The Lake

The Central Coast of NSW is fringed by a series of freshwater lakes and lagoons. Avoca Lake at Avoca is one of the smaller lakes. In the nineteenth century there was a major timber industry in the area and hardwoods were extracted and put on boats and taken to nearby Terrigal Haven where it was loaded onto ships and transported to Sydney. As the timber was extracted and the area was cleared erosion increased and the lake silted up and could no longer be used by boats so the timber had to be taken by a tramway system to the neighbouring Terrigal Haven. Hardwoods extracted from the Avoca area were used in the piling for the wharves in London Docks and the Suez Canal.
Now all that remains of the timber industry is Tramway Road which follows the route of the long gone tramway.

Gum trees have grown up to replace the hardwoods but the lake now is very shallow.In two of the photos below you can see a rope hanging from a tree where boys used to swing out over the lake and jump into presumably reasonably deep water .Today the lake is used by kayakers and people fishing in very shallow draught boats and herons and pelicans.The lake opens onto a beautiful surf beach. It is the stuff of tourist brochures and it is just 5 mins drive from my house -over a very steep hill so it's a pretty arduous walk.

In the past 12 months I have been making occasional trips to the lake in the afternoon with my Hasselblad and a tripod to try to capture the changing moods of the lake on film.The results are below. It's a totally different sort of photography to my usual style but I am very pleased with the results.Film has magical properties.I don't usually like using a tripod but it is necessary when using a Blad for this sort of shooting otherwise focussing on that dim little screen and camera shake are big problems.
Photos taken on Kodak Portra 400 film on a Hasselblad 500 with Zeiss 50mm,80mm and 150mm lenses.