The Adventure Continues

With smiles on our faces we headed out of the city, now longing for some wide-open spaces and it was also nice not to have to worry about traffic anymore. With Mary and Tom’s claim that Wilsons Promontory was one of their favourite places we were off to experience it for ourselves. We expected the National Park camp at the “Prom to be almost empty now that school holidays were over so were very surprised to find most of the camp sites nearest the beach taken. After driving around and going for a walk (it took a while as there are 480 sites in the camp!) we found a nice site with some shade and no immediate neighbours. By the time the day was over, from our campsite we had seen fairy wrens, kookaburra, lapwings, ducks sea gulls, galahs, crimson rosellas and yellow tailed black cockatoos. At night we went wombat hunting and saw two the first night and three the following night as well as two brush tailed possums (the same kind as we have in NZ). We also saw rabbits but these are not on our list of wildlife that we want to encounter.

The camp is set alongside Tidal River, a small tannin stained creek and Norman Bay, a large sheltered bay with huge granite scrub covered hills protruding out into the sea. It is a delightful spot and popular with families as both the river and sea are safe for swimming. It is also popular for school groups and over the three days we were there we saw students heading off to go surfing, hiking, canoeing, biking and abseiling.

We went on several walks that took us through bush and over hills to several lovely beaches. The summer fires last year burnt some of the forest and in the areas we went little of this appears to have recovered. Hopefully there are seeds in the ground that will germinate and over the next few years the blackened trucks will be hidden by new growth coming through.

Unfortunately we came across “march flies” at the beaches and a couple of times there were so many of them we didn’t linger there for long. March flies are large flies that bite! They have quite a nip and those who are susceptible to bites may end up with the same reaction as from a mosquito or sandfly bite. Thank goodness we don’t have these back home – I prefer our sandflies! Fortunately there were very few of these pests at the camp and at the nearest beach. One day we took a short walk to Cotter beach and all along the track there were millions of small grasshoppers (locusts?). As we walked along they pinged up and sometimes they hit against our legs. I am sure they would be good food for the birds but we only saw three magpies making a meal of them.

As we left the “Prom” it had become very humid and at 28C it was what you might call sticky weather. Our next destination was Tarra-Bulga National Park, a place recommended to us by friends. There aren't any camp spots in the park, but there are a few places to stay just outside. We stayed at the Tarra Valley Tourist Park "Fernholme". It is quite a small park under tall eucalypts right beside the Tarra river. It is a really nice spot but our site got a bit muddy after torrential rain (with thunder and lightning) on our first night. In the National Park we found a cool moist forest with lovely tree ferns in the under story and towering mountain ash trees (a eucalypt), myrtle beech (a relative of the NZ south island beech trees) and sassafras with it’s lovely scented leaves and we heard lots of bird song in the trees. We took a few short walks through the forest and spotted a lyrebird scratching in the undergrowth. It was a male so had a lyre shaped tail. It was really nice to walk in a forest that was cool, green and soft as opposed to the usual gum forests that tend to be greyish and dry with prickly shrubs in the undergrowth. This forest reminded us of the Fiordland bush.

For the past couple of days we have been at the Buchan Caves Reserve, a lovely spot with park like surrounds. The reserve was created back in the 1930s when reserves were made to a different plan. Lots of English Oak, Ash, Sycamore, Walnut etc trees have been planted and there are grassy lawns set amongst a sprinkling of native trees. At the moment it is really quiet. We had about 4 other groups here last night, but tonight there is only one other couple in a camper van. We see and hear a variety of birds in the trees and have the odd kangaroo wandering around. Today we went for a walk and saw a lyrebird, a female so it didn’t have such nice tail feathers. We heard another one doing amazing mimics of other birds including a very passable kookaburra. We went on two cave tours where we saw many lovely formations; stalagmites, stalactites, shawls, flowstones, rim pools to name a few of the wonderful creations made by droplets of water seeping through the limestone.

We are now making our way back to Sydney, by an indirect route as we plan to be there in a couple of weeks time. This will give us time to sell the caravan and get much of the accumulated dirt off the truck before it goes for shipping to NZ, in mid March. Like when we sent it over the authorities in both Aus and NZ will no doubt clean it, but we figure that if we can get rid of all the dirt we can find the authorities cleaning charge will be less.