Fish and chips in Queenscliff

from w
While Peceli was in one of the best fish and chips shops in the Bellarine Peninsular - where you can actually choose your own fish, prawns, etc., I did some sketches of the park near the beach in Queenscliff. It was our wedding anniversary - 45th - and we had taken a drive down from Geelong. This was New Year's Eve. Later in the evening we drove to Eastern Beach and watched the fireworks at midnight. Very nice, but rather extravagant as the money could be used for better purposes.

Yesterday we sweltered in 42 degrees heat - and some of our family slept outside and I even checked on the rabbit and guinea pig at midnight as they were suffering from the heat.

making collages

from w
Being rather limited in what I experiment with using Picasa I've been concentrating on overlapping images to get new effects. It's usually a surprise what turns up. Here are some from photos I took at Queenscliff, a seaside town out of Geelong. Large trees and details from a hotel verandah.

Queenscliff and fish and chips

from w
Yesterday we drove down to Queenscliff, a pleasant little town half an hour's drive from Geelong. They have their own Council - a kind of snobbery perhaps? Lovely old hotels, plenty of boats, access to a ferry that goes over to Sorrento, and the best fish and chips shop opposite the beach parkland. We bought some fresh mussels also which I cooked today. Anyway, we made drawings of one of the lighthouses there and noticed there were a couple of dozen people fishing from rocks below us. Also a couple in the car near us were eating their fish and chips and the seagulls were investigating and hoping for a bite or two. We used to visit Queenscliff occasionally as guests of the Military guys at the Fort - at the time when Fijian soldiers did a short course there. Not these days though after coups and suchlike.

Queenscliff has sentimental value for me also as my grandparents brought their children to Queenscliff every January for a holiday - by boat from Melbourne. Also Grandad was in the Victorian Navy at one time working on a torpedo boat they say. Also my Dad worked for a short time on the couta boats in Queenscliff when he was seventeen until he decided that working with wool was to be his career instead of the sea.

I was given a letter from my grandfather Charles Lay to his girl in Melbourne, Francis. November 1893 probably when he was in the Victorian Navy. Signed 'hotheaded lover'! They did marry and my father George Lay was one of their children.

It ain't modern art but

from w
These sketches just aren't modern art but seem to be in the popular category of 'pictureque' landscapes - one of boats at Queenscliff where the ferry leaves for Sorrento and the other Barwon Heads, the cafe near the two bridges. I like to do sketches like this occasionally on site, but I wouldn't hang them on my wall. The enjoyment is in the process, not the result.