Lake Bolac and homeward March 20-23

Lake Bookaar wetland wildlife Reserve

My brain is in a bit of a fog - too many veeery bumpy roads travelled but the terrain has been beautiful to my eyes. Over the last few days, we’ve been traveling in lakes and craters territory, the basalt plains - it’s ancient and fascinating. 

Tonight we stopped at Lake Bolac, a huge freshwater lake that was created when lava which flowed from the local volcanic cones - and there are many in the region - altered the flow and dammed the former bed of the lovely Fiery Creek. A depression formed which filled to form the lake (don’t ask me the geology of it all). We have seen many similar lakes over the last week or so. Absolutely intriguing, a geological history which I never absorbed, or knew about, but which is fascinating to contemplate.

Lake Bolac. This tree has fallen into the lake and has sprouted fresh growth!

My stomach/taste buds may not be exactly prophetic but certainly they’ve been sensing the environment; I have had a hankering for smoked eel for days and voila this weekend is the eel festival in Lake Bolac. The festival recognises the annual Aboriginal gatherings by the lake to feast on eels as they started their migration downstream and out to sea. 

Smoked eel is on the Lake Bolac pub menu for dinner tomorrow night. We didn’t manage to stay but bought a large smoked eel to bring home – we had to bend it like a cabana to fit it in the fridge. 

This is indeed eel territory and also not far from the UNESCO world heritage site of Budji Bim. Over thousands of years the Gunditjmara people of southwestern Victoria, used volcanic rock created by the Budj Bim lava flow (formerly named Mount Eccles by the European settlers) to construct a sophisticated stone aquaculture complex of fish traps, weirs, dams, and channels. Drawing upon their ancient knowledge of water cycles and migration routes, they used the landscape over a 100 sq km area to divert water flow and trap, grow and harvest eels and galaxia fish. It is one of the world’s oldest and most extensive aquaculture sites, dating back almost 7000 years. The eels farmed were then a trading asset taken along songlines (trading routes). This practice ensured ample supplies of food year-round allowing the Gunditjmara, who were primarily nomadic, to develop into a settled society living permanently off the land. Evidence of this society, including the fish traps as well as stone houses, can be seen across the Budj Bim cultural landscape today. As such, the eel traps have become an Australian UNESCO World Heritage site, the only one listed exclusively for its Aboriginal cultural values. But ....
it was time to move away from the eels and volcanic landscape and on closer to home. Our route took us through the Grampians. such a beautiful place but getting a little too overrun with tourists so we lingered only long enough to wander through one of the bush parks. then it was on to Lake Burrumbeet.

The caravan park creeps down a gentle slope to the edge of the lake; here we had a ‘room’ with a view - and not a little nostalgia. We were camped on the shores of Lake Burrumbeet where as a child we came on Sunday School picnics and as a 18-19 yo ‘our gang’ crept out of Ballarat late night to picnic among the looming ghostly cypress pines to be serenaded by a lone piper (one of our mad mob was a bagpiper).  It was thrilling and very romantic. Bittersweet trips down memory lane.

Our lovely view

Our last night on the road and we were treated to a beautiful sunset over the water.

Camperdown 16-19 March

 Camperdown sits on the lower slopes of Mount Leura which, together with nearby Mount Sugarloaf, are part of a large extinct volcanic complex known as the ‘Leura Maar’. To the west of Camperdown are Lakes Bullen Merri and Gnotuk. To the east is Lake Purrumbete, the site of the first European settlement in the district. On the way into Camperdown we stopped for lunch at the Mortlake Pub where I had the best lamb and veggie soup I've ever tasted. We'll be back.

If you love old trees and gardens you must visit the Heritage Listed, historic Camperdown Botanical Gardens and Arboretum. The area was reserved as a park in 1869 and the gardens laid out by botanist and explorer Daniel Bunce; and later refined by William Guilfoyle in 1888. The Park gets lots of visitors with a botanical bent.

