Out of the Minds of Andrews: Photos

Showing posts with label Photos. Show all posts

Tuesday, 15 February 2011

Cockle Creek and Recherche Bay

Southern Tasmania is beautiful. Recherche Bay, Cockle Creek… One of the many places that I would love to visit again…

Recherche bay is the site of the first scientific experiments on Australian soil. The French explorer Antoine Raymond Joseph de Bruni d’Entrecasteaux (what a groovy name) landed in 1792 and made a garden and observatory and mapped and named parts of Southern Tasmania, which has resulted in Tasmania having some beautiful French names mixed up with Indigenous and English names. Bruni d’Entrecasteaux’s ships included the Recherche and the Esperance.

One of the goals of Bruni d’Entrecasteaux’s voyage was to try and find the explorer Jean-Francois de Galaup, comte de La Perouse who was last seen in Botany Bay in 1788 heading off towards New Caledonia.

Recherche Bay

"It would be vain of me to attempt to describe my feelings when I beheld this lovely harbour lying at the world's end, separated as it were from the rest of the universe.”
- Antoine Raymond Joseph de Bruni d’Entrecasteaux

Beach at Cockle Creek

Cockle Creek is the southern most point that is assessable in Australia. The beach is beautiful, and when I was there the sky and water were beautiful shades of blue.

Cockle Creek is also host to a sad period in Australia’s history being a centre for whaling in the 1830s. A bronze statue of a Southern Right Whale Cub mourns for all the whales killed in the area. The whalers used to kill the cubs and when the adults heard their cries would run in to see what the matter was and then be killed as well.

Whale statue at Cockle Creek - sculptured by Steven Walker

“The next stop is Antarctica. And it’s not that far away. Standing here, you are closer to Antarctica than you are to Cairns.”
- Australian Government – Department of Resources Energy and Tourism

The southernmost point that you can buy food is Ida Bay. Where naturally I had a Devonshire Tea.

Thursday, 27 January 2011

Cradle Mountain

I’m not that happy with my Cradle Mountain photos – I think I over exposed all of them. They should be less brown and more green, and the water more blue. I’ve tried to play around with colours but with no success as yet. 300 photos ruined. Oh well, I’ll just have to go again.

I like the warning on the Tasmanian Parks & Wildlife Service website: “Visitors should bear in mind, however, that the wild weather of the Tasmanian highlands often shrouds the mountain in cloud”. I drove from Launceston and when I set out the entire sky was covered with cloud. and as I approached the national park, the sky slowly cleared.

This photo was taken from the top of a nice rock (which I’ve forgotten it’s name) and is a very nice place to sit and soak in the atmosphere.
Nikon D3000 – Zoom: 200mm

There is a Tourist Information Centre a couple of k’s before Cradle Mountain, where you can buy your pass to get into the national park, touristy stuff and a map, and a bus ticket. The shuttle bus takes people from the information centre to Lake Dove, and runs every fifteen minutes or so. It is much cheaper than buying a ticket for your car, and there is not much parking at the lake.

There seems to be two types of people who go to Cradle Mountain. Tourists who just want to cross things off their list and don’t want to walk or talk, and serious walkers who are pleasant to talk to.

There is not much to say about Cradle Mountain. It is a beautiful place. And I would like to visit again.

There are a number of walks that can be done. I walked clockwise around Lake Dove, then up the steep section past Lake Wilks to Little Horn and then back via Marions Lookout. This walk took me about four hours, but includes a good half an hour for lunch and a lot of time taking photos.