Photos to follow when or if I ever get a decent connection!
We left Melbourne just after 6.30 this morning, very sad at having seen almost nothing of the city. We will obviously have to come back! Public transport seems very easy too; we noticed the large number of trams, including the free one that goes right round the city. We also liked this warning notice.
This morning we drove out of the southern suburbs - stone bungalows with tile roofs - and continued on a dual carriageway for over an hour through very flat, green countryside, with some marshy areas. It reminded me a bit of parts of Kent. Then we were into green rolling hills with grazing cows; they are Friesians, this is dairy country and not unlike Devon!
We were on our way to Wilson's Promontory and WIlson's Promontory National Park, and we crossed quite a narrow isthmus to get to it - sufficiently narrow that we could see the sea on both sides. This is the most southerly point in Australia.
We saw a warning about wombats crossing the road, and almost immediately afterwards, saw a dead one at the side of the road, which was very sad, particularly since I have yet to see a live wild one.
Once in the national park, we got out to walk and take pictures of the many kangaroos and emus in that part of the park. Our driver took a football, and the emus were very interested in it and kept going over to inspect it.
We saw a number of female kangaroos, some with joeys in the pouch, and though they were a bit wary, we were able to get quite close.
We saw a wombat hole, but nobody was home. We also had a look under an old car tyre and saw quite a big funnel-web spider and a very small red backed spider. There were lots of funnel-web spider holes too.
We got back into the bus and headed for Squeaky Beach, so called because the sand squeaks under your feet. It is a most attractive beach of clean pale sand with almost nobody about.
We had to leap a little creek to get onto the beach, and walked along it (squeaking loudly) and then began a climb towards Pillar Point. At the start of the walk, we passed these massive rocks.
It would have been a delightful walk, though steep in places, but it was made most unpleasant by the presence of throngs of small black flying insects. They didn't bite or sting, but there were an awful lot of them. I eventually put on the mosquito head net and felt much more comfortable. The views from Pillar Point were spectacular,
but I was disinclined to stay because I was covered in little black insects. We walked back towards the beach and once we had escaped the insects we were able to stop on some rocks for lunch.
After lunch, we started a long drive towards Gippsland Lakes and the town of Lakes Entrance. This is a most picturesque little fishing port and holiday resort. There is a charming little harbour full of fishing and recreation boats. Unfortunately, it was after 6 when we arrived and it was raining, so the pictures are poor. And we are off early tomorrow morning, so there may not be time to get any better ones. The pictures I took from the moving bus are hopeless, and the ones from from the lookout are nice, though dark, but don't show the little town or the harbour.
- Posted using BlogPress from my iPad
No comments:
Post a Comment