Our last trip to Australia was in 2001. That was a 4-week trip during which time we were based in Sydney, with Francine’s brother Michel. Our highlight, though, was a 2-week camping trip using his pop-up camper trailer. One place we visited en route was Lake Hume. Lake Hume was created by damming and flooding a valley. Unfortunately, this project was also going to flood the town of Tallangatta so a new town of Tallangatta was built to replace the original. Tallangatta became known as “the town that moved”.
When the water in Lake Hume, a reservoir, is low enough, it is said that some remains of the original Tallangatta can be seen poking above the water. Normally what can be seen are the skeletons of now dead trees. At the time, long before our adopting digital photography, we snapped a rather contre-jour scene across the lake on 50 ASA slide film. Here’s Lake Hume 2001. Memories!
Photographers like trees in water as subjects so Francine was keen to return for a repeat visit in 2017 to see how things might have developed in the intervening 16 years. It was about an hour’s drive away. Memories faded by wine and with no Internet on the road, we couldn’t really remember where our original viewpoint had been. The one we eventually found was clearly a bit further right, with a large tree looming that wasn’t in the original; it certainly wasn’t 16 years of growth, either. The comparison gives the general idea, though. It also shows what flexibility a post-processing digital darkroom makes compared to happy snappy film. Here’s Lake Hume 2017.
Taking a slightly more circuitous route back, we stumbled across an agricultural scene. It looked very pastoral but also looked as if it could have been almost anywhere in Europe, to me. It is Australia, honestly.
As we neared home base, we dived off sideways back to Woolshed Falls again. Almost as soon as we parked the car, though, the sun became covered by clouds so there was little in the way of action, save for a pair of Australian visitors, the female partner of which was picking her way over the rocks between the pools dressed in flip-flops and an ankle-length flower print dress. Very practical. I’m clearly letting the side down; I really must try to spruce myself up a bit next time I go climbing up waterfalls hunting odos.
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