View allAll Photos Tagged stkilda
Another St Kilda shot. The white bits near the top of the left-hand rock are nesting gannets (and gannet pooh!)
1/500 Second almost freezes the dog but not the splashing water. I typically set the shutter speed to 1/2000 second using Auto ISO Minimum Shutter Speed.
Little church near the Old Post Office at Lochbuie. It was completely dark and empty but I found the light switches.
This small inoccuous looking skerry conceals the most spectacular arch. Dropping in in a slight swell we descended to 35m down a sheer wall covered in hydroids and anemones. Keeping the wall on our right we finned for a couple of minutes until a huge 50m deep canyon opened up with the arch inside it.
The viz was a bit down at "only" 15m but I hovered above the smooth stone seabed at 48m looking up at the apex of the arch at 32m , the walls smothered in glittering carpets of multicoloured jewel anemones and sagartia anemones.
Round the other side of the skerry we ascended steep walls covered in a white garden of sagartia anemones and covered in swirling kelp.
I was surprised that there was so much stone on Hirta but perhaps as it's a huge rock outcrop that they quarried for their use
There was some amazing light in St Kilda last night. This before seeing Ross Wilson, Pseudo Echo, Mi Sex, Dragon, and a bunch of also-rans
I was sitting in the office this afternoon and heard Lorikeets and Sulphur Crested Cockatoos going crazy. The Sulphur Cresteds were attcking a small ring-tailed possum that was trying to cross the yard on an electic wire. They jumped up and down on the wire trying to throw the possum to the ground. Then they started nipping at it's tail. It finally managed to turn and scramble into a tree. It made it home to it's possum box and the Cockies went wild. Don't know why they did it as they are not competitors for food and the cockies don't eat meat.
St Kilda.
As the closest point on the coast to Salisbury and near the estuary of the Little Para River this quaint beachside town used to be the exclusive holiday haven of the wealthy from Salisbury. Fishermen huts were erected on the mud flats in the 1860s by some Salisbury residents. Then Thomas Evans surveyed the area in 1873 and the government township blocks of St Kilda were snapped up by Salisbury residents in 1874. John Harvey, the founder of Salisbury, is credited with naming the place because it reminded him of St. Kilda in the Outer Hebrides off Scotland according to the Register newspaper in 1896. St Kilda in the Hebrides and in SA had massive bird life. Certainly Harvey bought a block in 1874 so he might have been asked to suggest a name for the seaside town. Locals who had erected huts at St Kilda in the 1860s generally received £15 compensation for them. In 1895 Matthias Lucas got John Harvey in his old age to lay the foundation stone for a hotel, built of local Salisbury stone. This St Kilda hotel was licensed in 1898. In 1957 this hotel, at the height of popularity of an Australian song by Slim Dusty called the “pub with no beer,” became the pub with no beer. The licensee at that time Mr Waterman took the license from St. Kilda so that he could open the Hotel Elizabeth. It took a year for the new license to be issued for Elizabeth and then for the St. Kilda hotel to re-open. A school opened at St. Kilda near where the tram museum is located in 1902 and ran, except for a couple of years, through to 1949. In 1924 a Post Office also opened at the same spot, called Moilong Post Office. Moilong was adopted from an Aboriginal word meaning “where the tide comes in” to avoid confusion with that beachside suburb in Melbourne which is also called St. Kilda. But the name of Moilong was never popular. The Post Office was re-named St. Kilda Post Office in 1965. It closed in the 1970s. In more recent years St. Kilda has witnessed the opening of the tram museum in 1967; the opening of the tram track to the beach in 1974; the opening of the adventure playground in 1982; the opening of the Mangrove Board Walk in 1984; and the latest boat ramp in 2002. The salt crystallization lagoons behind St. Kilda are part of the former Imperial Chemical Industries and now Chatham salt works whereby the salt brine is pumped from the ocean into the pans and then circulated to Cavan where the pans dry out and the salt is harvested. These salt pans were dug by hand by unemployed men during the depression. They opened in 1936 and the salt, about 750,000 tons a year, was mainly used by Penrice Soda for their production of soda ash at Osborne. The salt pans stretch for 35 kms from beyond Port Gawler to Cavan/Dry Creek. But Penrice Soda has stopped production of soda ash in South Australia and the salt pans areas is due to be sold probably for housing or industry.
Posting and running - I'm still away up north at the moment. (And still feeling slightly queasy...) Plenty more photos to come when I get back home!
**Back home now and not feeling quite so sick!! I've tried to name the various islands in the shot, I think I've got them right... If anyone knows better, please correct me!
128/365
It actually got darker mid-shot and the lighthouse lamp came on again. It was so gusty, I had to virtually bury the tripod in the sand. Fortunately, one photo was sharp. Hot, windy and a spectacular sunrise, the long exposure makes everything a calming lie.
