12 of 12, January 2015

Sometime between last night and 8am this morning I changed my plans for the week rather radically. The agenda for the original plan had started out fairly concretely, with the intention of two days at work, after which the plan degenerated into vagueness, with some wishy-washy whim of spending a few days on Maria Island later in the week. Then I (a) learned that the forecast isn’t good, (b) came to the realisation that I’m not even remotely close to being organised to go, and (c) was forced to face the terrifying reality that the number of things I need to do at work before semester starts is definitely frightening and almost certainly impossible.

The positive news was that the forecast for today was good.

It was also the 12th, and I hadn’t really been looking forward to trying to document yet another dull day at the office. (It might have featured 12 pages of the second of the PhD theses that I am re-examining!)

So, I changed plans: I lodged a leave application for today, grabbed the APs, and we took off southwards.

With no great expectation—and faded memories of some rather slow trips in the past—we stopped at Lune River and decided to do the Ida Bay Railway trip out to Deep Hole.

#1. Gum tree trunk against the sky at Lune River.

I clocked the train at up to 13km/hr (it’s a small diesel hauling two carriages on a 2′ gauge railway), which seemed to be faster than I recall from the last trip I did in my teens where I have vague recollections of walking alongside the train or thinking that we could (not permitted now, if it ever was). The rolling stock is unprepossessing and the amenities functional … but the countryside is lovely and it was a glorious day.

#2. Ida Bay, with the remains of the jetty, a boiler and steam engine, and Adamsons Peak in the background.

#3. The railway line heading through the tea-tree scrub.

#4. Nearing the end of the line: looking across to Southport just before reaching Deep Hole.

#5. The beach at Deep Hole.

We stopped briefly for a look at the beach at Deep Hole, but decided not to hang around and wait for a later train, since there were other things we wanted to do (well, which I wanted to do but with a hope that the APs did too, and they seemed to humour me!). We did, however, have time to set the Three Wise Men up for a couple of photos (there are other photos on their Facebook page (these wise men are savvy with regard to social media, although they don’t bother with Twitter since sharing 140 characters between them is difficult (as 140 is not divisible by 3), and, besides, they have no arms and are decidedly mute)).

#6. The Three Wise Men go off the rails.

After rattling our way back to Lune River we returned to the car and then bounced our way around and through the potholes down to Cockle Creek, the southernmost end of roads in Tasmania (and Australia, when it comes right down to it). It was one of those days where the water was a magical blue, and the wind but a zephyr. We didn’t exert ourselves too much, but we certainly enjoyed the views.

#7. Some of the peaks to the north of Rocky Bay/Recherche Bay.

#8. Looking east towards Fishers Point (note to self: must come back and walk out to it).

#9. Beach near Fishers Point viewed from Cockle Creek using the 200mm end of my zoom lens.

#10. Fishers Point as viewed from Cockle Creek itself.

Back at home this evening, I was still kind of in “day off mode” (despite the scarily impossible To Do list) and so I popped down to the river’s edge just after sunset to play with my camera and a neutral density filter (since the best way to deal with a scarily impossible To Do list is to run away). An ND filter reduces the amount of light reaching the lens/film, allowing you to take longer exposures. When water is involved in such long exposures, it takes on an ethereal quicksilver-like character, with a shimmering boundarylessness where it comes into contact with objects.

#11. kunanyi/Mt Wellington and the Tasman Bridge, as viewed from Rose Bay (f13, 30second exposure).

#12. Water and foreshore rocks (f13, 30 seconds).