Hill End NSW

Hello!

In my previous post I showed you photos from my country weekend to the Bathurst region and the old gold rush town of Sofala. This post is devoted to Hill End which is nearby. We went there the same afternoon. Hill End is well preserved and possibly a bit more touristy than Sofala but the spooky feeling of never quite being alone pervades just as much.

There are plaques in front of the major buildings, all of which have been filmed and painted by artists, nowadays frequented by tourist,s a few grumpy locals and kangaroos.

This buildings featured in a painting by Russell Drysdale. See some of his works here 

The store was open. I am still regretting not going in for a look but I'll be back, hopefully in a few months time..

Here in Australia we talk about having 'kangaroos loose in the top paddock' but I have never seen them in a churchyard before.

I don't know what this was. Maybe a well? 

This is the local 'pottery barn'..but we couldn't find anybody!

The post office was as quaint as the rest of the town, so was the Police Station.

With that I'll leave you and go back to the modern world.

Have a good weekend,

Val.

New Experiences

Last weekend I went to the country towns of Bathurst and Mudgee with a friend. I have seen relatively little of inland Australia and I wanted to see 'the outback'. Now while these towns certainly don't qualify for that description which is short for 'out the back of nowhere' they were certainly a change from Sydney and I want to do it again! I want to go further and see Broken Hill and the desert then go north to see Kakadu. One day.

In the meantime, after spending the weekend and photographing the old gold rush towns of Hill End and Sofala, we headed home over the tableland and through the Blue Mountains via Lithgow and what did we see but snow. SNOW! It is a once every two or three decades event to see snow like this - it's very rare here. We drove through it. The car had no anti-freeze so there was no stopping but I took these at low speed from the passenger seat. We were lucky to get through, the roads were closed for a time yesterday as the the snow had continued all week.

Sydney siders don't get to drive in snow as a rule, so only those with four wheel drives were brave enough to pull over to have a play..

Everyone slowed down to get a good look. Snow on gum trees!

It's snowing it's snowing!

Then as we wound our way further down the road the snow was replaced by spatters of rain.

My own reflection.

I'll put up some photos of the gold rush days next week,

Have a good weekend,

Val.

Reflections of a fun fair

Last weekend I met up at dusk with my photo group. Albert park in Parramatta, western Sydney, had been turned into a Winter Wonderland Festival with carnival rides and a ice rink and flashing lights and music and a skating show. We went with the aim of getting some dusk/night shots. We had to try to get what we could without using a tripod and that made for a real challenge.

It was a lot of fun. You could tell a lot of people had not ice skated before ;)
Ever on the lookout for a good reflection, I saw carnival lights in a window across the road. I was trying not to shoot cars but I kept these shots...

Edit. I have just linked to James' Weekend Reflections (see his blog on my sidebar).  It's amazing where people find reflections.

Have a good weekend,

Val.

Park Hyatt Hotel

Going through some photos from a couple of months back I found this reflection shot of an inner city boutique hotel and Oh yeah there's this little bridge in the background..

Have a reflective weekend,

Val.

I love macro

If I could afford to buy a high powered microscope, attach a camera, then photograph the exquisite detail of the natural world I would. But one step at a time. I've been experimenting with dandelions, white backgrounds made of typing paper and a hand held torch and I came up with this.

Do you like it? 

xx Val.