Coles bay, Tasmania, 10 October 2023
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Click on any image to see it larger (If you are on a PC at least).

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This is the first post of our recent trip to Tasmania.  We took our own car so we drove down from Canberra to the ferry at Geelong and drove off the ferry in Devonport early in the morning.  I thought I had the car GPS programmed with a route but though all intended destinations had been saved, it just took us directly to Coles Bay.

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The Nuggets.

After checking in to our accommodation, we headed to Cape Tourville Lighthouse.  This image and the next six are taken from around the lighthouse.  I did not actually photograph the lighthouse though you can see a couple of images of that at a distance in Wineglass Bay Evening Sail, a post from my 2017 trip, with images from a boat rather than from land.

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Seals on the headland and cormorants on the rock behind.

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Perhaps a rock awaiting the attentions of a sculptor.

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Lemon Rock and Cape Forestier.

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Ancient fort on a mountain from the Crusader era.

Perhaps you have heard of the fleet of ships from Northern England that made for Constantinople in the eleventh century rather than submit to Norman rule, as described in a 13th century French chronicle and a 14th century Icelandic Saga.  They are said to have assisted the Byzantine Emperor, been granted land in Crimea and later  contributed soldiers to the Varangian Guard (as well as the Vikings).  Clearly there must have been some ships who missed the Straights of Gibraltar and ended up in Tasmania.  It is curious that Cook did not mention this when he sailed past at a later date.

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Looking towards Wineglass Bay.

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Unidentified flowers beside a rock.

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Apsley Waterhole.

The route our GPS neglected to follow wold have taken us to a cafe in St Marys and then down the east coast.  It was too late to follow that but we headed up for the southern end.  This is Apsley Waterhole just north of Bicheno.

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This image and the next six are at the Bicheo Blowhole.  This was a pleasant surprise, first the rocks with their red lichen and then the blowhole.

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(I took both Fuji and Nikon gear on this trip.  Images 2 to 6 are with Fuji and a long lens (150-600mm); the rest with Nikon primes or a wide angle zoom.)

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The blowhole could be quite impressive, especially considering it was a calm day.  It must be most impressive in a storm.

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Same view without the people.

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A previous image looked as though the people were in danger of being swamped.  This is taken from their perspective and shows they were in no danger at all because the water was blowing out away from them.

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Another perspective in which the cubic rock has turned into a pyramid, a little bit like the Bent Pyramid of Sneferu, perhaps indicating ancient Egyptians visited here as well.  Maybe there’s a sarcophagus in the blowhole.

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Those wonderful rocks with the red lichen again.

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We are now back at Coles Bay for the sunset.

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Just a few meters away, with the red rocks.

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I returned after dark for a nighttime exposure.

This was one of the reasons I brought Nikon as well as Fuji (which is lighter).  My Nikon camera has a native ISO range up to 52,000 compared to 12,800 for the Fuji, giving better images at high ISO generally and a larger image to work with.  It is close to the new moon, with is ideal for Milky Way exposures.

Now in theory, how you are supposed to do this is take multiple exposures on a tripod for the stars and combine them for increased resolution using a program such as Sequator.  Also, you may take other exposures for panoramas so you can get the whole Milky Way.  Then you take other exposures for the foreground, which may or may not include panorama exposures , light painting and focus stacking, and combine those using Photoshop.  You will probably also reduce noise using a program such as Topaz Photo AI, DxO PureRaw, Lightroom or Photoshop.  Then you need to process to optimise exposure, colour balance and colour separation for both the sky and the foreground.

I did very little of that here. The tail of the Milky Way is at the right part of the sky but I wasn’t particularly interested in bracketing out to the right to get the full Milky Way.  This is also just from a single image, with noise reduction using Topaz Photo AI and processed in Capture One.  Exposure was 8 seconds at f2.8 on a Nikon Z6ii and 14-24mm Z f2.8 at 14mm.  On a PC at least, you will get a much better view if you click on it for a larger image.