These clouds and early morning light are what I saw on early on Friday morning when Kayla and I were walking along the Heritage-Trail through a familiar coastal landscape. It was so very still that morning.
These are the kind of conditions that indicate that a dramatic change in the weather is about to happen; usually, they mean that the hot weather is coming to an end, and a big storm will be sweeping into the coast of the Fleurieu Peninsula from the south west.
It was the morning of the 13th April, which is when the cold front with its wild winds and driving rain, hit the southern coast of the Fleurieu Peninsula in the late afternoon.
I was taking advantage of the lull before the storm to walk to a specific site amongst the granite rocks around the point from Dep’s Beach; a site that I had selected for a large format photo session.
I made some snaps of familiar objects with my digital camera as I slowly scrambled amongst the granite rocks to the site of the makeshift open air studio.
The large format photo session went well, for once. The gear worked, and I didn’t make any mistakes. I was very methodical and slow.
However, I overloaded my back carrying all the large format gear uphill to the car that was parked at Petrel Cove. I was very thankful that I had an appointment booked with my chiropractor on the Friday afternoon, and that my back could be adjusted before the lower back locked up.
My back was sore and tender throughout the Saturday, which is when the intensity of the storm was at its peak. The weather cleared late Saturday afternoon, only for the rain in the form of passing showers/drizzle returning on Sunday morning.
When Kayla and I was walking along the path on Sunday morning the large waves were pounding the coastal rocks and the tide was very high.
When we ventured down to the rocks I noticed that most of the seaweed that had accumulated throughout the summer had gone. A lot of the sand on Dep’s Beach and at Petrel Cove had also been washed away, exposing the underlying rock formation. The Littoral Zone had undergone a dramatic change during those 48 hours.
The site of the open air studio wasn’t accessible because of the tide, so I had to postpone the black and white abstraction photo session that I had planned with the baby Linhof. My back is still too tender to lug the large format gear down to the rocks.