Grampians

I went to the Grampians in western Victoria a week and a half ago.  I found a fine lizard basking on a rock.

The Grampians are a bit like the Santa Lucia Mountains near Monterey in that they are not very high...tallest peak is about 3500 feet...but they are quite rugged.

Here's a lookout in the mountains with Halls Gap far below.

Peaks of the main range loom through the mist at another lookout.

Black rocks are of volcanic origin.

A precarious perch.  Folks are now prohibited from going out on this ledge...I reckon a few probably fell off before the ban went into effect.

Neat black rocks seem to have oozed out of the Cliffside.

McKenzie Falls.  Though it's quite dry here now, in late summer, the falls are fed by a reservoir and flow strongly most of the time.

Blow up the pic and you'll spot a kookaburra in the tree.

This pic was taken at my lodging, D'Alton's Resort, in Halls Gap.  It's in bushland a couple blocks off the highway and I had a comfy, cozy cabin with all modcons.  At dusk the roos came out for dinner.

The kookaburra has taken roost on the fence at the swimming pool.  He had vigorous competition from the cockatoos...between the two tribes it was delightfully noisy at dusk.  I still say it's worth going to Australia just for the birds...they're wonderful!

A closeup of one of the resident roos.

A very cool large gum tree at D'Alton's.

Cruising to Adelaide

Last week I cruised 500 km from the Grampians to Adelaide, the longest drive of the trip.  Rolling on the A8 I came to the town of Kaniva, just E of the Victoria-South Australia border.  Like most country towns, it featured a cool old hotel.

Also in Kaniva, psychedelic sheep.

There was a rest area on the border.  Here Verde is in Victoria and Lizard is in South Australia.  

Now I've progressed to Glenelg, a swish seaside suburb of Adelaide.  Most Australian beach towns of 1000 or more have a surf lifesaving club.  The surf club is a social centre of the beach community, and trains and staffs lifeguards for the local beach.  The clubs hold lifesaving competitions and have strong rivalries with each other.

Glenelg from the jetty.

I'm having a tasty Italian meal alfresfco in Glenelg...right next to the tram.  Adelaide's only tram line runs from here to the CBD.

Tons (literally) of boats.  Adelaide's airport is nearby, thus the passing airplane.

The view from my window at the Comfort Inn in Glenelg.  It's a tranquil spot, especially mornings and evenings.  A good way to start the day is with an alfresco brekky at the motel's restaurant, watching the cyclists and canoeists pass by.

Adelaide to Mildura

Yesterday I drove from Adelaide, on the Spencer Gulf, to Mildura, not quite in the Outback but close.  First stop was...well, it looks like Napa or Sonoma, but this is another legendary wine area, the Barossa Valley, about 100 km NE of Adelaide.  The theme is the same...drink wine, enjoy life!

The Lizards have visited many large rivers...the Columbia, Mississippi, Missouri, Ohio...and now the Murray, Australia's longest stream, for long an artery of commerce between the country's southern interior and the sea.  Those days are gone, but you can still take a steamboat cruise, rent a houseboat, fish, swim, waterski, paddleboard.

'Twas a lazy, hot Saturday in Waikerie, on the river in South Australia.  A cable ferry transports cars across the river on a side road.  A couple blokes were sloated out on the shady grass here, which seemed like a good idea on a 30C day, so I followed suit for awhile.

Wheat fields predominate west of Mildura.  Here a couple emus are grazing on the stubble from a recent harvest...it's the end of summer here.  There were dozens of emus in the space of a few km here.  

The view from my room at the Grand Hotel in Mildura.  Very comfy.  Blow up the pic and you can see a peek of the Murray in the distance.

A shot of the Grand.  It opened in 1891 and was remodeled in Art Deco style in the 1920s.

There are really fine river red gum trees all along the Murray.  These are superb trees...tall, broad, and delightfully convoluted.

Spectacular!  These trees have souls, I swear.

A fine batch of red gum biomass.

There have been floods here, as the mural on the left shows.

Right across the street from my hotel was fine parkland.  It's nice to just hang out and watch the scene.  These three very large pelicans were present for a long time, bludging on these three fishermen.  The fishermen didn't bite...they left the pels to forage for themselves.

These two cockatoos had an argument for about ten minutes. Then they flew off, one chasing the other.