It contains century-old trees and a diverse collection of plants from around the world; most I’ve never heard of such as the African Holly. One which caught my eye was the ‘Scottish elm’, Ulmus glabra camperdownii. I didn’t get a photo but its history is fascinating. Commonly known as the Camperdown Elm, it was discovered in the mid 1800s growing in the forest at Camperdown House in Dundee, Scotland. As the story goes, the young tree was lifted and replanted within the gardens of Camperdown House (in Scotland) where it remains to this day. The connection? Scottish roots seem strong here abouts, so in Camperdown Victoria this little Camperdown Elm tree is a rather special. 

The potting shed

An Indian plant that produces a purple flower. Strangely after it flowers the plant dies

Olearia paniculata - a species found only in New Zealand (and here!)

The 'unattended' site office which harks back to an earlier day

We spent some delightful time wandering, exploring and then when we were leaving we were lucky enough to run into the woman responsible for, and passionate driver of, the preservation of the gardens and arboretum, head gardener, Janet O’Hehir. She’s a wealth of knowledge. It’s a marvelous place - quiet, cool, tranquil with amazingly diverse and unusual plants and trees.  A must see for plant lovers and also insect and bird enthusiasts.

This large reserve tops a ‘hill’ between two volcanic crater lakes - Lake Bullen Mierrl and Lake Gnotuk and looks across the Western Victorian volcanic plain. It’s sacred land of the Djargurd wurrung people - Eastern Maar, traditional owners of south-western Victoria. Nearby are several deep volcanic crater lakes. We were staying in the caravan park which strange as it might seem is located within this Heritage site. Stunning views over the crater lakes but the sites are set along an avenue of century old European Linden trees! Seems totally incongruous – but it’s a marvelous spot nonetheless.

Portland to Camperdown 14 – 19 March

 This trip has turned out quite different to how it began. Seems less than a month ago we said goodbye to exploring the NW of Victoria in face of searing heat and fierce winds (and fire risk!) and headed for the SE coast of South Australia. A week on the wide stretches of beach along the Coorong staying at Kingston SE (plus a few days in Mount Gambier), we then put out our doormat at Port MacDonnell just south of Mount Gambier. Delicious long wind-swept beaches adorned with gorgeous brightly coloured seaweed, long slow walks along the water’s edge blew away the cobwebs. 

Driving down from Cape Bridgewater into the sweeping Discovery Bay

After a few weeks and many photos (of beaches and lighthouses) later we are now back in Victoria. First stop Portland - a bit of a tourist magnet but a fascinating place with incredible history - the Hentys, merino sheep, and some of my ancestors (not sheep even black sheep!). 

We took a wander through the 'petrified forest' at Cape Bridgewater. The trunk-like columns looks like petrified trees but apparently they are not.  Current thinking is that they were made from sand cemented by a mineral solution. That leave the question of why this shape - they must have grown up around trees.  We saw similar formations on Flinders Island. 

We are still in limestone territory.

Cape Bridgewater Lighthouse built in 1882

Today we headed away from the madding crowd and after checking out the petrified forest and sights at Cape Bridgewater and inspecting the lighthouse settlement Cape Nelson, we dived into the Lower Glenelg National park and meandered right and left through beautiful temperate scrubland past tranquil mirror-like black pools back to Portland. 

This tranquil pool was indeed like an ink pot - black and still.

This western part of Victoria is intriguing. The basalt cliffs of Bridgewater Bay, the highest on Victoria's coast, are the remains of the enormous volcanic crater which stretched across Bridgewater Bay which is basically a massive underwater crater. Further inland we visited other craters such as Lake Cartcarrong which forms part of the Newer Volcanics Province volcanic field, which contains more than 400 volcanoes that have erupted over the past 8 million years, with the last eruption at Mount Gambier around 5000 years ago.

The area is pock-marked with craters and cones and where we were heading next was no different. Lake Cartcarrong formed when magma rose through the earth's crust and encountered groundwater. The contact between hot and cold liquid caused a violent explosion resulting eventually in a broad shallow crater which then filled with water. We saw such geological formations in Iceland a couple of years ago. 

Tower Hill - Koroitj

Lake Cartcarrong 

Tower Hill is quite significant as volcanoes go but I am not going to bore you with the detail. Suffice it to say there are a number of cones surrounded by a crater lake - we drove around within the crater. The Dhauwurd-wurrung name for the volcano is Koroitj. 

