few inches of rain. Every so often a south coast low pressure system brings 10 to 12 inches of rain in a 24 hour period. Rivers swell, bursting their banks, dragging vulnerable trees and branches downstream.

Sometimes, flood waters will seek an alternate course creating islands, and when the water recedes billabongs are left behind.

It has been a wet summer. When we visited the Deua River was higher than usual. Huge rainfalls and flooding a few weeks ago earlier however had meant branches were deposited, creating mid-air sculptural installations on the bank, at least 6-8 feet above the normal water height.

After the rain

She-oaks and billabong

Deposited

Balanced

As we headed across the open country near Braidwood on Saturday afternoon we drove into a huge storm. Blacks clouds licked the horizon and lightning struck the ground. By the time we descended the escarpment into the Araluen Valley we were in the midst of a deluge. Melody kept on driving her Ford truck, towing the camper trailer across rising streams and fords, down the dirt road running alongside the Deua River.

When we reached Bakers Flat we quickly set up the camper trailer, and got ready to endure a long night of inclement weather.

For nearly 8 hours the thunder did not stop. In a slight break when it was raining lightly, Melody suggested we go out and take some photos.

I set up Chamonix in the tent with an Apo-Sironar-S 150mm lens, grabbed a Grafmatic film holder loaded with Shanghai 100, put a plastic cover over my equipment…

Not far from Moruya on the south coast of New South Wales, Bingie Bingie Point juts like a finger into the Tasman Sea.

It is a remarkable place that was inhabited by the Brinja-Yuin people before European settlement. It is a place of plenty, and the word “bingie” in Dhurga, the traditional language of the first peoples of the coast means “stomach”, and thus bingie bingie, abundance.

The geology of this point is special, as between the two types of grey igneous rocks which cooled far below the earth’s surface, there are intrusions into cracks when the granite cooled by later eruption forming dykes of pink aplite and black basalt. Elsewhere, on the southern side of the point white intrusions into the granite have the appearance of a web.

Along this coastline there are dreaming tracks, song lines, used by its earliest peoples. It is not hard to wonder at…

The Kangaroo River begins on a narrow isthmus of the Illawarra escarpment before it plunges hundreds of feet over Carrington Falls into Kangaroo Valley.

On an overcast Saturday on the coast, nothing seems more perfect than being in the mist and rain on the escarpment, where streams pass through still rainforests, before rushing towards the roar of cascades and vertiginous falls.

Walking in the cool waters before the precipice, soothes my feet and aching heart.

Dark waters

Quiet pool with blossoms

Cascade and mist

Towards the precipice

Taken in Budderoo National Park using Chamonix 045F1 View Camera with Rodenstock Apo-Sironar-S 150mm lens, on Kodak TMax 100 and developed in a mix of Xtol(1.2) and Adonal(1.200).

Yesterday afternoon, my partner Melody and I had a long and interesting discussion reflecting upon aesthetics, sexuality, art and the artist.

Our conversation was in response to a post we had noticed elsewhere on the inter-webs in relation to nude photography. The discussion was characterised by a division of the subject into nude vs naked, and a proposition that works by famous artists, for example Weston, Man Ray, Mapplethorpe, or Imogen Cunningham have stood the test of time and are beyond criticism. On the other hand much nudity seen elsewhere on photo sharing sites was regarded in the post as sexualised, trashy, and just not really art.

Sublimation

One commentator maintained “I love photographing the nude but it has nothing to do with sexuality – everything to do with line and shape and the light. … Actually it’s another landscape and a lot harder than one expects.”

Melody on…

As a child on Sunday afternoons I would often sit on a small stool in front of my father and play chess with him. He was a kind, humble man who worked long hard hours as a baker to provide for his family. As an adult, he seemed stoic, enduring difficult times during the Nazi Occupation of Holland, and when I was young yearned for his only day off, Sunday, to spend with his family. He enjoyed teaching me chess, one of few past-times remaining from his youth, and how to drink black coffee. I liked learning how to play chess from him and eventually how to beat him.

Upstairs in his wardrobe were a few old cameras which he brought to Australia with him. A box Brownie, and a folder, both of which he complained didn’t work, possibly considered as foibles from younger days, and beyond his being able…

For want of something to say, lost for words maybe, or just the tune in my head – perhaps it’s better to quote The Stones:

“whoa, eeyo, eeyo, eeyo, eeyo
whoa, eeyo, eeyo, eeyo, eeyo
yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah,
yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah,…

oh cherry, oh cherry, oh baby
doncha know i’m in love with you”

Oh yeah, I’m in love with aerochrome. I love its cherry and candy tones.

Don’t matter whether it is in the desert, mountains or tropics.

It never disappoints!

Taken around Korotogo, Fiji using Olympus OM2 and G. Zuiko 50mm f/1.4 lens with LZOS Soviet Y12 filter on Aerochrome and developed in Tetanal E6 Colortec.