Sunshine Coast Daily Photo

Sunday, 19 February 2017

Unnamed bay.

It occurred to me as I took this photo that I couldn't recall the name of this bay that forms the beach at Mooloolaba, despite years of living here and even more years of sailing on it.

Perhaps it's a worrying sign of ageing, or perhaps it's just a secret bay with no name. I can say with a little certainty that the water is part of the Coral Sea though, although I've never understood the point in dividing a perfectly good ocean into a number of seas. Perhaps it makes it feel more important.

Mooloolaba

Another view from the Loo

On the lower boardwalk late in the afternoon. I'd better stop the Loo with a View series right now, before the bad puns and rhymes get out of hand.

Mooloolaba

From the Loo with a View.

Sucking in the view.

Mooloolaba

© Sunshine Coast Daily Photo - Australia

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The real thing.

Perhaps this is where the dolls of yesterday got their suntanning inspiration?

Mooloolaba

Sunbaking

Lying there in the sun, pretending to be enjoying themselves, we found these half-life sized dolls.

If Gulliver had found a pair of Barbie dolls in Brobdingnag during his travels and these were they, perhaps they are worth a fortune!

Maleny

Perpetual motion.

Call them "Trash and Treasure" or whatever you like, the fact remains that events such as this one at Maleny on the weekend are a sort of perpetual motion machine.

One goes to these things to trawl through other people's cast offs, to search for a "bargain" which will ultimately find its way into a cupboard, and then a few years from now, onto a table under an umbrella with a little price tag sticker attached.

Maleny
© Sunshine Coast Daily Photo - Australia

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Traffic jam

I can't say why I took this photo nor what it may mean, but I hope the young boys trying to sell their collection at the car boot sale had great success.

Maleny

Pastel.

Not the blue hour!

Actually it's fine, hot, humid and there's a big swell running. The sun is below the horizon and somehow it all looks about twenty degrees cooler than the thirty-eight it got to today!

Moffat Headland from the other direction.

© Sunshine Coast Daily Photo - Australia

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Not Fog

"Sea Mist" it's called, but really it's just salt hanging about in the humidity, rusting the workings of everyone's television set, to say nothing of their cars.

Afternoon in Shelly Beach

Parking Lot.

No need to take paradise and put up a parking lot, when you can park anywhere you like.

Shelly Beach

Time to go.

I know, I know it's one of the basic rules of composition that the subject of the photo should appear to be walking "in" to it, but these guys were keen to get home.

Cute little matching body boards though.

Shelly Beach

© Sunshine Coast Daily Photo - Australia

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Something Blue

In most places around the world the "blue hour" is arguably the best time to take photographs, occurring as it does around an hour before sunset or after sunrise.

Well here, pretty much every hour is a "blue hour".

Just hanging about watching ships go by.

Caloundra

Yes it does.

Seriously?

No warning about sand being gritty or water being wet though, perhaps we should sue!

Kings Beach.

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Colour and texture, nothing more to see here.

Theres a whole lot of texture going on here, and the colours are muted because the sun is low in the sky and I'm looking into it more or less, but I like them none the less. It makes a change from all that deep blue and vibrant green that is impossible to escape!

Kings Beach

Pandanus Roots

Not much more to say really... nice, aren't they?

Kings Beach

Differently Abled

I don't for one moment begrudge parking for disabled people, but I do begrudge those who are not disabled using them, and perhaps ask just a teensy question about appropriateness of location when I see one at the bottom of a long set of steps leading to a lookout!

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Coastal Pathway

If one arrives at exactly the right time, the shadows from the trees behind make it look as though they are coming from the other direction. Or is it just me?

Shelly Beach

In case you missed it.

Actually it's not the same shot as last Tuesday's, but it was taken at the same time from the same place, or nearby at least. I liked the odd lighting enough to risk posting a second shot.

Kings Beach

Loving life

Who's loving life more? Miss six with a mouth full of missing teeth and gaps for more to grow into, salt in her hair and sand underfoot, or her grandparents happily feasting on her boundless optimism?

This month's City Daily Photo theme day is "Loving Life" and as ever you can see lots more on that theme at this link.

Dicky Beach

Bushfire at dusk

There's a bushfire near the highway this evening, it's fifteen or twenty kilometres away and poses no threat to property, even if driving on the highway requires a little extra care in the smoke.

Caloundra.

Postcard from Golden Beach

Blue sky, blue water, a few birds and a pandanus in silhouette, no need to look further for today's photo even though this one may well smack of a certain amount of desperation!

Golden Beach from Bulcock Beach

Boardwalk

Because it's interesting to see how various timbers age.

Maroochydore's North Shore.

On tippy toe.

I guess he's trying to sneak up on us.

Caloundra

The simple things.

I often find myself walking home from the beach late in the afternoon, and for all the pleasure that simple walk can give, perhaps one of my favourite things is the way the sun shines through the ferns at the top of this little flight of stairs at just the right time of the afternoon.

Moffat Beach

Australia Day.

Yeah well, what better way of spending a holiday, than by going fishing with a few mates, then showing our place in an international arena by throwing our Belgium owned Mexican brewed Beer bottles onto the rocks so the locals can clean up when we've gone.

