Thursday, June 10, 2010

Mornington

Back at the start of autumn Deb and I shot down to the Mornington Peninsular at the south end of Port Phillip Bay.
As you can see from the map (copied from Google Maps) Melbourne Sits at the Northern end of the bay.The first place we stopped was Rosebud about 80 kilometres (50 miles) south of the city.

Well inside the bay Rosebud was sheltered from a southerly wind on the day.Along the beach is a fairly rare sight for Oz, brightly painted beach huts.Deb and I had a bit of a poke around.

Deb set off across this bridge at one end of the beach while I did my usual trick of playing with my camera.This stern looking fellow is a “Pacific Gull”. They are a large species of gull around the size of a fully grown chicken.

This guy is actually a juvenile pacific gull, they don’t grow adult plumage until their second year.

I’ve included a piccie of the “baby” with some more regular silver gulls to give you an idea of the relative size.After snapping away happily I noticed that in the distant haze I could see the skyscrapers of the city poking up over the horizon.After a bit Deb came back with an abalone shell she had found among the rocks.
On the way back to the car I snapped this Banksia flower
Then we hopped back on the road for a short drive to overlook the open ocean of Bass Straight (near Portsea on the map).
Unlike the bay the wind was whipping into the shore and only a few hardy souls could be seen strolling on the beach.One final sight before we turned for home was this wave cut arch which is known as “London Bridge”. There are at least a couple of other natural arches along the Victorian coast named after London Bridge.
Aussies can be a boring lot when it comes to place names.

6 comments:

Wendy Ramer, Author said...

You are a great photographer. Of course, you had great subjects to work with, but still, it's all beautiful. The second post I've read this morning about loving where you live. (Through the Looking Glass wrote about Nova Scotia.) So as I commented on her post, I'm inspired to revisit my own hometown area of South Florida. Maybe I'll even post pics soon. Stay tuned.

Hannah said...

oooh, I love seashells! Gorgeous.

And I would love to investigate those beach huts. ;)

Kyna said...

"Aussies can be a boring lot when it comes to place names."

Haha! There are websites dedicated to some of the weird city names we have in Canada...such as 'Medicine Hat', 'Moose Jaw', 'Saskatoon', 'Winnipeg'...most of them are of Aboriginal origin. I bet Australia has quite a few of them herself :)

Jaydee Morgan said...

Everytime I see your pictures, I'm inspired to explore my own surroundings a little more closely :)

Old Kitty said...

I love the beaks of those gulls! Fantastic!

The seashell is huge!! Blimey!! And your London Bridge is a wonder!

Lovely pics, beautiful place - great to see these brightly painted and individual beach huts too.

Take care
x

Al said...

Hi Wendy,
Thank you, I certainly try with the piccies.
I’d love to see a bit about South Florida. Piccies of your patch would be good too!

Hi Hannah,
I love seashells as well. You don’t often find nice ones any more (too many people picking them up I guess.)
I guess poking around the huts would be interesting

Hi Kyna,
We have some amazing Aboriginal p lace names here too: Wooloomooloo, Coolongolook, Mulumbimby, Murwullambah to name a few.
But our English language place names tend to be a bit tedious. For example a Richmond, and a Windsor in basically every state.

Hi Jaydee,
Thank you! Have fun poking around your neck of the woods.

Hi Jennifer,
Aren’t the gulls amazing? And the youngsters so different from their parents.
Abalone are beautiful shells (and they taste good too)! Pleased you like ‘London Bridge’.
The huts are fun, and as I said quite unusual in Oz. In most city beaches there are combined changing rooms and shower blocks. At some there are ‘surf clubs’, but at the vast majority of beaches there is nothing. Just sea and sand.