Previous Challenge Entry (Level 3 - Advanced)
Topic: PHOTOS and/or SOUVENIR(S) (vacation) (07/16/15)
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TITLE: Ouch! | Previous Challenge Entry
By Robyn Harbour
07/20/15 -
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We had planned a driving holiday, staying in 3 star motels and eating out at cheap restaurants. We were on a tight budget but determined to have the best honeymoon ever as neither of us had been out of the state before.
We had with us our new Zenit camera. The latest model direct from Russia, seized by Border Control and bought from the Customs Auction House in Melbourne for the cost of a weeks’ wage.
We read the instruction manual and practiced using the various aperture and shutter speed settings, as this was no ‘pick up and shoot’ instamatic. We wanted the best photos of what we knew would be the best honeymoon ever. We took with us one roll of 35 mm Kodak color slide film allowing us to take 36 pictures.
Mount Gambier was our first stop. We hiked around the Blue Lake, so named because the water was a bright blue. We were careful to change the settings on the camera to suit and we allowed ourselves just two photos. Brown and Valley lakes still contained water in the seventies, we walked around both and took a couple of photos, the autumn colors were magnificent in the trees lining the lakes.
The next photo we took was of the Umpherston Sinkhole, a sunken garden had been built in a collapsed limestone cave, the ecology just right, evidenced by the lush growth at the base. My husband took a photo of me in front of a deep red rose bush, ‘Red for my love’ he said.
A short drive out of the town and we were at the Tantanoola Caves. Neither of us had been inside a cave system before. Using our flash for the first time, we hoped we had captured the beauty of the crystallized formations that were enhanced by colored lights along the internal pathways.
A few days later we drove to Nelson, taking a river cruise along the lower reaches of the Glenelg River, visiting the Princess Margaret Rose Caves. By now we had used up twelve of our thirty-six photos.
We were enjoying our holiday and were positive that we were getting great photos to show our future children in years to come and making great memories of the start of our new life together.
The next stop was Warrnambool, we visited the Flagstaff Hill Maritime Village; so much history to absorb and more photos to take. We tried a time delay photo while sitting on the old ship, this was one photo we were not sure of as my husband barely made it back to me in time.
Other tourists quickly caught on that we were honeymooners, perhaps it was the shiny new wedding bands that alerted them, or the look of pure love in our eyes! At Tower Hill a man offered to take a photo of both of us with our camera, one of the few we would have together.
Port Campbell and the Twelve Apostles rock formations in the sea were photographed. We were now up to twenty-six on the counter. Only ten photos left to go and still more ground to cover.
The Grampians are a majestic mountain range in Western Victoria. We walked the track to the Pinnacle, taking a wonderful panorama shots of the mountains from the top. I was nearly a widow that day as my husband decided to jump the Nerve Test and slipped and just grabbed a large rock in time.
We hiked up Mt Rosea, the mountain where we had met twelve months before. We had been on a church camp and at the steepest part I was struggling for breath, my now husband reached down and pulled me all the way to the top. This was the beginning of our journey together.
36, 37, 38, Ok, we often get more than 36 photos, but not 39, 40, 41. Now we were worried. What was wrong with the camera? We were not able to wind the film back into its canister.
Later that night in the motel bathroom we opened the camera in near darkness. The film had never moved through the camera, when we loaded it the holes had not engaged with the sprockets and the film had never left the canister.
Ouch! We had no record of the beginning of our life together.
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