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Sydney to Melbourne along the coast
Mallacoota, Australia |
Mallacoota, Australia
Back on the road and our first stop was Jervis Bay. Whilst Jervis Bay is a pretty little sea side town, with beautiful views, there was not a huge amount to see here. We had a dusty spot on a windy campsite and battened down the hatches before heading off the following day. Here we had a little diversion to Hyam Beach. Apparently Hyam Beach is in the Guinness Book of Records for having the worlds whitest sand. Whilst I have to admit, the sand was white, and made that squeaky clean noise when you walked on it, I think I have seen whiter around Australia and around the world, but it was worth a side a trip and with the school holidays over the beaches were back to their beautiful deserted selves, Just the way we like them.
Our next stop was Narooma, again, this is a quaint sea side town with lovely sea views and we managed to get a pitch on a camp site looking out over the ocean. Whilst the down side to this was that we had a monster walk to the toilet and shower block and suffered all night with the wind battering us, to the extent that we were not sure if the pop top would be there in the morning, we trusted La Toya and she survived and we very much enjoyed the calm the next morning eating breakfast taking in the views of the sea dotted with huge pelicans. There was a lovely foreshore walk at Narooma and we headed to the cliffs to see if we could spot any seals which are often in the area. We found some lovely views over the headland, and just as we were headed back disappointed to have missed the seals we saw 2 huge seals lounging on the rocks at the sea inlet and another playing in the sea, such cute animals, and a real treat.
As we were walking back we found Australia Rock, so named because the hole in the rock is the exact shape of the map of Australia. It turns out that the shape of Australia cut into the rock wall was accidental and was created many years ago when a ship was tied to the rock with large chains to prevent it from washing away. The chains wore the shape into the rock during rough seas and it has been known as Australia Rock ever since
The next day we set off and finally entered another State, farewell NSW, it has been emotional but it has also been great.
Mallacoota is the first official township on Victoria’s east coast after the border with New South Wales. Mallacoota has a population of 972 and at holiday times, particularly Easter and Christmas, the population increases by about 8,000. It is one of the most isolated towns in the state of Victoria, 25 kilometres off the Princes Highway and 523 kilometres from Melbourne, 526 kilometres from Sydney, New South Wales. It is halfway between Sydney and Melbourne when travelling via Princes Highway.
The campsite at Mallacoota was one of the biggest we have ever seen, it has 650 pitches and explains how the population increases by 8,000 during the holidays. The site overlooks the ocean and even has its own moorings for visitors to park their boats during their stay. I was drawn to this campsite because the reviews I had read kept on mentioning wild koalas in the trees on the camp site. When we checked in the lovely lady on reception gave me a map and marked the trees that the koalas liked the best, but more usefully she told us about Raymond Island. An island on our route to Melbourne with over 300 wild koalas, how is this place not in any of the tourist information. As it is, I didn’t manage to find any koalas in Mallacoota, but we did manage to plan our next stop – Raymond Island.
We decided to set up camp in the town of Bairnsdale, which is just a 15 minute drive to Paynesville where the ferry departs for Raymond lsland.
Raymond Island has a population of just 540 people, is just 6 kilometers by 2 kilometers, is 200 meters from the mainland and whilst there has been much discussion about replacing the ferry with a bridge, as yet there is still no bridge and foot passengers get to go on the ferry for free.
As a safekeeping measure, the Department of Fisheries and Game sent a consignment of 32 koalas from Phillip Island to Raymond Island 25 September 1953. At the annual koala count in May 2013, there were 307 koalas on Raymond Island.
As soon as you step off the ferry you are directed to the free 1.2km koala walk with signs helping guide you and help you to spot koalas. Just minutes in, I stopped in my tracks, convinced that someone was having a laugh and had put a huge koala teddy in a tree. But as I got closer this beautiful huge male koala that we named Keith just turned his head towards me. He can only have been 8 foot from the ground and could not care less that we were looking at him and taking photos from every angle. We were a little sneaky and pretended to look in other trees when any other tourists walked past so we would have Keith all to ourselves.
We completed the walk and in all found about 13 koalas, some were just too high to see, so we returned to say goodbye to our new best friend Keith and unsurprisingly he was exactly where we left him. We watched him for a while and he watched us and before long he couldn’t stay awake any longer. He rested his head against the tree and must have had a falling dream and he did a big jump, woke himself up, looked at us as if we had done something to him and let out a little roar, before parking his head back on the tree and this time falling into a restful sleep.
Our first wild koala experience and what an experience it was, I honestly think that Raymond Island is one of the most underestimated tourist locations in Australia. I think I would like to live there.
So after the wonder that was Koala Island, the next destination had a tough act to follow. Most people have probably never heard of Toora and I don’t think that it is a bad thing. We picked it simply because it was half way between Bairnsville and Philip Island.
Predominantly Toora is a dairy farming community with flat grasslands as far as the eye can see. It has a population of 674 people and 12 wind turbines. We drove through the town and didn’t find anything which excited us, so we took ourselves on a trip to the wind farm. It was surprisingly good, although I have never seen so many flies, both buzzing around my face and squished onto la Toya’s face, time to give our girl a bath I think.
Philip Island is one of the places that I could not wait to get to, I was so excited to go to the famous Penguin Parade where little penguins arrive at the beach each night and walk up from the sea to their nests.
