The Hunters Lap of Australia
"Gone Bush"
Monochrome Mayhem
Something a little different for this post.
Many of you may not know that we have taken a little downtime from our trip to catchup with some of our family on the Gold Coast – specifically the Gold Coast Hinterland of sunny Queensland. We had pre-planned our route to swing by this time of year as this is generally a period that has a balanced mix of warm days, cool nights and little wind.
Well …not exactly!
Last week, June 3, a low pressure system built up offshore off Sunshine and Gold Coast. Closely observing the Bureau of Meteorology (BOM) website and sites for road closures, I decided to drive down from where we were staying on Tamborine Mountain to Coolangatta’s Snapper Rocks to see if I could shoot the reported 4-6M swells – i.e, safely. It turned out to be more arduous than first thought, largely because the heavy and relentless rain and wind was so constant.
After arriving at the Snapper Rocks carpark a little after 2pm, and with scores of other onlookers, I waited a little over an hour in the car for the rain to ease, but it didn’t. The ambient light in the mid afternoon was becoming more like dusk. I decided the rain was not going to abate before the light did and decided to get out amongst it. I put on my raincoat, wrapped the camera and lens up in a thick towel and swiftly headed up on to a small headland adjacent to the carpark. I managed no more than 90 seconds before my Sony A7R camera decided it wanted out and switched off – presumably from moisture ingress.
Despite the camera and myself almost drowning in the rain, thankfully though, we did manage to roll off several shots and here are a few of them.
So there you have it – a few basic monochrome (B&W) shots of the storm. In case you were wondering what the halo effect is on some of the shots, I had to do a bit of research to figure this out. Apparently, this is the heavy rain being forced upward and somewhat compressed by the strong wind back over the waves and the halo is ambient light reflecting off these rain particles. In other words, a good lens can render information the human eye cannot see.
The other news is my trusty A7R recovered from its first decent shower and, to this point, with no immediate signs of ill-effect. The rainfall according to the BOM for 24Hrs on that day on Tamborine Mountain was 267mm (or 10.5 inches in the old scale) and was the highest recorded rainfall in the Goldcoast region.
Geoff
The Hunters Lap of Australia 
Hi great to see you are all still having a great time and catching up with family! We have also been catching up with family, we are in Townsvlle for a few more weeks before heading back south and moving into our house in July! Love to catch up again with you all so if you are in or around Bargara drop in! Safe travels keep safe love to you all. Xox 😘🌈🎉🎊
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Hi Ray & Maureen – we are sure you guys are tearing Townsville up and enjoying yourselves. We are still in the hinterland with family (and the wind and rain ATM too) and will be here for another week or so before we finalise our next route plans – will call before set off for the final couple of weeks to see if we can meet up somewhere along the line. G
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Wow, Geoff! The photos are incredible!
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Thanks Mel – it was fun taking them!
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It certainly was an impressive storm Geoff, great shots too. Travel safely and enjoy the adventure. Quinton
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Thank you, Quinton.
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