A nice night for it!

With winter approaching far too fast for my liking, I am making the most of any good weather which comes along. So, with that in mind, I hit the river late on a sunny afternoon for a short paddle between Breakwater and Prince's Bridge with a stop along the way for a picnic dinner with the family.

James Harrison and Barwon Bridges, looking east

The end result was a swag of scenic sunset shots (conveniently enough I was paddling west) and a swag of dark, often blurry, shots after sunset as I attempted to come to terms with the finer points of aperture size and shutter speed on my fairly simple "point and shoot" camera.

The McIntyre bridge, looking west

Sunset over Highton

Still looking west

As the light levels dropped, the cockies and corellas which had been screeching in the trees and wheeling overhead while we were eating dinner, dispersed and now, the usual array of birds was replaced by "bats". By bats, I actually mean Grey-headed Flying-foxes which I looked at in a previous post.


As night falls and the full moon rises

Fortunately I am used to the noise these guys make (they often frequent the large Silky oak tree in my backyard), otherwise, the sound of their squeaks and squawks along what were by now very quiet and dark banks, could have been rather disturbing. As it was, the occasional splash as something unseen broke the water's surface seemed far more prominent than during daylight.


In town it is never really dark

By the time darkness (such as it was on a clear night with a full moon) descended, there were no pedestrians on the riverbank and no-one on the water either - except me and the occasional waterbird who I think was as surprised to see me as I was to see them.

Everything looks different at night

As well as everything looking and sounding different in darkness, it smelled different as well. What little breeze there had been on dusk disappeared completely. The surface of the river was like glass and the moisture level in the atmosphere increased noticeably, giving everything that fresh, cool smell.

Breakwater Bridge under the full moon

Finally, after a very different paddle, I made it back to Breakwater in time to hear a train tooting its way towards Geelong from Marshall Station. Time then, as I waited for a pick up, for one last shot...

The 20:39 train from Waurn Ponds crosses the Barwon