Tag: Road Trip

Lockdown Life: Victorian Goldfields During COVID-19

Photos from Victoria’s goldfields during COVID-19 lockdown.

Well, it’s been a long time between blog posts … and the world has definitely changed! Melbourne began a COVID-19 lockdown in late March, before a gradual easing at the start of winter. And after a calamitous second wave of infections, right now we’re (hopefully) at the tail-end of a second, even stricter lockdown.

My wife and I were fortunate to be able to spend many weekends (when we could travel outside of Melbourne) at Tarnagulla in central Victoria. I spent some time exploring the bush fires trails on my mountain bike. Here’s a few iPhone images.

It’s a beautiful, peaceful part of the world … and we can’t wait to get back there.

Loddon River at Newbridge, Victoria
Loddon River at Newbridge, Victoria
Loddon River at Newbridge, Victoria
Loddon River at Newbridge, Victoria
Tarnagulla Rainbow
Tarnagulla Rainbow above the Wesleyan Methodist church and Poverty Mine poppet head.
Broadway, Dunolly.
The view from Mt Moliagul.
Tarnagulla Track.
The track up to Mt Moliagul. Worth the trek for the view…
Murderers Hill, on the road between Tarnagulla and Dunolly, where a double murder took place in 1857.
One of the sand-scrape greens of Tarnagulla & District Golf Course in the dusk light.
Tarnagulla bush track.
On the banks of the Loddon River, near Poseidon Reef. Two guys were in the news a couple of weeks ago because they dug up a $350,000 gold nugget right behind those far trees on the left. Read about it here.
Bendigo’s grand court house … doing it’s best Parisian impression.
Advertisement

East Coast Surf Road Trip With Just An iPhone

Crescent Head beach panorama
Panorama taken with iPhone.

iPhones make it all too easy! In fact nowadays I hardly bother taking my pocket Canon digital camera with me, let alone my new Canon EOS 1D mark IV. So I thought I’d try posting a blog directly from my iPhone with photos from a recent roadtrip from Melbourne to the Gold Coast and edited using just the phone’s auto-enhance & panorama function as well as Instagram, Luminance and Pic Jointer apps.

1800km, 3 days, 4 surfs … and 5 McDonald’s stops. What a road trip.
Hume Hwy/Holbrook. Why is there a Submarine in the middle of NSW?
Goulburn, NSW.
Who said it was a dirty, industrial town? Crystal clear water in Newcastle.
Inviting…
Merewether, Newcastle.
Merewether Beach, Newcastle.
Lighthouse Beach, Port Macquarie.
Port Mac’s lighthouse.
Nature at her finest.
Mother Nature turning it on … and iPhone’s panorama function doing work!
On the road through a scary forest, guided by the moon…
Summer traffic jams in Kempsey. NSW roads are the worst!
Crescent Head. What a magical little place!
Into the blue (and green).
Looks nice here, but a shithole of a town.
Endless sea of cane…
Surf stop in the fading light on the last day.

And the result. Well, WordPress ain’t the easiest beast to tame on a 3 inch touch screen – I couldn’t work out how to change the order of the gallery photos, or caption them. So I think I’ll stick to computer blogging from now on…

Roadtrippin’ through the middle…

After the Oz winter, a literal seachange was in order. My brother, El Rad, had moved down from Brisbane to the Gold Coast and had a spare bedroom…so it would have been remiss of me to not take up his offer of a place to stay 150 metres from the beach and within 15 drive minutes of four world-famous surf breaks! If i could handle the heat, it would be a great time to learn to surf better and generally just enjoy the good life the Goldy has to offer.

So back in early November i packed up the orange beast and headed north up the Hume, Via the Newell Hwy through the middle of NSW and into Qld. It was two days, 1800km and 18.5 hours of driving time according to my dashboard. I had my serious camera gear with me, but i always like the flexibility of small, pocket-sized point-and-shoot cameras. I have a little Sony Cybershot 8.5 megapixel camera, as well as a couple of Minolta film instamatics that i often load with slide (transparency) film and cross-process for interesting and unexpected results. It keeps photography fun!

Here are some of the photos i took of all the weird things along the way… Click the heading to see more:

After the Oz winter, a literal seachange was in order. My brother, El Rad, had moved down from Brisbane to the Gold Coast and had a spare bedroom…so it would have been remiss of me to not take up his offer of a place to stay 150 metres from the beach and within 15 drive minutes of four world-famous surf breaks! If i could handle the heat, it would be a great time to learn to surf better and generally just enjoy the good life the Goldy has to offer.

So back in early November i packed up the orange beast and headed north up the Hume, Via the Newell Hwy through the middle of NSW and into Qld. It was two days, 1800km and 18.5 hours of driving time according to my dashboard. I had my serious camera gear with me, but i always like the flexibility of small, pocket-sized point-and-shoot cameras. I have a little Sony Cybershot 8.5 megapixel camera, as well as a couple of Minolta film instamatics that i often load with slide (transparency) film and cross-process for interesting and unexpected results. It keeps photography fun!

Here are some of the photos i took of all the weird things along the way… Click the photos to see them larger: