Southern ocean waves, wild seas, sunrises, a yellow-tailed black cockatoo and a border-koolie called Magpie.

As autumn fades and winter marches in from the south the air and the ocean get colder, and dark clouds and squall lines become more common than blue skies. Glassy waist-high green waves are replaced by double and triple overhead waves of consequence generated by storms deep in the southern ocean.

Marked seasonal variation is one of the things I love about living at a southern latitude.

Sunrise over the ocean from Apollo Bay beach

The dawn glow a few minutes before sunrise over silhouetted Cape Patton.

Late autumn dawn from Tuxion beach at Apollo Bay.

Apollo Bay harbour.

Sunrise over Cape Patton.

Glassy green waves at the end of my street

I have a waterproof housing for my old iPhone 8 (and you guessed it, no later model iPhone will fit in the housing). Fortunately the camera on my superseded iPhone 8 is still functioning well. The housing has a 6″ diameter dome port, which is a plastic half sphere which allows the tiny lens on the iPhone camera to take a split image over and under the water. Bisecting a picture in this way is easy with the housing, and impossible without it. I’ve owned this housing for some years, and it has never leaked. There is an o-ring seal on the housing which, in addition to being kept clean, requires a light application of silicone grease from time to time to keep it fully waterproof.

Right at the end of autumn Apollo Bay and surrounds had a full day of clear blue skies, no wind and small glassy waves rolling in all day. The air was pleasantly cool and the ocean invigoratingly cold for swimmers (unless well covered in neoprene as I was). I swam offshore on a high tide from the beach at the end of my street. I swam out to the sand bars where these glassy waves were rising and breaking gently. Visibility underwater was very good. This image shows clearly the wave forms in the sandy seabed, with tesselated filtered-light patterns drifting across them. It also captures the view I had of the unbroken face of the wave and the white water down the line as it broke over shallower water. The over/under shot can be tricky at times with simple equipment such as I was using. Getting the nearby seabed and wave and the distant shore features all in focus is a challenge. I didn’t really succeed here, but it’s close enough to convey the wonderful view I had from my vantage point in the waves with my goggles on.

The view north towards Wild Dog Creek, which flows to the sea through the valley just left of the wave crest in this photo.

The view south towards the line of trees where I entered the water. I kept swimming to wherever the waves seemed to be breaking most photogenically. Without specifically intending to do so, during my hour or so swanning about in these waves I swam around 800m chasing the best waves. I like the constantly changing swirls and textures on the surface and the clean glassy face of the wave as it reaches the sandbar and rises then breaks. The sight of a wave of this quality from this vantage point, notwithstanding that it is small, would please every surfer, ski-paddler, boogie-boarder, SUP rider, body-surfer, swimmer or someone like me just floating around at the spot where I took this photo.

A breaking wave as seen from inside the wave.

That’s the blue of the sky on the top right through the cascading lip of the wave as it broke and kept that cylinder of white water rotating until its force was spent. The light green on the lower left is the sunlight shining on the seabed through a couple of metres of clear water behind the breaking wave. The darker area between the sunlit seabed and the rolling whitewater is the shadow cast on the seabed by the line of whitewater leading the final charge of the breaking wave.

This is a view familiar to those who have paddled, swum or trod water behind a breaking wave. If the face of a rising and breaking wave is the show, this view of a wave is definitely back stage. But it’s a perspective I always enjoy. In offshore-wind conditions and larger surf, spray blows back over the wave in a large curved mane and hits the surface of the water well behind the wave like heavy rain. It pings off a neoprene hood like hail on a raincoat hood. But this wave was small, and the wind was soft and gentle.

Mellow autumn conditions at Kennett River

Another calm and cloudless late-autumm day saw a handful of longboarders at Kennett River enjoying an uncrowded mellow early session before the tide came in.

Strong wind and rising swell on coast near Apollo Bay

The mellow conditions of late autumn were dismissed by a single weather system that marched across the state as winter arrived. Ahead of the cold front there were very strong northerly and north-westerly winds (offshore winds for local east and south facing beaches). The energy of storms in the deeper southern latitudes created swell which travelled long distances to the Victorian coast. The early rising swell lines pushed ashore into very strong winds.

On Apollo Bay beach near Wild Dog Creek, strong winds flattened surf and blew the tops off breaking waves as the rising swell arrived. The spray behind these waves would have stung the face of any surfers directly behind the wave.

East of Apollo Bay, the strong winds played havoc with the spray blowing off close-out shorebreaks such as this. Instead of parallel and neatly curved arcs of spray as occur over a breaking wave in a steady offshore wind, the gusting strong wind blew the spray into flailing disarray as shown. The hint of clour on one of the fingers of spray on the right of the image was a split second appearance of a rainbow fragment.

A local point break with a bit of a reputation as its powerful waves break over a shallow reef. It went unsurfed on this day.

