Blowholes, Shipwrecks and Hearts in the Sea

I wrote a post earlier this year about visiting the town of Eden and my reasons for stopping there in the ex-whaling town for two nights, mainly because of my viewing the film, 'In the Heart of the Sea' and drinking a bottle of Tasmanian wine, while getting the idea to travel to Tasmania -
Eden: The Unintended Garden 
I had promised to write a follow-up post about my visit to the Killer Whale Museum, so yesterday I spent time watching and gathering screenshots from the movie, 'In the Heart of the Sea', a movie I had seen at the end of 2015 at the cinema while I was going through a divorce from a 25 year marriage and that movie inspired my choice of Tasmanian sparkling wine to "celebrate" my divorce.

Marriage/Devil's corner?-)

When I was drinking the wine and reading the label a thought popped into my head that I should make an effort to visit Tasmania next year while I had the time and money to do so, but I never really took that thought seriously until I made a second road-trip in 2016 and saw that Chelsea Wolfe was playing Dark Mofo in Hobart and that I would be halfway there already, as I was heading down to Sydney to watch my team the Sharks play the Cowboys in Cronulla.

I crossed the sea for the first time in my life on a boat in that road-trip to Tasmania and back and the night after I made it back to the mainland a guy decided to end his life by jumping off the same boat and into the icy dark sea, only to end up going under the boat, never to be seen again.

The bones of 'Old Tom' the killer whale
of Eden, New South Wales

Eden is a town that honours the bones of a killer whale they named Old Tom.
Old Tom was one of the killer whales that would help the local whalers catch the humpback whales for their share of the spoils.

In the movie 'In the Heart of the Sea' it is also an "Old Thom" dictating the story of the murderous whale to Herman Melville, the author of 'Moby Dick'.

"The novel was a commercial failure and out of print at the time of the author's death in 1891, but during the 20th century, its reputation as a Great American Novel was established."

"The product of a year and a half of writing, the book draws on Melville's experience at sea, on his reading in whaling literature, and on literary inspirations such as Shakespeare and the Bible. 
The white whale is modeled on the notoriously hard to catch actual albino whale Mocha Dick, and the ending is based on the sinking of the whaler Essex by a whale. 
The detailed and realistic descriptions of whale hunting and of extracting whale oil, as well as life aboard ship among a culturally diverse crew, are mixed with exploration of class and social status, good and evil, and the existence of God. 
In addition to narrative prose, Melville uses styles and literary devices ranging from songs, poetry, and catalogs to Shakespearean stage directions, soliloquies, and asides."
'Moby Dick' is basically a metaphorical novel about following a dangerous dream that could end in tragedy, or triumph.  

And in the novel I'm reading at the moment trying to get finished before the movie hits cinema screens in Australia in a few weeks, the main character is a lighthouse keeper named Tom. 
The novel is set about 100 years ago and Tom was a WWI veteran who fought in France.
I met the author M.L. Stedman in Byron Bay in 2014 at a talk she was participating in about lighthouses, one of my loves also. 
A movie by Dreamworks of the book was filmed mainly in Tasmania starring Michael Fassbender as Tom.

I bought her book, 'The Light Between Oceans' then, but left it unread until I heard the movie was coming out soon ... next week in Australia, I think.

Huge waves pounding the coast near Bondi.

Picture Chris Pavlich

As I'm putting the killer whale post together, I see a news story about the 'Sculpture by the Sea' event in Sydney getting smashed by freak waves and wrecking artworks.
Sculpture by the Sea: More installations under threat by huge surf
"Two artworks are destroyed and another three have been damaged by a storm surge that hammered the world’s largest annual sculpture exhibition along Sydney’s coast.
Some artworks were dragged along the sand and into the water during wild weather between Bondi and Tamarama beaches on Monday, less than a week after the opening of the popular Sculptures by the Sea exhibition."

I love Alessandra Rossi's unnamed sculpture.
'Spirit by the Sea'?

'Alien – 

self consciousness is a virus 

from outer space', 

by Angelika Summa 

... wrecked by the sea

When I saw that news story about the sculptures getting smashed by the sea, it reminded me that I had stopped off in the town of Kiama after leaving Eden on my way to Wollongong. 
I stopped there to see the famous Kiama Blowhole and the lighthouse that was next to it.
And that news story also reminded me of the sculptures and potential dangers I encountered on my last road-trip in Newcastle -
New Castle? See Change?

The Kiama (Karma?-) Light remembering 100 years of war

The Kiama Blowhole

There have been quite a few freak waves at the blowhole that have claimed the lives of people who ventured too close to it at times.

The Kiama Light, as the real light appears
 to descend behind the horizon 

The weird and spooky part about watching the Chris Hemsworth movie, 'In the Heart of the Sea' and getting screen shots for my post about Eden was I didn't get to see any breaking news that afternoon and it was only when I rang my mother and she mentioned four people getting killed on the 'Thunder River Rapid Ride' at Dreamworld that I remembered that Chris Hemsworth was filming his new Thor (god of thunder?) movie just down the road at Warner Brothers studios, home of the Movieworld theme park.

Dreamworlds turning to dark worlds?

Life is stranger and more horrific than any movie Hollywood could dream up and most dreams turn to nightmares sooner or later for the majority of mortals who walk the earth.

All we can do is pray for a happy ending and hope for the best, I guess. 
24 World Pieces into One Peace?

Jake Kotze's piece, 

'Life is a movie'

Life is sometimes one deep dark puzzle

Killer whale post coming soon.