Wilson's Promontory - Sealers Cove

It was a great walk to Sealers Cove! Slightly more demanding than I expected, probably due to the warm weather in combo with a backpack, that had been packed for all possible conditions .. it was heavy. First part of the walk was uphill towards Windy saddle and went through areas that were recovering from a bushfire that raged through in 2005. The fire was started by a back burn attempt going horrible wrong - for some reason it was decided to start a little fire just around Easter when the park was packed full of happy campers ... 600 people had to be evacuated!!!

The peninsular nature of the park i.e. surrounded by water on three sides and the fact that fires are very unlikely to spreed out of the park, means that fires will often be left burning till the die out naturally. During the Black Saturday bushfires in Victoria 2009 the prom was once again hit by a bushfire which burned approximately 25% of the park. Luckily no one died, but enormous areas of bush was damaged and neighbors to the park was once again not impressed by the Governments plans to start back burning again.

After enjoying the views form Windy Saddle the track dived into the lush dark green rain forest covering the east side of the park and I could once again start the battle of trying to get enough light through the lens to picture some of the wildlife living in this dark place.

I saw surprisingly little flying wildlife on my way through the rain forest, next to no birds - guess the exceptional warm weather was an excellent reason to sit still in a shaded tree somewhere and relax - Reptiles on the other hand was well represented, I managed to spot quite a good collection of these heat hungry critters sitting on the forest floor where the sun managed to penetrate the foliage.

The last 2.5km of the walk are flat and most of it happens on boardwalks negotiating the swampy area between the beach and the slopes up towards Windy saddle and Mount Oberon.

Good solid walking down there in Victoria, even though the return trip would include slightly more climbing I was quite confident that I would be able to scramble out early next morning, probably having quite a bit of an advantage not having to do the brunt of the walk during the midday heat. All good and I still had a good part of the Saturday to explore around Sealers Cove :-) As you have probably noticed, I like those Victorian park signs stating that you are not allowed to bring your riffle to the park - surprised? :-D

Wilson's Promontory - Tidal River Madness

I arrived back at my tent and noticed a few others having taken refuge in the school camping area, no worries there was heaps of space :-) Knowing that I would be in for a big Saturday, I quickly sorted out some food, brushed my teeth and happily crawled into the Hubba for an early night. I managed to sort of fall asleep before a (camping) "party" arrived at the site next to me .. what sounded like 4 couples in 2 cars decided that the spot next to the tiny little Hubba tent would be perfect for their reunion. Ah .. well, at first I was confident that the lovely young people would stop shouting and obviously be so considered that they would turn the car's lights off as soon as they had managed to raise their tents .. since those beams, apart from lighting up their efforts with the tents, were making it look like daytime inside my Hubba.

In the end I had to make my way out of the tent and give the happy campers the most unhappy Jutlandian grumpy look I can muster without adding sound effects. It partly worked - they turned the light off, but kept on drinking and chatting. Having made it out of the tent I decided to take advantage and visit the bathroom. Oh boy, Oh boy what a change a couple of hours make! The campsite was more than full, but with a steady stream of desperate wannabe campers flowing in from Melbourne, Tidal River campsite had turned into a cauldron of madness with people and cars moving around between the closely packed tents seeking out those last few square meters of space needed for a tent.

Returning back at my tent after my little evening walk, I realized that I would be a rough night. Two additional camping parties had arrived and taken a liking to the area bordering the Hubba - I was surrounded and there was no way out!

The seagulls woke me up early Saturday morning - I had managed only a few hours of sleep, but with only one full day in the bush I could not afford wasting time sleeping - and seriously, I would be happy being out of the way before my neighboring campers began waking up. The plan of escaping was dropped as soon as I looked out of the tent. There was no way I could maneuver the oil-ship sized Ford Falcon out of the campsite - in fact is was nearly difficult to navigate myself through the chaos of guy ropes, tents, cars, beer cans, chips and other seagull feed.

I ended up having a great morning around Tidal River after all! A walk along the beach followed by a shorter excursion into the bush made me nearly forget about the population density around my tent. A visit to the Visitor Centre cheered me up even more, the rangers were incredible helpful and I managed to get an overnight camping permit for Sealers Cove, which can only (unless you have a boat) be accessed by following a 10.2km bushwalking route across the peninsula .. that should be sufficient to scare off most of my still sleeping neighbors. :-)

Wilson's Promontory, Victoria - A Sneaky Long Weekend Escape

Suddenly I found myself with a golden chance of taking a closer look at the Victorian bush. I had attended a conference in Melbourne and was not expected back in Sydney before Monday morning, giving me 2.5 days of freedom :-) A combination of computer trouble and general busyness meant that I was very badly prepared and when leaving for Melbourne I hardly knew what my plans would be for the weekend.

