Go South, Young Man

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Around 175 km south-east of Melbourne lies Wilsons Promontory – the southernmost point of mainland Australia. There it is – in the distance:

And what else can you see? It's sunny! Yes, it was a beautiful day!

We set off for a two-day trip – it being quite a long round trip for a single day. En route, we visited Mount Dandenong – a very pretty mountain to the east of Melbourne. Well, I say “to the east”, which it is, but only just. Just a little to the west of the mountain is the suburb of Ferny Creek which is 37 km from down-town Melbourne. Melbourne is a very wide city.

Anyway, Mount Dandenong is home to quite a number of garden centres and plant nurseries. And also the Silvan Reservoir:

While visiting that viewpoint, we saw a sign pointing us in the direction of the Olinda Falls. Well, that seemed like a good opportunity so off we set through the Cool Temperate Rainforest:

When we got there, it seemed like it might not have been worth the walk. The "fall" towards the bottom left of the picture is about 2 feet high...:

Ah well, the walk was pleasant. I had hoped we might spot a koala but it was not to be. The only koalas I've seen are the ones at the wildlife centre in Sydney.

After our walk, we set off again for Wilsons Promontory. The whole promontory is a national park and there's only one place to stay in it. In summer they run a raffle to see who gets the available places but, at this time of year, we had our pick! In fact, we rented a cabin which was very nice and cosy in the middle of the forest. Next morning, Alex took this picture of me in front of what had been our home for the night:

After leaving, we decided to climb Mount Oberon which towers over the camp site. Actually, you can drive a fair way up the hill, but we still had about an hour's climb to reach the summit. It was well worth it.

This is, apparently, the windiest spot in the state, but our luck with the weather held and we could sit easily at the summit, and enjoyed wonderful views. The first picture at the top of the posting is the view looking south. Looking the other way you see this:

Almost in the middle of the picture is the camp site where we'd stayed the night before. The cabins were to the right hand side of the site – along the river. Incidentally, that's “Tidal River”; wonder how they came up with the name...

The bay to the left (west) of the village is Norman Bay, then (going north) is Squeaky Beach then Whisky Bay in the distance.

Our next stop was Squeaky Beach, but not before we stopped in at Tidal River camp-site again to pick up a sandwich and cup of tea for lunch. While there, we suddenly made friends with a whole flock of beautiful Rosella birds:

Rosellas are members of the parrot family. I believe these are Crimson Rosellas (Platycercus elegans).

As well as the Rosellas, we came across this very cute wombat:

After lunch, we visited Squeaky Beach. Why “squeaky”? Well, the sand is almost pure quartz and it really does squeak when you walk on it. There was quite a good surf running, but we resisted the urge to go swimming. Well, I didn't quite – I went paddling; it was pretty cold, but lovely on feet which had previously hiked up and down Mount Oberon!

While at the beach, we came across two signs which struck me. The first was this, typically blunt Australian warning:

The other was these instructions:

I only wondered – do you really need instructions on how to work a life ring? I mean, what else would you do with it?

On the way back to Melbourne, we spotted these emus in a field:

There were about 5 or 6 of them grazing in the field. We also spotted a mob of kangaroos in the scrub in the field, but they mostly kept their heads down except for the occasional one who popped up for a look around.

Then it really was time to head home, stopping only for a delicious Vietnamese dinner in Melbourne.