Sunday 6th
After a few very pleasant days of down time in Brisbane it was back to work in with a vengeance.
No it wasn’t.
Luke, the producer for this segment of the Daybreak Down Under week , Nick the picture editor and I met Sam from the Victoria tourist office in the reception of our hotel on a quiet Sunday Melbourne morning.
Yesterday in the city it had been a bit more busy and exciting with lots of people dressed in their best clobber for the final day of the Melbourne Spring Festival which had included the Melbourne Cup earlier in the week, Australia’s biggest and most famous horse race. It is a combination of the Grand National and Ascot but much bigger.
Sam had brought us a shiny Holden hire car for our day’s outing of recces and little bit of shooting.
After dropping Sam off we set out on the three hour drive to the first place that we needed to check out. Flagstaff Hill would be an alternative location for our live broadcasts if the weather was not good at our primary location.
Nick drove us along the inland route to Flagstaff which is quicker than the more picturesque but slower coast road.
When we got there we were met by Peter the boss of the Maritime Museum.
It would make a great location and he was well up for helping us in any way possible. There would even be the opportunity to get presenter Kate Garraway dressed up in period costume.
Looking down on the village at Flagstaff Hill.
Peter chats points out the location options to Luke and Nick.
The lake doubling as the sea.
The beautiful coast that can be seen from the Museum.
The entrance.
After having a look at the Flagstaff Maritime Museum we got on the road to what we hoped would be the main location by dropping on to the coast road called the Great Ocean Road and doubling back a couple of hours.
One of Australia's must do trips.
Says it all.
As if we didn't know.
Nick at the wheel.
It was pretty warm on the road...
...too warm for any of these to be leaping about..
...didn't stop us looking out for them though.
The Twelve Apostles are large pillars of stone that stick out of the sea rather spectacularly but, because of erosion there are no longer 12. This would be the prefered location, weather permitting.
They are pretty spectacular...
..whichever direction you look.
Nick gets his pics.
Quite awesome...
..and very dangerous.
After checking out that this would work we then had to meet our 20 of the 100 competition winners that were going to be touring around Victoria.
They had travelled from Sydney after having done the Sydney Harbour Bridge climb with the other 80 winners. That had not been without drama.
Daybreak was featured on the TV news in Sydney because the Harbour bridge had to be closed to allow paramedics to bring down one of the guys who had taken a bit of a bad turn. From the very top he had to be stretchered down and off the bridge.
The rendezvous was at the memorial arch that signifies the start of the Great Ocean Road.
The road was built by ex-servicemen and is dedicated to the memory of those soldiers, sailors and airmen from Ausrtalia that have been killed in action. It is the world’s largest war memorial.
It was getting dark by the time we met them.
II would need to work very quickly before the light disappeared completely.
We just needed a shot of the people at the arch and the bus going under it.
This meant that our first meeting with the guys was not a nice polite “hello, how are you”, followed by small talk and introductions.
It was, “Hi. Get off the bus when I say go. Then go and stand over there! Quickly!”
The twenty did as they were told. I managed to get the few shoots that we needed quite literally before the light went completely. Thank goodness for the sensitivity of modern, or fairly modern cameras.
A few years ago the shots would not have been possible without the help of a huge light.
We got back into the car and retraced our tyre track back along The Great Ocean Road to our hotel at Warrnambool.
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