Glimpse of Apollo Bay in the distance as the swell rolls in over the reefs near Skenes Creek.

Storm out to sea viewed over solid swell from the beach at the Aire River mouth

A winter ocean view.

Waves on Little Henty Reef as autumn turns to winter

Strong winds and sizeable swell created these waves breaking on Little Henty Reef, just south of Apollo Bay. BIrds at top right give some indication of scale.

Not all waves end their journey peacefully.

The emerald eye.

A sizeable barrel forms as this wave hits Little Henty Reef.

The dark horizontal line is exposed reef. This wave was one with the lot.

Crushing shore break over the reef at Hayley Point, Marengo.

Little Henty reef teeming with life – crested terns and Australian fur seals. There are more seals present in this image than might be noticed at first glance.

Peterborough coast with big swell and strong winds

View to the south west from the lookout point at Peterborough.

Wild coast between Port Campbell and Peterborough

Explosion of spray some distance from the cliffs in big swell and very strong winds, between Peterborough and Port Campbell. This only occurred once while I was watching.

Waves hitting the cliffs between Peterborough and Port Campbell

West of Port Campbell on the Vic west coast, backwash (water flowing back out to sea) from waves (such as the wave in the image below) hitting a cliff (as shown in the three images above) would sometimes collide with incoming waves. This resulted in unique shapes such as a twisting ‘barrel’ mouth twice the height of the wave (see enlargement of this phenomenon two photos below) and a column of white water rising from the sea like a whale breaching (three photos below). Every collision produced a different shape. It was quite a show.

(This photo is repeated and discussed further below).

Backwash colliding with incoming waves

This particular collision of waves shows clearly the green back of the wave advancing towards the cliff and the white water of the backwash climbing up and over that wave.

The barrel like no other – sequence of three photos

I witnessed this through the camera lens with my eye on the shutter. It was just an arc of water advancing relatively evenly towards the cliffs. The far end of the wave began to break evenly, then sudddenly the part of the breaking wave nearest to me reared skyward and opened up with a quite fast rotating motion to reveal this emerald coloured barrel-mouth angling upwards.

The rotation continued and the ‘barrel mouth’ closed as quickly as it formed. There were two visible elements of the sphere of spray (divided by a near-vertical line) as the opening collapsed. My uneducated guess is that this demonstrates clearly that this was a collision between two waves (the backwash and the wave advancing towards the cliff) travelling in opposite directions. This occurrence was a spectacle such as I had never witnessed before this day.

Solid swell photographed from cliffs at Moonlight Head

This photo was taken from a high cliff quite some distance horizontally from the subject wave. Scale is difficult to assess withou a surfer or a boat in the picture. But the size and power of this wave was impressive.

Secluded valley where the Otway Ranges meet the sea

After the time I had just spent witnessing the the power and might and mystery of the ocean, the contrast was dramatic when I unexpectedly came across this peaceful scene as I rounded a bend on an out-of-the-way dirt road in the Otway ranges. The ridges in the distance are filtered by sea spray in the air, as the valley ended at the ocean’s edge not too far from where this photo was taken. It was late in the day when I took this photo, and the low angle light worked its usual magic late in the golden hour.

When cattle dream.

Living his best life in the Otway Ranges.

Wildlife in and around the Otway Ranges

Eastern grey roos in the Otways near dusk. Apparently I had been noticed.

Black wallaby (aka swamp wallaby) beside a dirt track behind the dunes in the Aire River valley. When I stopped to take this quick photo through the driver’s window on the car, this well fed wallaby stopped eating (leaving the green leaves poking out of his mouth just where you see them), stood up a bit straighter and eyeballed me, and remained perfectly still until I took the shot and moved on. Swamp wallaby coolness under fire.

Female yellow-tailed black cockatoo beside the creek near my house. (Males have a smaller yellow cheek patch, a pink ring around the eyes and a grey-black upper bill).

Playful corellas at dusk.

Magpie

Magpie is now 2 years and 3 months old. He is a wonderful and constant companion. He loves the open and empty beaches near where we live. This photo was taken not long after sunrise.

Magpie was some distance from me when I gave a single whistle to summon him. This photo was taken as he immediately ran towards me. He’s a beautiful dog.

Magpie on a rock at the beach in the early morning light. He had run ahead and disappeared from sight. This is where he reappeared when I whistled, and waited for me to join him.

Magpie listening inently as I tell him what we are doing next. The capacity for complete focus is the secret weapon of the border-collie and the koolie, and hence of the border-koolie.

Magpie likes to play his version of ‘fetch’ in the mornings. It is not a game he tires of. Apparently I wasn’t on my game on this occasion, and he admonished me with this stern, round-eyed ‘What is your problem?!’ look for my delay in throwing the toy for what must have been at least the 20th time. I accepted the criticism, lifted my game and the potentially endless game of ‘fetch’ resumed without further incident.

“Good dog.”