Cora Lynn Falls

My piccie of the day is of the Cora Lynn Falls near Marysville in Central Victoria.
They seem more of a cascade than a fall proper (if you ask me).

Perhaps confusingly there are actually two waterfalls in different parts of Victoria called the "Cora Lynn" falls. I have no idea why the two different locations have the same name.

Perhaps there is an interesting story in that!

I caught this piccie a  while ago, it was a rainy miserable day to go trekking through the rainforest but worth it in the end.
 

Hunting part II

Well I hope this isn’t a case of too much of a good thing…

From the Phantom Falls Deb and I went back to the car.

We drove further up the valley. The road (not quite sure it deserves to be called a road) got narrower and muddier, if I wasn’t a ‘bushie’ (a person who grew up in the country) I wouldn’t have dared to keep going without an all wheel drive. We actually drive a FIAT which is better suited to an autostrada than a bush track. But if you are careful and know what you are doing you can take 2 wheel drives to a surprising range of places.

As we drove we pushed into country I haven’t seen before, we saw other wonderful falls up branches of the valley that we just didn’t get to because it was too wet and too late. (I would have had to walk)
About another seven kilometres up the valley (nearly half an hour at the speed the road made me go) we crossed the Taggerty River.
Which cascades out of the forest by the road (this piccie was taken from the road bridge).

Notice the bush doesn’t seem burnt here? It’s a bit deceptive unfortunately.
This is a pocket of true rainforest in the Mountain Ash forest that surrounds it. Mountain Ash forest is a eucalyptus dominated ‘wet sclerophyll’ forest for the botanically minded of you. And like most eucalyptus forests will burn at the drop of a hat.

Proper rainforest like this pocket is usually too wet to burn but in the extreme conditions of Black Saturday in 2009 the crowning fire that raced through the forest around has effectively singed off the crowns of these trees.

Many of the larger ones are dying which is a real shame, especially as many of the trees in this pocket are rare Antarctic Beeches.

Back to my story.

The section of the river that cascades under the road is just the start. To my surprise just off the road is a beautifully built path.
There are a whole series of these lovely stairs that zig-zag through the trees up the side of the ‘Taggerty Cascades’.The stairs take you past a series of views of the cascades which divide and redivide between the trees and the granite boulders.

This boulder in the middle of one branch of the stream is about eight feet across.Just below on a smaller branch the water pours through under some boulders.
Then at the foot of these sweet stairs this mini cascade let me get my favourite shot of the day.A close-up with a very long exposure to compensate for the rapidly fading light.
Remember it was raining and it is winter with short days down this way.

One last piccie to give you an idea of how dark it was under the trees when I finished shooting. For shooting waterfalls you generally want low light so you can take long exposures, but this was getting ridiculous.So it was back to the car to weave our way out of the valley.

I think I caught my trophies from my waterfall hunt.

The only problem is I want to go back!

Snob?

Well I have had a hectic day at work again. The reality (unfortunately) is that services for homeless people get busier in tough economic times.

Overall Oz has fared well in the difficult times that have raged around the world. But things haven’t exactly been rosy, and Victoria is the state that has fared the worst. Which means with unemployment increasing, homelessness has increased.

But enough doom and gloom for one night.

I want to thank everybody who has commented for their feedback on the two versions of my blurb. What you guys have provided is invaluable.

Thank you.

Well now for some fun with some piccies!

I want to share some piccies I took the weekend after my trip to Beechworth.

They were taken at a place called Snob’s Creek. The creek rolls down from the highlands near Eildon about two hours drive from home.

The piccies I am sharing were all taken on my camera, but the credits for these piccies have to be shared between me and Lu, my youngest.

To get to the falls you have to climb down a couple of sets of stairs. Lu paused to turn and take this piccie back up the path.I took a similar one also aiming to capture the roots of this smallish Mountain Ash as they grow over the boulders of the slope. The path parallels the creek as it tumbles down a series of small cascades towards the falls.
At this one I set up the camera to take some long exposure shots in the dark under the forest canopy.The blurred figure in the fore ground is me. Once I set the camera I went around the front to look up into the tree branches.
Lu started clicking away to try and capture me. But of course the exposure was far too long for portraits so I was just a blur.

Another shot from the same position.A third zooming in on the lower cascade.
A fourth looking at the upper cascade.Lu took the camera as we continued down. She paused to take this shot looking down at a small rotting stump.Then, budding photographer that she is, she took another after removing the bottle cap. Can you see she has inadvertently caught her toes at the bottom of both shots :-).

After a bit of a struggle I prised the camera from her hands to shoot this rather attractive boulder in the middle of the stream.Finally, I took a pile of piccies at the bottom of the falls.
And me being me, stuffed nearly all of them. I didn’t notice I still had the ISO set for the dark of the forest so nearly all of the piccies in the relatively bright conditions at the bottom were hopelessly over exposed.

This is the only one that is worth sharing.
But in an effort to be an optimist I am going to take this as a good thing.
Because I stuffed so many exposures, I have the perfect excuse to head back (in the not too distant future) to get some more.

Not that I really need an excuse.