I came across the image below  whilst  going through  the archives looking  for photos that I'd made in April 2022 when we stayed overnight  in accommodation behind the coffee shop at Natimuk. We were on our way back to  Encounter Bay in South Australia from  walking in Wilson's Promontory in Victoria. 

I'd forgotten about the  image below  which  I'd  made on my  first visit  to this  part of western Victoria.  It  is of Castle Craig at  Mt Arapiles (known traditionally as Dyurrite by the Djurid Balud clan of the  Wotjobaluk people) and  it was made pre-Covid  with the 5x4 Linhof  Technika IV  Some other colour images  from Mt Arapiles  are here.  

Mt Arapiles, which  is in  the  Mt Arapiles-Tooan State Park near Natimuk,  is  a large  rock outcrop overlooking the Wimmera plains and surrounded by the  agricultural country.   It is a well known international  climbing spot. 

On an earlier  visit  to Mt Arapiles  I explored  Mitre Rock,  a small isolated rock outcrop of hard sandstone, just down the road from Mt Arapiles.  I made a  medium format black and white photo of its  western wall. The weather  was cold and wet from memory.  

Behind me lies Mitre Lake,  a flora and fauna conservation reserve. Mitre Lake is a natural salt lake surrounded by samphire, melaleuca and other salt tolerant vegetation. I didn't make any photos. 

On both of those occasions I ran out of time to explore the Black Range State Park which  is just  south of the Grampians. We had time to do so on the  Melbourne  visit in 2023, as  we went south of the Grampians to look for it.  We went  via Dunkeld to Cavendish, then along the A 200   (ie., the Henty Highway) via Mooralia, Cherrypool, Brimpaen, Mockinya  to Horsham.   However, we  missed the turnoff for the Rocklands/Cherrypool Rd on the Henty Highway, which was the access road to the state park.   

My interest in the Black Range State Park arose from both seeing  Ian Lobb's wonderful  series of landscapes, which he had made in  the late 1980s;  and then Greg Wayn's fascinating  landscapes that he made in 2018 (plus  his more recent ones  using the digital 16:9  aspect ratio).  This series has a harsh,  high tone look which I find intriguing because due to the way that it  undercuts the traditional emphasis on beauty  in landscape photography and  foregrounds the harshness and messiness of a regional  Australian landscape damaged by fire.