Splashing through the Water

The boat is a means of transportation that has been using since the prehistoric age. It has evolved from a dugout made from a hollowed tree trunk to highly sophisticated yachts. Even though the early use of a boat is either transportation or trading, nowadays it is ranging from transportation to racing and other recreational rides. The picture you see here is captured from a ferry operating from Sydney harbour to Manly Beach in Sydney NSW Australia.

If you were asked to close your eyes and visualize a boat, arrive into shore, what kind of image you would have? Well, you would have a unique image in your mind. What would be the main elements your image? Of course, there would be a boat and water. In addition to those, one might see a land, trees and more specifically some sort of animals, at least a bird.  If you have such an image in your mind, I suppose you were privileged enough to feel the beauty of nature at someday in your life. However, if your image is somewhat similar to what is in this picture, the bitter truth is you did not get to feel the real beauty of nature. We can rarely see any tree or land in this picture. Not to criticize the development but, this is where we are heading.

In this picture, the tall, narrow tower you see is the Sydney Tower Eye, the highest place and one of the iconic places in Sydney. It is the second tallest observation tower in the Southern Hemisphere.  Tourists or any visitor to Sydney may not miss the chance to see the 360 view of Sydney from the observation deck of this tower. Different sizes, shapes and architectural designs of the buildings surrounded by roads, which are often busy with travelling vehicles on it, can be seen from there. Among them, there is the Opera House, which is famous for its unique architecture and one of the UNESCO world heritage sites. Also, the Sydney Harbour Bridge, a through-type arch bridge made up of steel, across which the CBD (Central Business District) connects to the North Shore. Beyond the buildings, there is the sea kissing the sky.

This picture is noisy, not because of the poor quality of the camera, but it reflects the real view to the best possible way without any filtering or editing. This was captured in the early days of the Black Summer, 2019-20 bushfire period. The view of the Sydney Tower Eye in that period was utterly smoky and begrimed. The beauty of Mother Nature is not to be considered as a business but a thing, which cares and protects us. Natural disasters reflect our own acts on it.