The Sanctury of the St Kilda Presbyterian Church features three beautiful 1880s Ferguson and Urie stained glass windows; Faith on the left, Charity in the middle and Hope on the right. All are executed in iridescent reds, yellows, greens and blues, to reflect the colour palate used in other Ferguson and Urie windows elsewhere around the church.
Built on the crest of a hill in a prominent position overlooking St Kilda and the bay is the grand St Kilda Presbyterian Church.
The St Kilda Presbyterian Church's interior is cool, spacious and lofty, with high ceilings of tongue and groove boards laid diagonally, and a large apse whose ceiling was once painted with golden star stenciling. The bluestone walls are so thick that the sounds of the busy intersection of Barkley Street and Alma Road barely permeate the church's interior, and it is easy to forget that you are in such a noisy inner Melbourne suburb. The cedar pews of the church are divided by two grand aisles which feature tall cast iron columns with Corinthian capitals. At the rear of the building towards Alma Road there are twin porches and a narthex with a staircase that leads to the rear gallery where the choir sang from. It apparently once housed an organ by William Anderson, but the space today is used as an office and Bible study area. The current impressive Fincham and Hobday organ from 1892 sits in the north-east corner of the church. It cost £1030.00 to acquire and install. The church is flooded with light, even on an overcast day with a powerful thunder storm brewing (as the weather was on my visit). The reason for such light is because of the very large Gothic windows, many of which are filled with quarry glass by Ferguson and Urie featuring geometric tracery with coloured borders. The church also features stained glass windows designed by Ferguson and Urie, including the impressive rose window, British stained glass artist Ernest Richard Suffling, Brooks, Robinson and Company Glass Merchants, Mathieson and Gibson of Melbourne and one by Australian stained glass artist Napier Waller.
Opened in 1886, the St Kilda Presbyterian church was designed by the architects firm of Wilson and Beswicke, a business founded in 1881 by Ralph Wilson and John Beswicke (1847 - 1925) when they became partners for a short period. The church is constructed of bluestone with freestone dressings and designed in typical Victorian Gothic style. The foundation stone, which may be found on the Alma Road facade, was laid by the Governor of Victoria Sir Henry Barkly on 27 January. When it was built, the St Kilda Presbyterian Church was surrounded by large properties with grand mansions built upon them, so the congregation were largely very affluent and wished for a place of worship that reflected its stature not only in location atop a hill, but in size and grandeur.
The exterior facades of the church on Barkley Street and Alma Road are dominated by a magnificent tower topped by an imposing tower. The location of the church and the height of the tower made the spire a landmark for mariners sailing into Melbourne's port. The tower features corner pinnacles and round spaces for the insertion of a clock, which never took place. Common Victorian Gothic architectural features of the St Kilda Presbyterian Church include complex bar tracery over the windows, wall buttresses which identify structural bays, gabled roof vents, parapeted gables and excellent stone masonry across the entire structure.
I am very grateful to the Reverend Paul Lee for allowing me the opportunity to photograph the interior of the St Kilda Presbyterian Church so extensively.
The architects Wilson and Beswicke were also responsible for the Brighton, Dandenong, Essendon, Hawthorn and Malvern Town Halls and the Brisbane Wesleyan Church on the corner of Albert and Ann Streets. They also designed shops in the inner Melbourne suburbs of Auburn and Fitzroy. They also designed several individual houses, including "Tudor House" in Williamstown, "Tudor Lodge" in Hawthorn and "Rotha" in Hawthorn, the latter of which is where John Beswicke lived.
The stained glass firm of Ferguson and Urie was established by Scots James Ferguson (1818 – 1894), James Urie (1828 – 1890) and John Lamb Lyon (1836 – 1916). They were the first known makers of stained glass in Australia. Until the early 1860s, window glass in Melbourne had been clear or plain coloured, and nearly all was imported, but new churches and elaborate buildings created a demand for pictorial windows. The three Scotsmen set up Ferguson and Urie in 1862 and the business thrived until 1899, when it ceased operation, with only John Lamb Lyon left alive. Ferguson and Urie was the most successful Nineteenth Century Australian stained glass window making company. Among their earliest works were a Shakespeare window for the Haymarket Theatre in Bourke Street, a memorial window to Prince Albert in Holy Trinity, Kew, and a set of Apostles for the West Melbourne Presbyterian Church. Their palatial Gothic Revival office building stood at 283 Collins Street from 1875. Ironically, their last major commission, a window depicting “labour”, was installed in the old Melbourne Stock Exchange in Collins Street in 1893 on the eve of the bank crash. Their windows can be found throughout the older suburbs of Melbourne and across provincial Victoria.