Great Ocean Road Day #2
(written on February 5th)
We started the day with a fresh breakfast with the eggs that Roderick left for us. He has a slew of little chickens that lay eggs and he provided us with some of them. They were delicious! We finished the morning with a drive to Apollo Bay, the town about 10 minutes from the farm we are staying on. We will pass through Apollo Bay tomorrow morning on our way to Port Campbell. We thought that we would head to the beach and go swimming, but after putting our feet in the water and with the waves being really small, we decided to just relax. Ilise and I went for a long walk on the beach while the kids just hung out on the beach.
After the walk Ilise went for a walk in town and Noah joined her. Of course Noah found something that he needed to buy, with his own money of course. I don’t know how he is my kid since I can’t stand shopping! After about 90 minutes of lying on the beach it was time to go back to the farm. We picked up some food for lunch and some finishing touches for our dinner and headed back to Wongarra Farm. Noah spent the afternoon doing school work while Drew and I went for a walk down the mountain. I really enjoy my walks with the kids on this trip. We get time to get exercise and talk about what is going on in their lives.
When we got back it was time to start preparing dinner. We had purchased some steaks the day before and I prepared them, along with some fresh veggies, the left over rice from last night and the pasta from lunch. It was a really yummy dinner and then we started to play a trivia game with the whole family. It was a lot of fun!
After the game I decided to head to the beach for the second night in a row to learn how to take pictures of flowing water at dusk. When we were in Maui a few years ago I saw a photographer taking pictures of this amazing rock that the waves were crashing over and he showed me the resulting images. It was very cool, so I have been trying to replicate that for a number of years. I have been able to do it when taking pictures of rivers and other flowing water, but never in the ocean. I tried it last night and it didn’t work at all, but I learned a few things.
Tonight, I got some really cool pictures, especially of the orange sky over Apollo Bay. There wasn’t anything really special to take a picture of, so I found some rocks with water crashing over it. Some of the pictures came out really nice, but now I know what settings I need to get the effect I’m looking for. I know that on this trip I will get a few opportunities to use this effect either here in Australia or in Greece. There is something about the ocean that just touches my soul. I feel so much more at home when I’m around the ocean.
To a life well lived!
Larry Kesslin 