Andy's Photo Blog: Christmas Break

I've had a week off over Christmas, and I've taken the opportunity to do a few interesting things. I went on a few dives and went up to see what's left of the Mt Stromlo observatory since it was pretty well destroyed by bushfires a few years ago.

I went on a dive trip out to Black Rock, about 20min off the coast from Bateman's Bay. I wasn't sure what the conditions would be like because many of the nearby beaches were closed because of the high surf caused by a nearby anti-cyclone. You can see from the photo below that the waves were still pretty large and higher than the boat itself, but fortunately there was no current to drag you away. Under the water it was quite peaceful with pretty good visibility though a fair amount of floating sediment.

Going up the anchor line back to the boat

Nudibranchs

"a shell-less, marine snail of the suborder Nudibranchia, having external, often branched respiratory appendages on the back and sides" - Dictionary.com

Starfish

Not a great picture of a starfish, but I was being dragged through an underwater tunnel by the current and I couldn't stop to take a better picture.

A close-up picture of a sponge.

A soft coral with a really interesting shape.

Mt Stromlo

The observatory on Mt Stromlo was pretty-well totalled by bushfires a few years ago. But since then there has been some reconstruction. Mt Stromlo is about half an hour's drive out from Canberra.

One of the domes looked ok, but when we peered in through the windows we noticed that everything inside had been destroyed, but still in place. Unfortunately the observatory was closed on the day we went there, so we couldn't go inside. It looks like they have repainted the exterior but preserved the interior.