Tarraleah walks

On the second day of the writing retreat I managed to get up early enough to fit in a quick walk to nearby Tarraleah Falls, which is about a 3.5km return journey. After crossing the pipeline near Tarraleah, the track heads into the bush, which was alive with the sounds of lots of different birds … or perhaps with the sounds of lots of different impersonations of birds done by a few lyrebirds!

The falls face east and so they were just starting to be lit by the morning light, although there was enough contrast between the top and the bottom of the falls to make it difficult to get a nice balanced exposure for the full falls.

From the lookout you can look down on the big tree ferns below (Dicksonia antarctica) and there was a dead tree bedecked with old man’s beard lichen in the river bed that was just catching the sun while rest of the valley floor was in shadow.

It was also fun to zoom in on parts of the falls to photograph some water effects.

In the afternoon, when heads were starting to get a bit befuddled after writing for most of the day, a few of us headed off on another walk. I was under the impression that it was a shorter walk than the one to the falls, but it ended up taking at least as long in terms of time (although this may have been due to the varying speeds of the members of the group). There were a few nice things to photograph on the way, though, including fern croziers, another lichen-encrusted tree, and a slightly battered butterfly.

Tarraleah proved to be a good place for a writing retreat. The dozen or so Faculty members managed quite a lot of work on various papers, thanks to the opportunity to focus on their tasks away from disruptions (email and phone access was limited, which definitely helped), and the walks definitely helped to rejuvenate the mind too.