Cumberland River

So I've been a bit M.I.A over the past week or so. To fill you in briefly, I've just returned from a much needed break with my boyfriend, Paul to a place that had basically no mobile reception, let alone internet. I've been feeling very overwhelmed by a lot of various things in my life over the past few weeks. Most notably about my work, and what I'm actually doing with myself. I'm working on pin pointing where exactly these feelings are stemming from but sometimes I find that just stepping away from something for a short amount of time can really help with my anxiety. It also makes me feel a lot more concise and clear about where I'm going with everything.

We stayed at a place called Cumberland River. It's a short drive along The Great Ocean Road from Lorne, Victoria. It's this tiny little caravan park nestled soundly between two cliff faces and a lot of trees. Cumberland river trickles down one side of the park, although it was more like rushing rapidly as we arrived in the middle of a flood (just our luck). Across the road, the aqua blue ocean crashes against volcanic rock eroding slowly away.

We went to Cumberland River only a few weeks ago, when my cousins were staying in a cabin there for a weekend. Paul used to stay there a lot with his family when he was a young boy. We only stayed for a few short hours but we knew instantly that we wanted to come back and have our own adventure. 

The cabin we stayed in was on the edge of the park, where clean cut grass meets the rugged Australian bush. It was so quiet and serene. We were surrounded by ducks and king parrots and kookaburras that woke us up in the mornings. The weather was incredibly temperamental. Between dodging showers of rain we visited several beautiful water falls and a cave, we walked across rapid river crossings and climbed up hills that were unrealistically steep. Neither of us are particularly experienced bushwalkers but it's something I've personally wanted to get into a lot more since I was fifteen (you can see some blog posts here and here). 

We've come back a bit of a wreck. I'm now sick with a cold and Paul tripped over a rock and hurt his arms, wrists and leg. Luckily none of it was too serious! Despite all this we had a wonderful time disconnecting from our usual day to day lives, and I'm feeling very refreshed. Over the next couple of weeks I'm going to be updating this blog design along with working on my new website. 

The photographs below are a combination of images I took on my DSLR when we visited Cumberland River a couple of weeks ago, and some iPhone pictures both taken by myself and Paul from the past couple of days. There's also a very horrifying video at the end of this post. Film is something I really want to get into more but like anything, it needs practice so please bear with my horrible film making skills. 

Also, a really huge and lovely shout out to a person called 'Pat' who said some really nice things about my work to my friend Sophie today which she kindly passed on to me. You are lovely!