Winter comes –
I see it in my face,
days grow shorter.
Light is white
Except when it’s black
– clouds are grey.
Lines, lines, lines.
Lines radiate from my eyes
– laughter lines
All photos taken on the rock shelf at Shellharbour using a Chamonix 045F1 View Camera, Wollensak Velostigmat W.A. Ser. III f/9.5 6-1/4inch lens, on Fomapan 100, and developed in a mix of Xtol(1.3)+RO9(1.160).
Over the weekend we visited Cowra and Canowindra on the western side of the Great Dividing Range. The latter is on the Belubula River which flows into the Lachlan not far downstream from Cowra. It is a prosperous grain and grape growing area when it is not otherwise in drought. Many of the fields have been ploughed ready for spring crops and welcome late autumn storms and rain.
The country beyond the great sandstone curtain in the central west is different to the world experienced on the coast. It is hot in summer and cold in winter. Hills roll out from the mountains into gently undulating slopes which gradually flatten into river flats and eventually plains where the eye can see almost forever. The dirt is a rich volcanic red.
Small ranges rise along the Lachlan River Valley, and caves hidden in their forests once were home to bushrangers. As the river travels deeper into the interior, its banks are home to old river gums and the land of the ancient Wiradjuri people with their culture once of carving trees.
Canowindra has an iconic narrow main street that winds above river flats around a small hill. There are four old hotels in the space of a few hundred yards and the remarkable Garden of Roses cafe with its stained glass windows and rows of empty tables and chairs. At one end of the main street is the small but important Age of Fishes Museum with its rare fossils from the Devonian period. Much as I am committed to landscape photography I force myself to make a few photographs within the streetscape.
We toy with the idea of moving inland where property is significantly cheaper and life slower. The people seem kind and generous, and it feels almost like an agricultural utopia. One suspects the streets are quiet on a cold Sunday morning, not because the townsfolk have gone to church, but because they are sleeping in. Beneath the surface, poverty still dwells but is concealed by the presence of tidy towns, cafes, local museums and galleries. Although time passes by many small towns, freshly painted buildings and window displays in empty shops encourage a sense of hope lighting a path to the future. Bucolic dreams always lead to existential contemplations which tantalise heart and mind as rural revelations question our urban existence near the coast.
All photos taken with Chamonix 045F1 View Camera, with Goerz Dagor 10 3/4″ and Gundlach Radar Extreme W.A. Anastigmat f16 6.5×8.5″lenses, on Fomapan 100 film, and developed in a mix of Xtol(1.3)+RO9(1.160).
Pounded by wild seas, cast upon rocks, and pushed high by storms, coves around Bass Point fill with shells. Some are whole, but most are fragments. Pieces are broken, and eroded by successive tides, revealing the patterns and structures of different species living by the sea.
An arabesque swirl catches my eye, as does the disk with a spiral, that differs from circles shining, unbreakable structures inside a barnacle, or wings remaining, and the surprise of a branch with leaves attached dried in the sun.
Every fragment, a memory of a past life or being. Each piece and pattern reminds me of my own existence, and the structures that shape my mind and spirit.
All photos taken using a Chamonix 045F1, with Rodenstock Ysaron 75mm lens, on Fomapan 100 film, and developed in a mix of Xtol(1.3)+paRodinal(1.160).
It has been about a year since I have been to Bombo. On my last visit I rolled my ankle on a rock, breaking a bone in my foot. Lately we have had heavy weather, so in a break between downpours, I headed to the old quarry at Bombo hoping that waves might be breaking over the sea walls.
Bombo seemingly was named after Thumbon, a local indigenous leader, at the time of the settlement of the Kiama district. When the railway was first built south from Sydney, it stopped just north of Kiama at Bombo, where the basalt quarries provided blue metal for concrete, building railway lines and roads.
Bombo headland has geological formations of hexagonal basalt columns of international significance, abutting sandstone formations, which have reversed magnetic polarities from a time when the North and South Magnetic Poles were reversed. Rocks of Permian age throughout the world show a reversed polarity and this unique formation is used for “intercontinental paleomagnetic correlation of Late Palaeozoic rock sequences.”
Quarrying began at Bombo headland in the 1880s. Basalt was carried to Sydney by dozens of small vessels known as the Stone Fleet until the railway line was built. The Irish miners employed to quarry the basalt, left rock columns and walls adjacent to the ocean protecting the works from the onslaught of the sea.
Today part of the old quarry is used for a sewerage plant, but that is largely concealed from the coastal walk that wends its way around the headland from Kiama via Bombo to the surf break known locally as The Boneyard, and then on to Jones Beach and Minnamurra.
On most days the headland is deserted, with the exception of seabirds watching for fish from the columns, just above the waves which pound along the walls.
Here and there a few broken columns reveal their hexagonal structure. Where waves crash through gaps, it seems as though the fortress wall has been breached.
The break in the wall opens a window to the ocean, clouds and the swirling tides.
On occasions the surging sea rushes over these formations, and once I got struck by water falling over the other side. Although the headland resembles a ruined fortress, or rock amphitheater for waves with seabirds as an audience, local children seemingly also call it Toothbrush Island.
Wave action shots were taken using Kodak TMax 400, except for the last one in series, which was made using Fomopan 100 along with the rest, using Toyo-View 45CF field camera with Nikkor-SW 90mm f/8 lens, and Tiffen Y12 filter. The film sheets were developed in a mix of Xtol (1:2) and Adonal (1:200).
Peter de Graaff 