Much of the western plains through which we were driving is pock-marked with craters and cones and where we were heading next was no different.

March 6-12 Port MacDonnell

It was time to move on so we packed up and headed south to Port MacDonnell. Historically this has been a busy port shipping out wool and wheat and today is supposed to be the rock lobster capital but not at the moment as there’s an abalone virus along the coast.  Needless to say we ate neither. It’s a perfect place particularly at this time of year. We’re set up in a beautifully quiet spot with just a small, albeit slightly steep, dune between us and a long sweeping beach looking out to Antarctica across the Southern Ocean. Glorious with the sound of the waves a constant backdrop. A happy place for me. 

Long beach walks were the order of the day most days. We were keen to find pipis for a fish stew but as much as we danced and shuffled and twisted and dug in the shallow water …. nada. All we found were stones, a few oyster and pipis shells, one lone cuttlefish and a broken sea urchin, but we did find masses of seaweed in an array of gorgeous colours. 

Seaweed strewn beaches

The sea plant at the bottom intrigued me. Turns out to be a green alga Chaetomorpha coliformis, with the common name Mermaid's necklace. Seems that it is edible and tastes a little like cucumber but I stuck to eating the sea lettuce which can be eaten fresh or dried and flaked. 

Having grown up spending summers at the beach I’ve seen a bit of seaweed but yesterday the beach was strewn with species I had never seen. Evidently water upwelling along the Great Southern Reef throws up unusual seaweeds from the deeper parts of that reef which is a massive series of reefs that extend around Australia's southern coastline. They cover around 71,000 sq km from New South Wales around the southern coastline of Australia to Kalbarri in Western Australia running along the coast for 8,000 km. 

Great Southern Reef 

It really is a beautiful place but we took a few trips along this section of the Limestone Coast to visit both Ewens Ponds and Picaninnie Ponds both special places. 

These areas of karst springs and fens once provided food, water and medicine for the indigenous people of SE South Australia and SW Victoria. The lands here are protected as they contain important remnants of vegetation long since cleared from the area for farming.   The Glenelg Sprig Freshwater Crayfish is one endangered species as is the Orange-bellied Parrot which winters along the southern coast of Victoria and South Australia. 

The waters of the ponds are crystal clear and some chambers within the systems drop to a depth of over 100m within the limestone. It has been on my dream list to swim in the ponds which extent a long way as strings of water-filled chambers – we walked beside them decades ago and I was hooked. Sadly my dreams were dashed. Snorkelling and cave diving at Piccaninnie Ponds is by permit only – not that I wanted to dive or go caving, but water entry is open only to snorkellers and divers either in a group or with a dive buddy - no swimming.  The reason you may have guessed is that several divers have died while exploring the caves.

The fresh water finds its way out to sea still bubbling up through the limestone.

It's amazing or rather saddening to see how much natural vegetation has been lost to farming but we found an interesting spot - Germein Reserve. This is a designated area protecting remnant vegetation in a region where 95% of native vegetation has been cleared and wetlands drained.  It now protects a number of species of flora and fauna: many dry and wetland plants,forest and water bats, a couple of  kangaroo and wallaby species, possums, echidnas, bush and swamp rats, an endangered antechinus species and more. We walked many Kms and got lost a few times but enjoyed the preserved bush.

All too soon it was time to head further east and homeward but it is a place we will return to I'm sure (if we reserve some time!!)

March 3 to 5 Mount Gambier

We hadn’t visited Mount Gambier for decades so we decided to take a short detour on our way to Port MacDonnell to revisit this volcanic spot. We have visited here a number of times over many decades, together and separately, so a few days was enough – it’s a little touristy for us but the rather huge caravan park where we stayed was well situated between the two big lakes - Blue and Valley crater lakes. 

