Down into East Victoria

Mon
We drove South out of the Blue Mountains through a patchwork of native bush between large tracts of farmland. We saw more of the wonderful birdlife, the magpies, galahs, and, the most enormous eagle I have ever seen, sitting in a tree by the edge of the road, but it soared off magestically before we managed to extract the camera. We drove through tiny little towns full of arty farty craft shops and cafes, one of which served us a very good fry up brunch!
From Goulburn we turned East to the coast and we stopped outside Bateman's bay in a little town called Nelligen where there is a river meeting the Bateman's bay estuary and people catching loads of fish. We left Celso fishing and Tris and I drove up the coast a bit to Pebbly Beach where we were told the kangaroos lie around on the beach... and they did! We drove down to the beach on a winding gravel road through the bush and arrived in a car park that was filled with various parrots (or parrot like birds - Celso will kill me for being so inprecise about the species), Rosellas (the blue cheeked kind), King Parrots, a Wattle Bird, a crested bronzewings pigeon, Rainbow Lorikeet, and long billed cockatoos. Tris and I were overwhelmed by both the numbers and by their boldness, then we went down onto the beach and watched the kangaroos grazing at their leisure as the sun went down. When we returned we found Celso still fishing, he had caught a few but they were all below the legal keep length so he had released them (or that is his story for having nothing to show us!).
We stayed the night in the local pub, we were the only patrons and the bar was closed early as it had no customers - the whole place was like a ghost town after the buzz and hustle and bustle of the long weekend.

Tues
Having missed Pebbly beach and all the birds yesterday, we had to take Celso down to see. There weren't as many birds but the kangaroos were still laying about, they look like Roman emperors lazing around on recliners.
Then we drove south down the coast, taking loads of little side roads to drive through small towns and native bush, however sometimes we were taken through some horrid modern built up areas that went right down to the sea with tiny plots and evidence of more and more bush being chopped down. We stopped in a tiny town called Cobargo to look through the craft shops and eat a pie (the Aussies are huge on their meat pies). Then we turned in land to go to Bombala (the platypus capital of Australia) where, apparently, over 90% of the rivers and streams in the region have platypus residents. We arrived around 4:30pm and rushed out to the 'platypus reserve' but were not to be granted a sighting, apparently they don't come out if it is windy! We were treated to a great sunset over the river though!

Wed
Celso and I got up at the crack of dawn to go down to the river again, fabulous sunrise but no platypus - again. We returned to the hotel dejected, but decided that we wouldn't wait any more and we would continue our journey south. The road south took us for about an hour through pristine bush without any sign of settlement and we passed only about 3 cars on our way into. We stopped off in loads of places, first at the MacKenzie river to take a walk through the rainforest. The Eucalyptus forest with its hanging down leaves that let the sunlight dapple through onto the ground allowing ferns and other low shrubs to grow just suddenly gives way to another type of tree. These have horizontal leaves that block out much more of the light and the air was noticably more humid. Later we stopped at huge tree lined rivers where Celso would cast a line; to look at various parrots, birds or plants that took our fancy; to look out over the sand dunes and the beaches. We finally reached Lake Tyers, a tidal lake near Marlo on the South East Coast of Victoria (where the Snowy River meets the sea), but the tide was out so Celso's fishing ambitions were shot, and then went on to Lakes Entrance where after some more failed fishing attempts we found a cabin to stay in for the night.

Thurs
Today our journey took us West along the South Coast to go to Wilson's Promontory. We stopped to take a walk through a wetland reserve, but it was completely dry and we saw nothing save some magpies and we heard some baby birds from amongst the reeds. On a bit further we were shocked but delighted to see an Echidna on the side of the road and we stopped to take a look. He had his nose stuck in the sand with loads of ants fleeing for their lives, but he looked up as we approached and then decided it was best to bury himself until all we could see was the spines on his back, suprisingly he seemed to be very well camouflaged. We were also intrigued by some Emus just off the edge of the road that fled into a pine forest as we tried to sneak up on them. We had another day of driving and loads of small stops. We stopped quite early in a little town called Foster as the weather had taken a turn for the worse.

Friday 30th May
This was just a great day. We drove out to Wilson's Prom, slowly the farmland turned to native forest separated by strips of grassland; the common grass, filled with clumps of spikey waist high grasses; we went down to the end of the road at Tidal River to get some info having stopped along the way to photograph herds of wild emu. Then we went for a walk along the grasslands; there were enormous quantities of poo! We were trying to work out which went with which animal! There was sloppy, like a cow pat, we concluded that it was from the emus; huge, round, rabbit like droppings (just bigger), we think that was kangaroo; and then torpedo shaped grass eater - we thought that it was Wombat!!! There was also detective work to be done with loads of bleached bones, and then of course there were the kangaroos and emus to be avoided as they suddenly appeared amongst the tall grasses. So brilliant to see the kangaroos on their terms, jumping along, so graceful, so incredibly strong.
After lunch we drove across to Philip Island. We found a really dirty, manky, ill looking Wombat munching grass on the edge of the road, however we are not sure whether he really was ill as he ran off quickly enough as we approached. Then we went on our way to Philip Island to visit a Koala reserve where we actually managed to spot a few of the cuddly critters at last - absolutely gorgeous. We also spotted some Wallabies, I don't even know what the difference is between a Kanga and a Wallaby. I'll have to do some research.
At 5:15pm we made our way down to the beach to sit and watch the fairy penguins come in to their nests for the night. It was absolutely incredible as about 20 of them waddled right past us, about 2 feet away. They appeared out of the surf and then waited for reinforcements. When their numbers were sufficient they set off up the beach at a fast waddle to make it to the dunes. Sadly we weren't allowed to take cameras down onto the beach as the penguins are protected and get really frightened by flash photography. It was doubly sad not to have our camera as there was the most incredible moon rise, about a half hour after sunset there was a red glow in the Eastern sky and then the moon rose, really fast, huge and blood red. I suppose it may have been an eclipse of the moon (or if not a very nearly one) as I know the moon goes red due to refraction of sunlight through the earth's atmosphere when it is in the shadow of the earth. The little fairy penguins have a good pair of lungs on them, they screamed and gurgled when they got up into the sanddunes and near to their burrows; we think they were calling for their mates, and then, once together, they did some more load squawking as they rubbed around each other. It was a breathtakingly amazing experience.