I can't resist adding another chapter to my rambling documentation of visits to the NSW South Coast (past instalments are here and here). 

In my mind, the South Coast is a distillation of a lot of the things that make the NSW coast so lovely. It's all these disparate wonders clustered together around a little bay. The beaches are uncorrupted and perfect; with white sand and water running from the brightest turquoise to deep clean blue.

A short drive inland, and you're in the kind of bushland that is just so uniquely Australian that it makes your heart sing for the likes of May Gibbs and Banjo Paterson. Big granite canyons rushing with water, wildflowers winding around every rock and trunk, and the specifically snakey feeling of bush undergrowth in this country. And there's nothing quite like seeing a towering waratah bloom in the wild... Seeing something so spectacular existing so quietly gives it an increased poignancy, a spark struck among the dusty grey-green march of the eucalypts. 

Even the farmland is beautiful, soft green rolls of hills leading out to the sea, the kind that make you want to quit the city and take up dairy farming. At least, for a minute. 

Actually, now that I think about it, every time I visit the South Coast I try to concoct a plan that involves me not heading back to the city. But dairy farming might be a bit out of my expertise sphere, I think...

We left home in the dark, driving south down the peninsula with only a rough idea of where we might go. The world turned dusky and grey around us while we drove, the day starting to seep in along tree tops and horizon edges. We stopped in an empty car park, then set off down a track, down some stairs. More colours steadily leeched in with the daylight.

And just as we headed around into a little cove, the sun broke over the distant headlands, throwing all it's flashy, fluorescent colours up onto the low clouds. Celebratory colours because it wasn't raining, because we weren't it the city, weren't at work, stuck in traffic or on commuter trains full of sad suits. Celebratory colours because we were somewhere alone, quiet, empty. Not sharing space with strangers. Or with concrete and plastic and mechanical sounds.

Just us and the big ocean. 

Just us and a little window on the quiet wild world. 

Vintage dress and hat; Wandering Coyote boots.

Hanging Rock, Victoria - Wurundjeri country.

“Although we are necessarily concerned, in a chronicle of events, with physical action by the light of day, history suggests that the human spirit wanders farthest in the silent hours between midnight and dawn. Those dark fruitful hours, seldom recorded, whose secret flowerings breed peace and war, loves and hates, the crowning or uncrowning of heads.” 
― Joan Lindsay, Picnic at Hanging Rock

Joe Cocker and John Steinbeck, Jenny Lewis and Charles Manson biographies. Ciders and sketchbooks on a picnic rug in the dappled shade. Coffee at 5am watching the sun rise, walking with bare feet across the dewy lawn to get a better photograph. Watching the neighbour brush her graceful black horses in the soft light of a crisp evening. Tiny nieces and nephews. Mandarin and lime-scents, fresh off the tree. Pandanus palms and pale pink barnacles, collected among the rocks on a lagoon-like beach. Pitch-dark nights and soft beds, and more than anything, peace.