I had taken what was intended to be my PAD today. But the wind was blowing strongly, and I could hear some quite pronounced pounding of water against rock on the inner side of the pier that runs parallel to (and over) the waterfront. The waves in Johnston's Bay were hardly mountainous, but there was a reasonable swell up and when the water hit a particularly shallow part of the rocky foreshore, it rattled about quite a bit.

And that's what we're seeing here. I appear, as I do in any of my self portraits, as nothing more than a shadow (The Shadow; hmmm, sounds like a good name for my superhero persona...) looking down at the water swirling about over the rocks. The hole that you can see in the lower left may not be natural, but rather a leftover from an earlier use. In the 1870's this was the site of the Pyrmont Baths, an enclosed ocean pool which was one of the few recreational sites in the (then) working class area, if you ignore an abundance of pubs. In 1900 the foreshore land was resumed by the Sydney Harbour Trust, and the baths were leased back to Sydney Council. The council enlarged and refurbished the baths in 1902, even installing electric lighting for night swimming.

While some old timers claimed that the water was crystal clear, given the types of industries that surrounded the baths at the time I shudder to think what toxins were in there.

The Trust tried to resume the baths in 1927 to expand nearby wharves and roads, but they survived until 1946 when the then state government tore them down much to the anger of the good citizens of Pyrmont.

So it's not merely turbulent water that we see here; there was a turbulent history as well.