Linda Cuttriss

In the mood for winter

20/7/2022

By Linda Cuttriss

WINTER has a bad reputation but I love the way it swings smoothly through all its moods. Wild and windy. Crisp, still and sunny. Calm, grey and drizzly. And back again.

On some winter days swell from storms in the Southern Ocean crashes violently upon the rocks. At other times the sea is calm and serene. Sometimes there are days of heavy rain changing paddocks into wetlands. On clear days sunshine illuminates green pastures and shimmers across the bay. Some mornings fog settles in the hollows.

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Summer bliss with a twist

24/2/2022

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By Linda Cuttriss

ONE of the best things for me about summer is plunging into the ocean. The temperature is just right. Not too warm like the tropics, cool enough to be invigorating and not too cold like in winter. Apparently, cold water swimming boosts the immune system, improves circulation and reduces stress, but it’s not for me. Most years I take my first plunge around late November and stretch it through until early April.

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Of magic, mystery and monsters

7/10/2021

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Linda Cuttriss joins a woodlands walk and finds a new kind of
magic in the hills above Grantville and The Gurdies.

By Linda Cuttriss

OVER the ages, in countries around the world, woodlands and forests have evoked stories of magic, mystery and mystical beings. Britain and Europe have fairies and elves. Indigenous Australians have Little People and the Yowie or Big Foot.

When I was little, travelling with my parents and brothers along the Bass Highway from Inverloch to Melbourne and back, I would get a spooky feeling along that thickly wooded stretch of road around Grantville and The Gurdies. There were stories of strange things seen by the roadside at night.

I am no longer spooked as I drive along that stretch of road but what lies behind those trees has remained a mystery. So, when Save Western Port Woodlands sent out word of guided woodland walks I jumped at the chance to discover what is hiding in there.

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Nature's Showtime

13/11/2020

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Magpie parent with a worm for the babies.
All photos: Linda Cuttriss

By Linda Cuttriss

IT WAS late afternoon in early spring and the paddocks across the bay were gleaming green. ‘Whales!’ I heard my partner call. Dozens of seabirds, probably terns, were dive-bombing the water a few hundred metres offshore, but as usual I could see no whales. ‘Where?’ I cried out. Then I spotted them. A blow of spray, then another further away. The pair of whales must have been feeding too, for they stayed for ages, barely breaching the surface for a sip of air before disappearing then reappearing a short while later with another blow of spray.

As I watched the whales, a pair of magpies charged back and forth from their nest high up in a she-oak tree, sailing over the edge of the bluff and returning with bugs and worms in their beaks. Mama magpie had been on the nest for almost three weeks so the babies must have hatched.

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The sands of time

18/8/2019

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Linda Cutttriss guides us on a walk back through time along the Cowes beach.

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Sculptures by the Sea

12/6/2019

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Like the walls of an ancient fort, the Colonnades on Woolamai Beach look impregnable.

The Colonnades to Forrest Bluff

By Linda Cuttriss

THE Colonnades are vertical basalt columns that stand like walls of an ancient fort at the western end of Woolamai Beach on the south coast of Phillip Island.

I turn off Cape Woolamai Road and drive to the end of Tampa Road where a boardwalk leads over a short-tailed shearwater rookery to a lookout and steps down to the beach. I arrive at low tide so I have plenty of time to take a close look at The Colonnades and explore westward to Forrest Bluff before the incoming tide swallows up the beach.

From the lookout, breaking waves roll in from Bass Strait. Cape Woolamai lies to the east and Pyramid Rock sits offshore in the west.

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On sheltered waters

19/7/2018

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Words and photos by Linda Cuttriss

IT IS low tide on a crisp, clear winter’s morning in the small fishing village of Rhyll. Blinding sunlight fills the space between French Island and this quiet, sheltered shore on the north-east tip of Phillip Island. The Bass Hills are still smudged with morning mist on the other side of the bay. The receding tide has left behind a patchwork of green seagrass meadows, expanses of deep blue water, luminous sheets of pale blue and a myriad of puddles and pools.

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Beaches, bays and one fatal shot

2/11/2017

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Picture Elizabeth Cove, Ventnor, Phillip Island, photo by Linda Cuttriss, 2017

Linda Cuttriss visits Ventnor, where Phillip Island’s first European family once hosted members of Melbourne’s social elite.

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A wild ride: Summerland scenic drive

20/9/2017

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Behind the scenes of the Summerland peninsula lies a unique history of tourism, development and wildlife conservation. Linda Cuttriss reports.

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Finding Ellen

8/10/2016

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Ellen Cuttriss

A family gathering at Inverloch Pioneer Cemetery marked the end of a quest to find the long-lost grave of a young mother and son, buried 125 years ago. Linda Cuttriss reports

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Of sand and stone

26/7/2016

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By Linda Cuttriss

THE Woolamai dunes rise behind lines of rolling surf on the south-east coast of Phillip Island. These massive hills of sand stand up to 30 metres high. They sprawl from Woolamai Surf Beach to Cleeland Bight and stretch from The Colonnades to the granite upland of Cape Woolamai.

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Island idyll

2/7/2016