This whole area is fascinating, geologically speaking. Mount Gambier is one of Australia's youngest volcanoes – the age? The most recent estimate, based on radiocarbon dating of plant fibres in the main crater (Blue Lake) suggests an eruption around 6000 years ago. The two big lakes formed when a number of small volcanic vents situated close together, joined and flooded - the crater floors are below the water table. This area is part of an extensive volcanic province located on a geological fault that stretches from Portland to Naracoorte. The region is called Kanawonka Geopark: in the local aboriginal dialect kanawinka means ‘land of tomorrow’. Fascinating to think on that.
Of course we explored the craters and a number of sink holes in the area: the surrounding district is dotted with lots of sink holes.  Within city limits are a few quite famous sinkholes, we visited two  - Umpherston and Cave Gardens. It’s where everyone goes and for good reason. There is another sinkhole there but it costs a pretty penny because you have to do ‘the tour’ – no option to simply have a look!

Umpherston sinkhole

From the bottom of the sinkhole I looked up and inside one cave I saw beehives 

Cave Gardens right in the city. 

Cave gardens was once either the city water supply or a cattle watering hole. Now it serves to drain storm water.

But we also took a day trip back to the coast to explore Buck Bay and Cape Banks. Twenty or so km out of Mount Gambier we stopped in at the little blue lake, sometimes referred to as Baby Blue.  It has a diameter of 50m and a depth of 36m; it is a popular spot for swimming and cave diving - we just went for a look. It was pretty crowded when we were there.

As we travel in Australia it’s hard to ignore the history. I know little of our history before British exploration and colonisation – how I wish there was more information about the longer history of the region, the people who populated this wild place. There is geological history of course and that tells its own quite breathtaking history story but the people? However ….  This is a wild coastline. In 1802 Captain Baudin heading a French scientific expedition passed point  and noted how treacherous this coastline was. He and Cpt Matthew Flinders later met at Encounter Bay. Between them from 1801-03, Baudin and Flinders completed the mapping of ‘New Holland’, the Great Southern Land.

Cape Banks lighthouse

A wild windswept coastline

This region and indeed the whole lower southeast coastline is an Internationally significant area for migratory shore birds most if which breed in Siberia. The distance they fly annually is mindboggling. 

Bucks Bay

Bucks Bay is a relatively safe harbour but it is surrounded by countless shipwrecks such is the wildness of the weather and sea around here. Dotted along this stretch of coast are memorials to ships and people who have been succumbed to the elements. Sobered by the forces of nature, and the folly of men, I selected an off the beaten track route to get us back to our safe haven, our cubby on wheels.

There were times when the driver worried that I had led us totally astray! 

March 1 a short trip along the Limestone coast

 

Taking advantage of our location while centred in Kingston SE we took a drive SE along the Limestone Coast taking in Penola and Robe in one big day loop. Penola is in the Coonawarra wine growing area and is known as the central location in the life of Mary MacKillop. Educator and social reformer she was the first Australian beatified by the Roman Catholic. It was pretty much a drive through for us and on to Robe situated along the Limestone coast. This whole south east area was once covered by sea 15-40  million years ago.
I remember Robe from 30 odd years ago when it was deliciously quiet. Today it is a thriving tourist spot simply teeming with holiday-makers. We gasped at the rush and headed for the lighthouse. The life tends to centre around the township and quiet beaches – and the wineries etc.  

Robe lighthouse

Cape Dombey was once home to a small wooden lighthouse. What stands nearby today building 1972 in a futuristic looking star-shaped concrete lighthouse. It replaced the lighthouse at Cape Jaffa.
This stretch of coast is wild exposed to high winds and wave energy. This area of the cape is now a declared sanctuary zone which protects the coastal platform reef which is home to southern rock lobsters, abalone, red algae and other species.

Pretties clinging to the rocky cliffs

Driving past the Woakwine Range we came to what is called Woakwine Cutting, a huge channel cut to drain some of the water from Woakwine Swamp and channel it to Lake George. The idea was to improve the land which is basically peat based. The cutting was masterminded and undertaken by BM McCourt who, together with another man and some heavy duty equipment, completed ‘the drain’ in under 3 years. The cutting is an impressive 1km long, 28m deep at its deepest point and has a fall of 7m from Woakwine swamp to Lake George. It is a local phenomenon. 

Woakwine cutting

A little something to tickle your fancy