From Richmond I headed south, ultimately heading for Port Arthur with a couple of stops to make along the way – Map of Richmond travelling to Port Arthur. At Eaglehawk Neck you turn off and wend your way down the hill to a carpark overlooking a large bay and a couple of hotels behind it. It was cold wet and quite windy by now so I geared up and walked down the path to the Tessellated Pavement.
There were many enticing shots of odd square flat rocks with a gorgeous sunset over them in the tourist brochures so I was not at all prepared for the sheer SCALE of the place, it was HUGE – here are some shots I took from the lookout on the walk down to give you an idea of the size
ALL images in this post have the big size embedded in them so please click to view LARGE
View to the left with distant rocks for scale – the black dot in the middle of the water is a surfer!
The middle section
Further around to the right, there is this much again beyond it too
By the grace of all the gods, I had incredibly managed to get there at low tide and so all the rocks were revealed and I could safely walk down to them and then on and across them. They look quite flat from up high but were quite treacherous to walk on, rounded in areas, flat in others, covered in deep puddles and grooves elsewhere. You had to go slowly and pay attention to not twist an ankle or get your feet wet!
So I carefully walked my way around the cliff, to where the surf was coming in and swirling against some broken up blocks and set up my tripod and my bag on a lucky dry spot and got shooting. The wind was quite strong and kept blowing spray on my lens but I was having so much fun it didn’t bother me too much.
This place was a photographers paradise, the pretty tourist pictures didn’t do it near enough justice – I was there with about 20 people all walking around, I just walked away from them and pointed my camera in the other direction FANTASTIC!
Of course with the surf coming in hard against the rocks it was an ideal time for some long exposure goodness, so I setup my trusty Lee Big Stopper and played with varying times to get a nice foamy image – these are around 15-20 sec
I changed the direction of my camera a few degrees and with the 10-22mm UWA lens on it was just the right angle to pick up the fast cloud movement in the sky – the tripod didnt move, just the camera so that was an interesting learning experience.
I hope you enjoyed my guided tour of the Tessellated Pavement – it was an unexpected delight – like much of Tasmania and I was so lucky to get good conditions to visit.
Everyone always goes OOH! over the long exposure shots but my fave is the BW at the top, it shows the scale and the details so nicely.
Which is your fave?
Learning to See Light 
Gorgeous pictures! I always find geological formations like this fascinating – it’s incredible what nature can produce. The long exposure shots are beautiful but I have to agree, the black and white shot is stunning. 🙂
The whole island is made up of these square blocks of stone, you could see it whereever you went, sometimes its old and worn down and rounded by the sea and sometimes its much blockier. On Mt Wellington above Hobart there is quite a long walk to do to view a formation called the Organ Pipes which I didn’t have time to do unfortunately.
Never heard of the tessellated pavement before… Haha learnt something new today!
Glad you stopped by Danial – yes its a bit tucked away in a corner of Tasmania so I am pleased I got to share it with you 🙂
Another great spot I haven’t been to, can’t believe a New Zealander has to show me the good spots 🙂 My fave is the one looking directly down onto the pavement so you can see how regular they are (third one).
LOL well I tried to get to all of the good spots and this was definately a good one. The lookout half way down the cliff was a good spot for the aerial views so you could see the patterns nicely.
Certainly looks a great place to linger – love your Big Stopper goodness 🙂
It was a great place to visit, probably not to linger as the tide came all the way up over them and the waves were pretty rough 🙂 The long exposures are a crowd favourite.
They are all great photos. Love your black & white too
Thanks Raewyn, it was a great place and I was so pleased I took the time to visit.
I thought the Tesselated Pavement was really cool. The tide was a lot higher when we were there. I like the third shot best. It does a great job of showing the rock formation.
I was so lucky to time it as I did because I didn’t realise it was right on the shoreline and that the tide would affect it. There was no planning involved at my end, I just arrived. It could have been much less photogenic!
The third shot is the view straight down from the lookout on the way down the cliff, very eye catching 🙂