Happy Australia Day.

Tooway Creek

Wallpaper.

I'm looking for something to use as paper for a bathroom wall.

This isn't it, not enough beach. Back to the drawing board!

Moffat Beach

© Sunshine Coast Daily Photo - Australia

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Conflab as the sun goes down.

Isn't language a wonderful thing? My brain couldn't decide whether they were having a "conflab" or a "confab" while the shadows reached out to grab them late this afternoon, so I looked it up.

They are confabulating, but the errant "L" it would appear has made it's presence felt over time, and is equally correctly included when shortening the word.

The things we think about as the sun goes down.

Moffat Beach

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Pom Pom Flower

The Pom Pom flower or Calliandra looks a bit as though it could be an Australian native, and for a time it was so ubiquitous in our gardens that it may well have been thought to be so, but alas (for us) it is actually a native of Borneo.

This one has lost some of its "Pom" though, so isn't half the flower it might have been had I happened upon it yesterday.

Dicky Beach

Soon to cause disappointment.

Oh yes! What the world really needs is more highway revetment walls painted bright glossy pink! What happened to the good old days, when these things were made of stone or timber to try to meld them with the background, or those little concrete blocks that stacked in great barren stacks with the thought that one day plants would grow down them but they never did?

That glossy pink is no doubt the latest thinking on the best way of guiding one under a bridge at a hundred kilometres per hour, but I can assure whoever is responsible that it won't last. Despite the best intentions of the paint supplier, despite its twenty year guarantee, and despite everything else, it will be flat, not glossy in a few short years, and within ten, well let's just say I hope the intention was for a light pink chalky look.

With a little luck, the trees will be covering it anyway.

City of Colour

Caloundra

All work and no play

I had intended to work all morning, take the debris to the dump in the early afternoon, then wander round camera in hand for a pleasant hour or two. Just as it was time to borrow the truck to load the stuff aboard, the rain came.

So I worked all afternoon, and snapped a photo from the front door which will serve to remind me in a week or two of just how far I've progressed.

I hope.

The Old and the New

There's a (relatively) new kid in town. Acai bowls and smoothies to go are in stark contrast to the old fish and chip shop with it's footpath bins and it's wafting odours of deep fried everything.

I guess the greeting on the bottom of the sign is to make any visiting Hawaiians feel welcome. I'm not sure that Hawaiians actually visit Moffs, but if they did I certain they'd appreciate the gesture.

Moffat Beach

© Sunshine Coast Daily Photo - Australia

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The Playground Redux

The little playground under the fig at Moffs has been renovated, using the same footprint, but the pirates and whales have gone and a surfboard climbing wall is back.

The kids all have a great time, but there are notably few places for their guardians to perch while they ostensibly oversee the goings on. If that was deliberate to encourage cross generational participation it seems to be working.

Moffat Beach

© Sunshine Coast Daily Photo - Australia

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Walking to the Post Office

It's not the prettiest bridge in the world, but we forgive it because that little boardwalk underpass takes us to the Post Office, and the Bakery and the Doctor, oh and the beach, without having to cross the busy little road that connects us to Caloundra.

Dicky Beach, looking across the creek to Moffat Beach

© Sunshine Coast Daily Photo - Australia

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Friend or Foe 2.

I have my friend Gerry to thank for this fine clump of what he calls "Coolum Library Grass" by our front path. It looks lovely, but it's just a little voracious. Those furry little flowers are actually seeds ready to fly off and strike a new clump wherever they land, and there don't appear to be any losses. Perhaps I have inadvertently planted a monster!

Dicky Beach

Friend or Foe?

The Golden Cane Palm Dypsis lutescens comes from Madagascar and is sold as a potted plant or a neat little edge palm. The trouble is that it grows, if you read the fine print to a fine little 12 metre high hedge, and it keeps on growing, sending out suckers in all directions until it becomes a thicket fit for hiding tigers. Then it starts to drop fronds, just enough so that they don't fit in the wheelie bin at the end of the week.

Sigh, it looks good though.

Moffat Beach

By popular request

The station wagon in yesterday's photo was a 1966 "VC" Valiant made by Chrysler Australia. It had a different body to the American Valiants, much smaller I think.

This one had those cool stainless steel dust deflectors, which apparently allowed only the merest whiff of carbon monoxide into the cabin should one which to drive with the rear window down.

Surplus stocks of these things went on to be sold as vegetable slicers I'm sure.

Moffat Beach

Salt

There's something about a rusty station wagon, windows coated with the grease of the sea, and a surfboard lying on a sleeping bag, that brings back fond memories of the good old days, when my hair was much longer and a few shades lighter, or to be accurate, when hair grew from my head.

Moffat Beach

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Night Shopping

We're in a strange nowhere time of year at the moment, the holiday crowds are still here, and everyone else is back at work, so the roads are a bit busy.

Even though most shops are open on a Thursday evening till eight, by seven the traffic is light and there's this weird aura of impending evening in front of the television. Does that sky look balmy? Try twenty nine degrees in the evening's cool!

Thankfully I was able to buy another thousand nails ready for a new day of banging them in.

