Cruise, Tom

Just The Ticket For A View Of Melbourne

Photographs copyright: DAVID McMAHON

With the weather warming up, the cruise vessels down the Yarra River get proportionally busier. When we first came to live in Melbourne 20 years ago, there were four months of daylight saving every year, from the last weekend of October to the first weekend of March.


Things have changed now. It was decided a few years ago to extend daylight saving until the end of March. And this year, for the first time, daylight saving began on the first weekend of October so we now have long daylight hours for exactly half the year.

Back in 2000, when Sydney hosted the Olympics, we actually went into daylight saving at the start of September, specifically because of the Games. So there's an interesting piece of Olympic trivia that you might not have known.

Oh, and here's another Olympic story - when Melbourne hosted the 1956 Games, the equestrian events were actually held in Stockholm, Sweden, because of Australia's strict quarantine laws.


The move towards longer daylight hours is good news for tour operators and for the restaurants that make this city famous. It was a warm, sunny afternoon when I took these shots. Now if you’ll excuse me, I’ll just go and grab a ticket for myself …..


By the way, if you're wondering about the huge silver figures that grace the diagonal bridge in the background of this shot (above) let me tell you they are an integral part of this city's multicultural background. The figures pay homage to those who left their homelands to live here, in this sunburnt country.

The story of the huge figures that actually move up and down the length of the disused Sandridge Rail Bridge is detailed in a previous post I wrote, and can be found at Action Figures.

Visit the creative team behind That's MyWorld Tuesday.

In Memory

The Light Shines On A Significant Message

When I was very little, I remember the joy of reading, because it opened up a whole new world for me. I clearly recall being in church each Sunday, at the beautiful Missions To Seamen Church called St Nicholas in Calcutta - and suddenly being able to read the brass plaques on the walls, between the high, narrow, arched windows.

One plaque honoured the memory of a sailor who had sacrificed his own life to save a shipmate who had fallen overboard. The inscription at the bottom of the memorial plaque read: "Great love hath no man than this, than a man lay down his life for a friend."

Those first five words are central to a very solemn part of Melbourne, the city that I have lived in for the past 20 years. In the Shrine of Remembrance on St Kilda Road, there is a special reverence that is hard to describe. This marble inscription is at the heart of the Shrine's interior and it has a very significant meaning.

When the Shrine was built, the architects were helped by calculations relating to astronomy and mathematics. The intricate design means that a ray of sunlight shines through the high atrium on a special commemorative day, to illuminate the word "love".

That day is the 11th of November each year. And the ray of light strikes the word "love" at exactly 11am, the eleventh hour of the eleventh day of the eleventh month. The calculations ensured that this accuracy would endure for 5000 years.

But then the state of Victoria introduced daylight saving - which in turn meant that the careful calculations would be thwarted. That's when all sorts of solutions were considered - and the simplest one was put in place.

Now, a simple prism refracts the light ray by exactly one hour. And at the appointed time on Armistice Day, the sunlight still illuminates the word "love".

Visit TNChick, creator of Photo Hunt. Today's theme: "Sad".

Clock Off

Daylight Shaving Time, For Sure

Photograph copyright: DAVID McMAHON

Five months of daylight saving ended at 2am on Sunday, with the clocks going back by an hour. But this morning, when I got into the city I noticed that the main clock tower at Flinder Street station still had summer time displayed. It was a busy morning and I couldn't spare the time to head down to the river to get a shot of the clock. But at lunch time I wandered downstairs and composed this shot deliberately, to get the clock `framed' by the autumn leaves on a tree. It was only when I uploaded the image here that I noticed the clock had been corrected to show the right time. Ah well, it's still a good shot, so here it is anyway!

Donald Dusk

Finally, The Sun Is Over The Yardarm

Photograph copyright: DAVID McMAHON

As the rest of the world shivers in winter, it's still a scorching summer here in Australia. And as we enjoy five months of daylight saving from the last weekend of October to the last weekend in March, this mean that it only gets dark about nine o'clock. This would have been tough if you belonged to the school of thought that only reached for the whiskey decanter after dark! This shot was taken on Hindley Street, which is the main restaurant strip in beautiful Adelaide, capital of South Australia and as you can see from the large digital clock, it was 8.50pm. The scene captivated me on several counts - the colonial architecture, the azure sky, the neon lighting and the many different light patterns on the footpath and walls and across the laneway in mid-frame. And I only just realised there is one unique thing about this picture. For a street that is always pulsating with action, there is not a single person in the shot.