Philip Island is 26 km by 9km, a 640m bridge connects island to the main land. It has a population of 9,000 which increases to 40,000 during the school holidays.
Philip Island has more than just penguins as we quickly discovered, it also has Koalas and seals.
As an early conservation measure, koalas were introduced to Phillip Island in 1920, there is now a koala park, where the koalas live in their natural habitat with walkways for tourists to get a closer look. This was no where near as special as Raymond Island and the flocks of Chinese tourists certainly ensured there was no peace and quiet to be found anywhere. The koalas were still adorable.
We headed to Nobbies rocks, which is an impressive boardwalk which overlooks a blow hole and the seal rocks. Strangely there was not a single seal to be seen when we were there, but the views were stunning and the rough seas hitting the coast left some beautiful blue colours in the ocean.
It was finally time for the penguin parade, we had treated ourselves to VIP passes which meant that rather than spending our time on the beach freezing we got to meet a guide, have coffee and nibbles and a penguin talk then we would watch the penguins come up the beach from the glass viewing platform where the nightly penguin count takes place.
The visitor centre was absolute chaos, people everywhere, children screaming and shouting and people generally just reminding me why I prefer animals to humans most of the time.
Sa
dly our guide was the most dull, boring individual that we could have hoped for. He spoke so softly you could only hear what he said if you were stood next to him, which was impossible most of the time given that there were 12 of us. He forgot to tell us to have a cup of coffee and a snack, so our VIP treats went untouched and we were ushered down to the viewing platform. We were each given a pair of binoculars and before long we could see the little penguins appearing on the beach. They were like ninjas, you would see nothing and then all of a sudden there would be a group of about 5 of them stood together grooming. The nightly ritual of the penguins is that after spending the whole day from dawn out fishing they reappear at sun set. They arrive on the beach and preen their feathers. The penguins have an oil gland near their tail and they will rub their beak on this gland and will coat each and every feather with oil to ensure that they are waterproof.
The most novel part of being in the viewing tower was actually listening to the rangers radios with reports of fainting women and vomiting children distributed through the crowd. It was worth being in the viewing tower just to avoid the vomiting child if you ask me!
How about some penguin factoids…..
The Penguins at Philip island are known as little penguins, they are also referred to as fairy penguins because of their tiny size. In New Zealand, they are also called little blue penguins, or just blue penguins, owing to their slate-blue plumage
The little penguin typically grows to between 30 and 33 cm tall and usually weighs about 1.5 kilogram on average
When they are out fishing most of their dives go no deeper than 2 m and last just 21 seconds. Yet, they are able to dive as deep as 20 m and remained submerged as long as 60 seconds
Little penguins mature at different ages. The female matures at 2 years old. The male, however, matures at 3 years old. Little penguins only remain faithful to their partner in breeding seasons and whilst hatching eggs. At other times of the year they do tend to swap burrows.
Sadly there is no photography allowed at Philip Island, not that that seemed to stop most of the retarded mass group tourists from taking as many pictures as they could before a ranger stopped them. The little penguins once up the beach head up under the wooden walkways to their burrows where their hungry impatient babies are waiting. Interestingly the babies cannot recognise their parents so they try to mug every penguin that passes by. The parent is able to recognise their chick by their call.
Approximately 572 penguins cross the beach each evening and there is no shortage of penguins to see once you head back up the walkways to the visitor centre.
We reserved our photo taking for the stuffed penguins in the shop which are wearing jumpers. As adorable as they look there is a sad story behind the jumpers. Oil spills can be fatal to penguins, a patch of oil the size of a thumb nail can kill a little penguin. Oiled penguins often die from exposure and starvation. Oil separates and mats feathers, allowing water to get in which makes a penguin very cold, heavy and less able to successfully hunt for food.
When oiled penguins are admitted to the Wildlife Clinic at Phillip Island Nature Parks, a knitted jumper is placed on the penguins to prevent them from preening and swallowing the toxic oil before they are washed and the oil removed by staff.
453 little penguins were affected by the last major oil spill near Phillip Island in 2001. 96% were successfully saved and rehabilitated at the Wildlife Clinic and released back into the wild.
But don’t worry the jumpers for sale in the gift shop are either the wrong size, wrong wool or are just excess to needs so are being sold to raise vital funds.
Whilst the penguin parade wasn’t quite the experience I had hoped due to the million other tourists that seemed to be there that night, it was still pretty special to see these little penguins for the first time.
Onwards and upwards to Melbourne for our last night on the mainland before we brave the Bass Straight over to the Tasmania.
We set off early and finally had to give in and use La Toya’s air con to ease the heat. It turns out that we had driven into a heatwave and Melbourne was sweltering at 40 degrees in the shade.
We headed to the local Kmart as we knew that Tasmania was likely to be cold so we bought some extra clothes and an extra duvet just to err on the side of caution. It felt so wrong buying jumpers and duvets in a heat wave.
That night the temperature never dropped below 25 degrees and our fan decided to give up on us, leaving us sweating and desperate to get over to Tassie.
We had an early start to get to the boat to face 9 hours at sea in one of the most notoriously rough ocean crossings in the world…. Would we make it with our stomach contents intact? Time to set sail and see!!
Beans Around The World 