Melbourne

I wasn’t sure what picture to put up as the Main image for this Melbourne post, none of the hundreds of photos I had taken over the past couple of weeks really jumped out at me as “the one”. I was a little upset with my city scape night shots, I’d spent all day taking photos in the botanic gardens then waited for the sun to set so I could take some night shots only to discover I’d left my tripod back in the caravan. Then after taking perhaps a dozen photos precariously balancing the camera on bollards, signs and anything I could find which was reasonably flay, my camera battery was dead. I walked a couple of kilometres back to my car to find that my spare batteries were also in the caravan rather than where they should be in the car.

I tried to consider what photo encapsulated my thoughts and feelings about Melbourne and I found this difficult. I didn’t mind the city as such, some areas were lovely, but then it was just another city and I’m rapidly going off cities in general.

It’s interesting to see how the city is changing, how many of the older buildings and areas are slowly being swallowed up by bigger and brighter buildings. Above you have the full range, a little old white building in the foreground, then revamped industrial building surrounding and new multi-stories in the background.

This sums up most of the waterfront areas, and many of the upmarket or “better” suburbs. The little old houses are slowly getting swallowed up by concrete and glass. Still I guess these areas are much nicer than out in the burbs where new developments are being constructed in some areas at a surprising rate.

This image isn’t very special, but there’s a soundtrack to go with it, click the play button above and listen to the song while you look closer at the photo, it’s only two minutes long and it’s worth taking 2 minutes out of your life to listen to what Malvina Reynolds has to say, or rather sing. These houses really did all look just the same, and there were hundreds of them stretching off into the distance.

Taking this photo got me into trouble. The sun was dropping in the sky and this industrial area looked interesting so I stopped on the side of the road, walked towards it and took a few snaps. Walking back to the car a security guard pulled over with his lights flashing, wound his window down and said “you weren’t taking photos of the refinery were you?”. I confessed that I didn’t even know it was a refinery. He told me that it’s illegal to take photos of any important infrastructure like refineries, airports and dams. I openly giggled, no photos at airports or dams? I was told to move on, and that I hadn’t been seen or spoken too?  Weird!

While I’m on a roll with strange things, Point Cook coastal park entrance. Look closely. Yes, they are tire spikes on the right hand side. Strange, why would you have tire spikes at a national park?  If anything they are more likely to cause an accident because while I was taking a couple of pictures, one person leaving the park went across to the right hand side of the road rather than drive over the spike strip. I saw this at another park down at Portsea as well, it’s as though they think when people enter a park they will forget what side of the road they are meant to drive on. If they’re going to spike your tires for going into a park on the wrong side of the road, I’ll be especially careful while in any parks not to do anything wrong.

While I was at Werribee there was a lot of rain and we had some high tides. In fact the weather was pretty horrible for a lot of the time I was there, but I still ventured into the CBD a few times to look around.

There are lots of public facilities and people are using them, I would have grabbed a bike to go for a ride except there were none with helmets and I didn’t bring mine with me. For memory it’s only two or three dollars for the bike and there are racks all over town, a fantastic idea for a way to get around.

And people use the facilities, it was a pretty horrible day when I was in here taking photos, blowing a gale and overcast yet there were people everywhere, the paths were packed down by the water.

 

I’ve probably been a little harsh with my thoughts on Melbourne, and I should probably visit when the weather is a little better and spend some more time seeking out the things I like. I did randomly find some lovely little boat houses while I was searching for shells at one stage.

If you’ve read any of my blog up till now, you’ll know that I can’t really let a post go by without slipping in two things, photo’s of shells and macro shots of plants or flowers.

There was a poor gum tree in a car park at a shopping centre and it was covered  in galls.

I struggled finding good shell grit around Melbourne, there were some vast areas of shells along some sections of coast but they were mainly just boring cockle shells or similar large standard fan shaped shells. I did find a couple of spots where I collected some grit, but after sorting, and there was a lot of sorting, it doesn’t really look so great.