Kawana

© Sunshine Coast Daily Photo - Australia

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A long weight.

I should be grateful I suppose that I can cross the line in the rain without getting wet, presuming all the while that I was in the stairwell when the rain started, and will leave the other stairwell after it stops, for there is a bit of an odd sprint to the next bit of shelter.

This is symptomatic of Queensland Rail I'm afraid. A company which spent several decades planning and building a new line only to find when it opened it, that it had forgotten to hire the three hundred new drivers it would need to service the line.

I shouldn't complain, at the speed at which our trains travel, our fares are probably the most competitive in the world in terms of dollars per hour spent aboard. In days of old the railway workshops used to initiate young apprentices by sending them to the stores for a "long weight (wait)", now they just give them a ticket to somewhere.

Landsborough.

© Sunshine Coast Daily Photo - Australia

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The romance of steam.

Landsborough station harks back to a time when things moved at a slower pace, when trains were powered by coal which sent romantic wafts of searing steam into one's ankles as they passed, and spat cinders in one's eyes and choofed and puffed and kept one awake at night.

Ahh for the good old days.

We are still there in a sense, with a rail system that finds getting out of bed in the morning something of a challenge, and running consistently on time something of an anathema.

That's not poorly exposed shade beyond that window, it's the black hole into which timetables disappear.

Landsborough.
© Sunshine Coast Daily Photo - Australia

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Look very closely

If you are to see what you need to see, you will have to click on the photo to view it full size. What looks like a flower with the stem growing through it is actually the red stamen of many small flowers, their small cream petals are just visible at the base of all that red.

Down there in the heart of the flower, the black dots are ants feasting on the nectar, getting sticky from it, and carrying pollen as they go.

The true beauty of it all lies beneath that glitzy red exterior. It makes me feel all warm and fuzzy!

Dicky Beach

Beach

Actually it's not really a beach, it's a building quite near a beach, but I suspect it wasn't quite tall enough to fit "Quite near the Beach" down the face of the lift shaft.

I've changed the colour a little because Maroochydore isn't quite up to the "white" thing that the rest of the coast is comfortable with, and we thought this would work better as a duvet cover in our guest bedroom.

International Standards

I've been in those meetings, the ones where the designer proposes a neat cover over the pipe controls and the owner says he'll plant something in front of them and no one will notice them.

Usually we do.

Particularly when they must be painted according to international standards to signify they are carrying potable water. Which begs the question - why does the little yellow label on the tap announce that it is not potable?

Surely it's not to stop passers-by having a quick refreshment on their way home from the beach?

Maroochydore.

© Sunshine Coast Daily Photo - Australia

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Dotty.

Random street scene.

I suppose there is a certain third world charm that results when palm trees and power poles are juxtaposed.

Maroochydore

A pox on them!

A marketing chap once told me (and I have reason to believe him) that branding is everything, that branding on wrappers spread the word subliminally to keep one's product at top of mind, even as litter.

I decided then that I would put off buying a product by a day for each branded wrapper I find on the street.

My next hamburger purchase will be in January 3017.

A pox on them, their packaging, and all who fling it on the street!

Maroochydore.

Drip

One drip a minute from the beach shower head, adds up to quite a lot of water wasted over a year, and quite a lot of cost to our Council. That's probably why they don't do Christmas decorations! To be fair, the beach showers are a great facility, no matter what the cost to residents.

Maroochydore.

© Sunshine Coast Daily Photo - Australia

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Sand Flats

Low tide at the mouth of the Maroochy River

Maroochydore

Sub Tropical Getaway

It could be an island anywhere in the Pacific, but it's not. Welcome to Cotton Tree at Maroochydore, at the edge of the caravan park, where the river meets the ocean.

Maroochydore

© Sunshine Coast Daily Photo - Australia

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Photo of the Year

Now this is becoming a bit odd. I decided that I would select my photo of the year by "popular vote", simply by choosing the most visited post of the past twelve months. Ironically perhaps, this shot of a lorikeet feasting in our callistemon tree was last year's photo of the year.

I tossed up whether or not to use it, but I do quite like it, and if it gets enough views it may end up as the photo of the year next year too!

I hope you have a great year in 2017, and thank you for your continued support of both City Daily Photo and this site. Don't forget to visit this link to see what many other City Daily Photo bloggers have chosen as their photo of the year.

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Sunday, 19 February 2017

Saturday, 18 February 2017

Friday, 17 February 2017

Thursday, 16 February 2017

Wednesday, 15 February 2017

Tuesday, 14 February 2017

Monday, 13 February 2017

Sunday, 12 February 2017

Saturday, 11 February 2017

Friday, 10 February 2017

Thursday, 9 February 2017

Wednesday, 8 February 2017

Tuesday, 7 February 2017

Monday, 6 February 2017

Sunday, 5 February 2017

Saturday, 4 February 2017

Friday, 3 February 2017

Thursday, 2 February 2017

Wednesday, 1 February 2017

Tuesday, 31 January 2017

Monday, 30 January 2017

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Thursday, 26 January 2017

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Friday, 20 January 2017

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Saturday, 14 January 2017

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