Now this is a fine pool!  Deco style at the Grand.  Blow up the pic and check out the grillwork on the surrounding structures.  Reminds me very much of the pool at the Arizona Inn in Tucson, which is of similar vintage.

Cradle Mountain

Back on Tassie, Cindy and I visited Cradle Mountain-Lake St Clair NP.  It's one of the few alpine areas in Australia, sculpted by Ice Age glaciers and still buffeted by frequent winter snows.  Here's a waterfall right near the visitor center.

Dove Lake, with Cradle Mountain in the background.

A nearby alpine lake, forged by glaciers.  You can hike for days in the wilderness here.  We opted for day trips, then back to our cozy cabin in the caravan park with a gas stove for cooking and a fridge for the wine.

The spacy eucalypt vegetation adds a surreal touch to the scene.

A massive gum tree...blow the pic up for best effect.

An old boathouse on Dove Lake.  I didn't know it at the time, but this scene is similar to the one on the cover of Lonely Planet's Tasmania guide...which is highly recommended.

An echidna was playing hide and seek.

I can relate to this sign!

We visited a Tasmanian Devil sanctuary.  There is a contagious facial cancer that is killing devils at an alarming rate.  Places like this protect cancer free devils and promote breeding of healthy young'uns.  As can be seen here, the Devils are really sloats...only intermittently fierce.

A Devil strikes an pensive pose.

The sanctuary also has quolls, another carnivorous marsupial that is endangered.  This one is quite stylish, don't you think?  Quoll by Dior.

A quoll sloats out on the afternoon sunshine.

A pademelon...common in these parts.  One visited us when we were having happy hour on the verandah.

A fine sunset at Cradle Mountain.  I went outside at 4 AM and there were tons of stars.  The Southern Cross was right overhead and the Milky Way was bright.  In addition to being out bush we were about 3000 feet above sea level and the skies were crystalline.

Shipwreck Sojourn

A few days ago I drove along the Shipwreck Coast, the stretch of southern Victoria shoreline that has seen many a vessel come to grief in storm winds, nasty currents, and rocky shorelines.  Even here, at Apollo Bay, there were shipwrecks.  I stayed here 21 years ago, in 1997.  It was so quiet that early on a weekday morning, a dog was sleeping on the sidewalk on the main drag.  It's somewhat busier now, but still beautiful and mellow.  And the beach is fine.

Just west of Apollo Bay, I came upon Maits Rest, in Otway National Park.  A bloke named Maitland, who had a trade route, used this area as a rest stop.  It remains pristine rainforest, with huge gum trees like this one.

Massive ferns dominate the lower story of the forest.

Now I'm at the 12 Apostles, a very famous spot on the coast, used in many Australian tourist commercials.  Though the surrounding countryside is quiet, there are tourons from all over the world here.  But on a weekday, it was no problem getting a parking spot and walking to this really spectacular viewpoint.  In my opinion the vivid colors of the breaking waves are what really makes the picture dynamic.

There are a couple apostles to the east of the viewpoint, with more fine surf breaks.  The coastal rocks are sandstone, easily erodable...so the scene is in flux.  Blow the pic up and you'll see that the right hand apostle is being undercut drastically by the sea, which is almost always rough here as there's no land between here and Antarctica.  That sea stack will topple in hundreds or thousands of years...not millions.

Nearby is the Loch Ard gorge.  This was the scene of a tragic shipwreck in 1878.  The vessel, named Loch Ard, was about to complete a long voyage from England to Melbourne.  There was a party for the passengers celebrating the end of the trip.  But...the seas got rough, and the Loch Ard ran onto a reef near the head  of the gorge and sank.  Out of over fifty people on board, two survived...a young bloke and a young Sheila. The media tried to hook them up but the lady wanted to get back home ASAP, and did.

Inland from the sandy beach at the Loch Ard gorge is a bunch of stalactites...mineral water dripping from the cliffs above.

The beach is really quite nice.  I went down onto it in 1997 and reprised that in 2018.  Sand felt really good on my footsies (left one has a spot of plantar fasciitis) and I even got a bit of slotation in.

I said this coast is changing in the short term as the massive waves batter the sandstone.  This is London Bridge, just W of Loch Ard Gorge.  Until 1990, this was a double arch.  Then the left hand arch fell into the sea, stranding two tourons on the Makai side of the rock.  They were airlifted off by helicopter.  Eventually the Makai arch will also fall into the sea, leaving a couple of new Apostles.