Sacred
This is one of the last shots I took on the second afternoon visiting Ben Lomond/turapina with my camera. It shows a prominent feature known as "Old Bill's Monument". I have no idea where this came from, it may well have been an old trapper who lived in the area not long after the indigenous inhabitants had been removed to Flinders Island.
We do know that John Batman (the founder of the city of Melbourne) climbed Ben Lomond from this point with artist John Glover in 1833. Glover had just established his farm "Patterdale" not far from here, and he is reputed to have made numerous sketches.
But this photograph of mine is about something and some people much older than these colonial times. Those of you familiar with central Australian landscapes would not think this view out of place there at all. In fact it reminds me of some of the wonderful watercolours by Albert Namatjira.
I won't tell you Namatjira's tragic tale here (I'll save that for my last shots in this series), but it will break your heart. But here I want this photograph to speak for Namatjira and his ancestors - the ancestors of the intrepid people who, some 40,000 years ago, made their way across the landbridge from the mainland to settle on what became the island of Tasmania.
To these indigenous people turapina was sacred (as were most mountains in the world for most people) and the air was thick with a sense of the numinous. When you stand here and watch the sun's rays change the colours of the rocks as it sets in the valley below, you do have a very palpable sense that we stand in the midst of "a great cloud of witnesses" (Hebrews 12:1).
Sacred
This is one of the last shots I took on the second afternoon visiting Ben Lomond/turapina with my camera. It shows a prominent feature known as "Old Bill's Monument". I have no idea where this came from, it may well have been an old trapper who lived in the area not long after the indigenous inhabitants had been removed to Flinders Island.
We do know that John Batman (the founder of the city of Melbourne) climbed Ben Lomond from this point with artist John Glover in 1833. Glover had just established his farm "Patterdale" not far from here, and he is reputed to have made numerous sketches.
But this photograph of mine is about something and some people much older than these colonial times. Those of you familiar with central Australian landscapes would not think this view out of place there at all. In fact it reminds me of some of the wonderful watercolours by Albert Namatjira.
I won't tell you Namatjira's tragic tale here (I'll save that for my last shots in this series), but it will break your heart. But here I want this photograph to speak for Namatjira and his ancestors - the ancestors of the intrepid people who, some 40,000 years ago, made their way across the landbridge from the mainland to settle on what became the island of Tasmania.
To these indigenous people turapina was sacred (as were most mountains in the world for most people) and the air was thick with a sense of the numinous. When you stand here and watch the sun's rays change the colours of the rocks as it sets in the valley below, you do have a very palpable sense that we stand in the midst of "a great cloud of witnesses" (Hebrews 12:1).