Lorne Pier

A long exposure made from beneath Lorne Pier on the Great Ocean Road, looking down a receding line of barnacle-crusted, rust-streaked iron pylons. The 68-second frame pools the water smooth and faintly green around their bases. Submerged rocks break the waterline in the foreground, thick with marine growth. Overcast light flattens the sky above a low outline of distant hills, and the concrete beams overhead draw the eye down the full length of the structure.

The first jetty at Lorne was built in 1879 on local blue gum piles, to give boats safe sea access, to serve the timber industry and to land supplies. Before it existed, boats had to be beached and propped while they were loaded and unloaded. The structure was reconfigured repeatedly over the next century and more, at various times triangular, L-shaped, lengthened and progressively concreted, working throughout as a cargo and fishing port. It was replaced in 2007 by the present pier, funded by the Victorian State Government for tourism and recreation, with a short section of the old pier kept alongside as an interpretive display. The pier predates the road running past it by more than forty years. Brett photographed it on 20 October 2017.