Willy sunrise...

There’s something very magical about the dawn before a scorching hot day. It’s the time of the day when you can move without dehydrating in 2.3 nano seconds, the colours in the sky are pretty special, and there’s no-one about. Well, apart from the axe wielding homicidal maniacs that usually just live in my mind but might actually be lurking on the dark streets, probably near bins. No wait...that’s polar bears.

I was a bit stir crazy from spending most of my time indoors and my general apathy towards anything other than sitting on the couch eating popcorn was threatening to take over. So I defied orders: ditched the moon boot, scarpered out at 4am and ran away to the sea! 

Hobson's Bay from Williamstown

Actually, I drove to Williamstown where I thought I might photograph the sun rising over some nice beachy scenes. I slowly puttered along The Strand, Nelson Place and Battery Road just generally doing a little reccy and checking out the scenery over the water and realised three things: 

1. there’s loads of light sources pretty much everywhere around Williamstown foreshore;
2. Appleton Docks have bloody big cranes on them;
3. there’s only two small piers accessible at this time of the day. One of these looked particularly dark and scary. Naturally, this would be the one with the best view of the city.

I have a bit of a thing for being out at night in environments I’m not familiar with, so I’m constantly looking over my shoulder and being alert to noises and movement. It doesn’t make for a relaxed photography session, but one must be ever vigilant. Werewolves and vampires aside, the only wildlife I saw was a possum, but I still wasn’t going down that pier in the dark. I went down the other one though, and saw this:

HMAS Castlemaine

So I drove, hopped out of the car, took pictures, hopped back in the car, drove, hopped out of the car, took pictures, hopped back in the car, drove, hopped out of the car...you get the gist. I saw the sun rising, ships coming and going, runners and cyclists sweating around Timeball Tower, and Williamstown's main drag waking up.

By 6.30am, my back was buzzing like a nest of angry bees (being in that stupid boot hasn’t done my back any favours) and I figured it wouldn’t be the worst of ideas to find coffee and then lie in the park and do some pilates stretches in the peace and quiet. I could make it look as though I was a local who had popped out to the park for her morning exercise. Clearly I know nothing: I parked in what was a shady spot but wasn’t by the time I returned to the car an hour later, the city’s maintenance workers all crank up the clean-o-meter once the sun’s up so there was no peace or quiet and the ground was damp. It’s been 4 million degrees! How could it have been damp?? Even dew can’t be arsed in hot weather!!! Must’ve been some sneaky sprinkler action.

Anyway, I did my exercises and kicked back to drink my coffee and enjoy my fresh as a very fresh thing cheesy mite scroll purchased from that purveyor of fine breakfast foods, Bakers Delight. As the seagulls began to gather, I noticed that one of the maintenance workers was casting me a bit of evil eye. I figured he was going to pounce on me either for throwing bits of bread to the birds (fat chance – those flying vultures get nothin’!) or dropping crumbs on his nicely manicured lawn. He was probably already annoyed that I had flattened part of it by lounging around on it like I owned the joint. Perhaps I was being paranoid: maybe he just liked my Duran Duran t-shirt.
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Needless to say, he looked pleased when I spilled all my crumbs into a baggie which subsequently went into a binnie, but the seagulls were pissed off to have missed out on any of the cheesy mitey goodness. Suffer you vultures, you weren’t getting any anyway! I never give seagulls anything, not since one pinched the last bit of pasty I was eating out of my hand on Rottnest Island. I was really enjoying that pasty so I was mad dirty on him.

It only takes one thieving bastard to spoil things for all the others.