Bay Textures (another water)

Locked down, and perhaps about to be locked down even more securely, it seems more important than ever to focus on what’s right in front of you. As Victoria struggles to bring down the number of Coronavirus cases I’m grateful that I can still walk by the seaside and, through my mask, take in the shape of the world.

I’ve always been interested in the look of water from above; looking down into it from Avon, impenetrable mostly. I saw an exhibition of Roni Horn’s photography and bought a copy of Another Water, photographs looking down into the Thames.

Another Water (Roni Horn)

[no title] 1999 Roni Horn born 1955 Presented by the American Fund for the Tate Gallery, courtesy of the American Acquisitions Committee 2005, accessioned 2008 http://www.tate.org.uk/art/work/P13059

My little vignettes were taken on an afternoon walk near Mornington Pier this week after work. It was a beautiful winter day with so much to look at, but on this walk it was the textures on the water that attracted my interest: the differences between the two sides of the pier, the little swirls and swells of energy pulsing across the shallow sand, the sense of depth and cold with even the sun swirling on the water. I suggest watching them full-scree, on repeat! Shut out today’s news.

Ripples

The same night, a little further along the beach, a sandbank with tiny waves flickering along, transparent and alive as little fish.

I found it very calming, for a few minutes, to watch these lines of energy arriving and dispersing in the late afternoon sun.

I recommend looping this!

 

The lake at the edge of my world

Bert by Lake Hindmarsh

I seem to remember that I took this photo myself as a kid, maybe I was twelve at the time. It’s my grandfather standing on the edge of Lake Hindmarsh in the Wimmera region in Western Victoria. I remember fishing there and in the Wimmera River. Even then I liked the silhouette of my grandfather here in this shot, liked that it was black and white and liked that I think I captured something of him in a landscape he loved; he grew up in nearby Diapur.

So, next week I’m happy to be heading up to the lake again, and hope to see it full of water again like it is here. It’s been dry for a long time, and I think that seeing it again will be somehow restorative.

Waking in the Blue

I was pleased to see that Famous Reporter magazine has chosen to publish my poem ‘Waking in the Blue*” in its most recent edition. I wrote it in New Zealand while staying at a ‘bach’ perched over the Marlborough Sounds, owned by some friends. We woke up almost surrounded by water, with the sound sometimes as smooth as glass, othertimes wild and swirling with water being thrown into the air. The picture above is one I took there in January this year.

You can read the poem HERE

Walking in the Briars

Walked this morning through the Briars park; doing the short walk and checking out a koalas on a fresh cool morning. Good to see more water in the dams and the creek flowing again after a couple of dry years. Walking back to the car, saw some little trees that had been blown down in the last storm, all cut up into neat pieces, with the vivid colours inside them clear and orange almost.