It all nearly cost me the trip - Friday afternoon I visited 3 car rental companies before I managed to get a way too large and way too expensive Ford Falcon Wagon with so much space that I would not have needed to bring my tent!

Already in the south-east corner of Melbourne and having to deliver the car back Sunday afternoon I decided that taking on the Great Ocean Road would probably be too much of a mouthful and that Wilson's Promontory would be the wiser target instead.

After a very pleasant drive through some lovely Victorian landscape I finally found myself at the gate ready to enter "The Prom". An early warning sign was a ca. 15 min queue .. in two rows! Queuing to get into a national park a Friday afternoon - what was happening here??? When I finally arrived at the counter the very friendly girl could shine a bit of light on the situation: The weather forecast had predicted absolutely fantastic weather for the entire weekend resulting in a migration of Melburnians to the Prom!

Since I had arrived relatively early she encouraged me to drive to Tidal River and pitch my tent for the night and "unless I wanted to sleep in the bush I would have to find somewhere else for the rest of the weekend" - I Proudly announced that I would be happy to take a night in the bush, but was met with a scrutinizing look and I realized that sitting in a Ford Falcon with only a hard shell suitcase and a plastic bag of apples as the only luggage, wearing a shirt, black trousers, black shoes and still having my conference name tag on - I did not look like the usual deep-bush-camper. I though about starting to explain about how small and light a tent I had (one of my favorite stories), but with 50 cars behind me, we agreed that I should pay for one night and have a little chat to the rangers in the morning about the possibility of going bush Saturday to Sunday. :-D

Arriving at Tidal River I realized how big this place was - 484 camping and caravan sites - surely this could not fill up(?) It proved a bit hard at first to find a good site, but the girl had told me to just pitch my tent anywhere, so I sneakily razed the little MSR Hubba in the school zone
- the sign said that the "school" restriction was only enforced Saturday and Sunday so I would be fine. Managed to raise the tent in record time and used the last light to run down to the water to take a few photos for this blog post. Fantastic spot, after a busy busy conference in Melbourne and a bit of stress finding a car, driving out of Melbourne without using toll roads and not really knowing where I would sleep tomorrow, I felt that I could finally relax and deal with it all as it came. Those Victorian beach sunsets works wonders!

Walking back to the tent, planning an early night. I was absolutely unprepared for what the night would bring :-D To be continued ..

Cape Banks with The Gang

Weather was not really good for snorkeling so the gang decided to use an early(?) Saturday morning down at Cape Banks for a healthy serve of coastal bushwalking spiced up with the chance of some pelagic action. To convince the boys to join I might have mentioned the possibility of bagging the resident Australian Hobby ... which obviously did not show!

Fantastic landscape down there and amazing that you can walk around for hours less than 3.5km from one of the busiest harbours in the southern end of the world and less than 6km from Sydney airport and have it all to yourself ... guess a bit of shabby weather increase your chances of solitude :-D


No Hobby and the shearwaters outside of binocular range meant that the Eastern Reef Egret above could proudly claim the "bird of the day"-title. But once again what really mattered was that we managed to drag our lazy bums of the couch (or out of bed) and put a bit of early Saturday excitement into a gray weekend :-)

Night Photography in Coogee

Once again I had signed up for a photowalk with Yiing, one of my Canon slinging friends. As usual there is always a surprise or two when Yiing is around :-) This time it was luckily great news .. and camera related, he had brought the Canon 50mm f/1.4! A super fast lens like that is tons of fun, the large aperture allows the photographer to take pictures that you simple cannot get with slower (cheaper) lenses.

All good! We started out by fooling around with shallow depth of field and available light shooting, but as it got really dark shutter speed slowed down and we decided to concentrate on long exposure night shooting. The secret is to have a good quality tripod, mirror lock-up option and a remote .. well, I do not have a tripod or a remote, my camera has mirror lock-up, but I cannot combine it with the timer function .. however there is quite a bit of good solid stonework around Coogee, which conveniently can be used as solid support, unfortunately, it also means that after a few nights out you end up having to take the same pictures over and over again unless the local council manages to put in some strategically well placed extra stones :-D One day I might buy a tripod .. maybe.

Good long exposure works really well with moving water, the averaging over 30 seconds (or longer) gives you this dreamy mercury look of the water, when conditions are right. This night in Coogee the waves were slightly on the large side and even cheating by retreating to the rock pool in our hunt for some steady waters was only partly successful - guess we will have to get out there another time! :-)

Cape Banks - Australian Hobby in Flight

Went for another little quick afternoon visit to Cape Banks, where we had first seen the Australian Hobby. This time we not only saw it again, but we managed to get a fairly good BIF :-)

After all the excitement with the Pacific Gull at Long Bay, Gemma had been all fired up about finishing of all the (usual) gulls - so mission accomplished and lots of cheering(?) when the Kelp Gull above cruised by.

All good! Great little trip and all this running around after work keeps you fit :-)