A long story to a short answer

A few weeks ago most of the five of us (Deb + me, E our eldest and Lu our youngest) went for a weekend drive to part of the Gippsland coast in east Victoria.
Io stayed home with Lilli (no dogs allowed in national parks in Oz)

It was by our standards a fairly short run of only about 2 and a half hours drive each way.
Anyway after having a relaxed lunch and poking around a bit we ended up at the rugged coast line between Cape Paterson and Inverloch.

Deb and Lu looked at the weather,

which was really threatening to rain and elected to stay near the car.

E and I decided to climb the stairs down to the beach to have a look at the rocks out towards this interesting feature called “The Eagles’ Nest”.


To give an idea of scale I would guess it is around 5 stories high with the cliffs about double that.

Despite the threatening storm and the late afternoon we took advantage of the fact that the tide was falling quickly. You can see as we crossed the area the platform was becoming exposed by the retreating tide.

Interestingly the rock platform at the base  is made up of sedimentary rock that was formed on a flood plain back in the Cretaceous about 115,000,000 years ago.

One beach to the east is the only current dinosaur fossil dig in Victoria known as the “Dinosaur Dreaming” dig. And in 1903 just to the west was the first discovery of a dinosaur fossil in Oz known as  the “Cape Paterson Claw”.
So as well as the usual hunt for starfish and periwinkles I had my eye open for fossils.
As we got closer to the Eagles’ Nest
I began noticing literally dozens of chunks of petrified wood in the stone.
This was the largest piece we found.
I like the way the water was rippling across it in this piccie.

And from another angle with E’s hand to give a scale.

As you can see it was a decent size and beautifully preserved. It was hard to believe it felt like solid rock, not wood, to the touch.

Now we come to part of the point of this whole story.
One of the local denizens was this White-faced Heron, Egretta novaehollandiae

I took a few shots of him before he took off.

For those of you who guessed feathers for this image you were 100% right.
 
Here is the un-cropped piccie

I told you I wasn’t going to be tricky!

Wild Weather

Well that one wasn't too hard: four out of eight people who commented said water or ocean. Although some of those did have a bet either way :-)

I was really impressed with some of the other guesses, pencil, ultrasound and wood.

Well here it is

I shot this on Saturday during my break. Deb and I acted as tour guides for Deb's sister down along the Great Ocean Road. It is meant to be high summer down here in Oz, but it was blowing a gale most of the time. And on Saturday evening it really clouded over. You can see the sun is bravely trying to poke through the incoming storm!

Fortunately there were periods when the clouds blew off but the wind was constant.

It is a beautiful section of the coast and I can never get enough shots of it. I will post more over the next little while but I simply haven't had time to sort them yet.

A sample though, The Twelve Apostles at sunset the evening before. Unfortunately the clouds had built up out at sea and robbed the evening of the rich sunset colour.

This was taken the same afternoon as my “What is it Wednesday” shot. I thought it illustrated how wild the sea was getting. These cliffs are about 45 metres (147 feet) tall. Those are navigation masts on top not golf flags!

What is it Wednesday

First of all I would like to wish you all a belated from Melbourne. I had intended a quick post on Christmas day but my plans were derailed.
We went out for a very non traditional BBQ for Christmas (almost no washing up).
Very relaxing (did I say no washing up?)

Why a BBQ? Well remember Christmas means summer in Oz and the weather seemed perfect.

Anyway we headed home in the early afternoon just in time to beat a terrible storm that lashed Melbourne late Christmas Day.

There was hail, terrible winds, and rain that caused flash-flooding across the city.

A section of the railway line I commute on every day has apparently been washed away (I haven't had a look yet). The shopping centre where Lu does her part time job has lost half its roof.

As for us we had two trees come down, one of which managed to fall between two of our cars (mine and our eldest's) without hitting either.

Our power went out for hours which kind of meant no posting!

Just as the sun set the storm began moving across and I braved the elements to capture this eerie sunset peeking under the edge of the storm (and droplets of rain still overflowing our gutters.)Speaking of droplets, to the business of the day.

What on Earth do you think this is?

Happiness

Way back on the 8th of June Myrna from 'Night Writer' passed the ‘Happiness 101 Award’ on to me. Things have been so hectic round here that I haven’t had the chance to acknowledge Myrna’s kindness until now.
Thank you Myrna!

I haven’t quite been able to work out if there are any ’rules’ to this award so I am just going to have to follow Myrna’s lead and list ten ‘things that make me happy’ and pass the award on to a few other people.

So with out further ado.

Ten things that make me happy (in no particular order).

Sunsets

Hall, Australian Capital Territory

Writing

The cover of my soon to be published book Veiled in shadows

The Aussie Bush

Fitzroy Falls, Morton National Park NSW.

Architecture

Fitzroy Library, Melbourne Victoria

Flora

‘Pink Fingers’ a tiny native orchid, Gundaroo NSW.

Fauna

Eastern Grey Kangaroo, Honeysuckle Creek Australian Capital Territory

Archaeology

Milecastle 37 Northern Gate, Hadrian’s Wall, Northumberland England.

Oceans

Bay Of Martyrs, Victoria.

History

German Gun Breech, Captured by Diggers Western Front WWI

Thunderstorms

Storm-cloud near Toowoomba Queensland

I will pass the award to a number of bloggers around whose blogs I frequently lurk:

B. at ‘B. Miller Fiction’

Mary at ‘The Ethos The Logos The Pathos’

Theresa at ‘Substitute Teacher’s Saga’

Hanna at ‘Musings of a Palindrome’

Cynthia at ‘Cynthia Reese’

Nothing Profound

I thought I’d share a little of the weather we have been having over the past week.

Late the other afternoon we had a huge storm blow in from the North-East.

It was still well and truly daylight but in an instant it was half-light.

You’ll have to excuse the poor quality of these photos, but I was trying to prevent my camera from getting too wet.The wind, as you can see was driving the rain across our neighbourhood. Inside a minute of this rain and our gutters were overflowing like crazy.In the North of Oz when it rains it tends to pour. Cloudbursts aren’t as common down here in Victoria, but we certainly have our share.

The sound of a downpour like this on a steel roof has to be heard to be believed.

Then, as usually happens with this type of storm, it was gone.

An hour later the clouds now moving away to the West gave us a pretty sunset.