Seas Stacks and Storm, Victoria Australia

(Click image to enlarge)

This was my fifth attempt to capture this scene at sunrise in five consecutive winter days. On all but this day it was pouring rain, bleak, cold, and viscously windy. This day was missing only the pouring rain, and for that I felt tremendously lucky. To make up for that, it started raining again before I left the viewpoint. It didn't matter much since I was already wet with salt spray.

These rock formations are remnants of the mainland's limestone cliffs. The stormy Southern Ocean, howling winds, and ten to twenty million years eroded the softer limestone, forming caves in the cliffs. The cave rooves collapsed to form arches, and when the arches collapsed, rock stacks (sea stacks) were formed, standing isolated from the shore. This is an ongoing process as shown by various sea caves in the shoreline with sink holes behind them, formed by the collapsing cave roofs.