There's a cliff above the small Victorian coastal township of Point Lonsdale from which you can gaze out across the narrow entrance to Port Phillip Bay — 'The Rip' as it is graphically and accurately called — and watch the big ships glide by in their stately way.
Even huge, chunky container ships seem briefly impressive as they cruise into this famous waterway and begin the tricky process of navigating the shallows and channels of the bay.
In this challenge they have the crucial aid of a pilot, traditionally a retired sea captain, who is delivered by launch from the Pilot Station at nearby Queenscliff and who leaves the vessel he is guiding once it has been safely ushered into or out of the bay. So that at almost any given time you can see a huge cargo ship or an ocean liner or both, along with the bright red pilot launch buzzing ahead or back into the Queenscliff distance.
And, as if all that watery traversing were not enough, you'll most likely see the Queenscliff–Sorrento ferry making its own quiet, regularly timed way across the paths and wakes of the big ships: well, that's how it looks to landlubber eyes watching from afar. No doubt, they don't actually go anywhere near each other.
But the sea, as we all know, is endlessly fascinating no matter what is happening or not happening on its restless features. Somehow you can watch it for hours — the glint and flash of waves, the dark smudge of a school of fish just below the surface, the glistening arc of what you would swear are dolphins but probably aren't
And, in the case of 'Rip View', as this spot is locally known, the ships, queues of them, so close, as I described it to a South Australian friend who quite properly didn't believe me, that you can see the crew on the deck, the pilot and skipper on the bridge and the printed lettering on the containers.
Decades, even centuries, of staring out at the sea give coastal townships a maritime, briny, windswept look, the way some dog owners start to look like their dogs.
Bush towns settle into their landscape. The galvanised-iron roofs and the encircling verandahs squat down