8. Australia - Aussie Dangers and Driving the Coast

Covering 8 October to 16 October 2019

 

Town Beach, Robe

  

It is a fact that there are no poisonous snakes in Australia.  The simple rule is that if you bite something and you sicken or die, it is poisonous but if it bites you and you sicken or die then it is venomous.  Second fact.  There are lots of venomous snakes in Australia, and venomous spiders, jellyfish and even seashells.  Then in the tropical north are the absolutely fearsome salt-water crocodiles.  Males have been known of 7 metres length (about 22 feet) and 1000 kilograms (almost a ton) in weight.  Now if one of those gets it’s gnashers into you, fear not dear reader, for you will not have time to sicken and die.  We won’t be anywhere near salt water croc habitat (deviously also found in fresh

I didn't even mention these

water !) or cone shells (deadly) or box jellyfish (deadly and apparently the worst pain you can imagine).  Survivors of box jellyfish encounters will be scarred for life, probably mentally as well as physically.  As it happens, in our two months or so here we haven’t seen any snakes – but I bet a lot have seen or felt the vibrations of us coming.  A couple of the worst are the Taipan (big and deadly) and the Desert Death Adder (small and deadly).  The latter is only about eight inches long and lurks in soft sand so flip-flops are not the best footwear.  I like the sound of the Levitating Paralysis Cobra but as I’ve just made that one up I’m not too worried about it.  It’s easy to assume that such creatures are only found in the wild and woolly outback and many are, but many are also in the green agricultural areas and around habitation.  One morning, Heather was about to have a shower and noticed a spider in the corner, began to move to rescue it by picking it up and realised where she was.  So she shared the cubicle while keeping a keen eye on her shower companion.

while neither poisonous or venomous, the
Australian Pelican could do some damage if it flew
into you.  It has an eight feet wingspan

While pondering nothing in particular I realised that probably the four most iconic Australian species of wildlife all begin with a K.  That’s Kangaroo, Koala, Kookaburra and Duck-Billed Platypus.  Call the last one an ‘alternative fact’.  Actually even the old D-B Platypus is venomous and we haven’t seen one of those either.

as if you wouldn't

We’re now intending to drive mostly along the coast to Melbourne.  We took two small car ferries on some back roads for the first part of this section of our trip.  Each would take perhaps ten cars or a couple of lorries.  Not only were they free but they ran twenty four hours a day, seven days a week.  Amazing.

We had only seen the south east corner of South Australia and were now crossing into Victoria but near the border we noticed a sign pointing away down a side road to a place called Woakwine Cutting.  For some reason we turned off to take a look.  Yet another platform over a deep sheer sided gulley which we took at first to be a natural crevasse cut through soft rock.  However when we read the info. board it turned out to be a man made drainage channel dug in order to empty a swamp.  Two men armed with a caterpillar tractor, a drain ripper (?) and explosives dug it in less than three years.  It’s nearly a kilometre long and thirty four metres deep.  276,000 cubic metres of material were removed.  We should have put them on the Channel Tunnel.

Sulphur Crested Cockatoo

Portland Bay

Portland is very proud of the old tram system
- and why not ?

Portland, a decent sized town set on the western end of a curving bay was Victoria’s first European settlement and once a whaling port.  The caravan park was set above the town with views of the harbour and the town’s cable tram ran straight past the gate.  It was here that Heather was told in the Tourist Office that even Koalas can cause physical damage.  It seems that if they’re frightened they run up the nearest vertical thing that they can find.  In this case, the narrator’s mother’s dog barked at it and it ran up the nearest vertical object which was his mother.  The claws did the damage and she had to visit the local hospital with lacerations.  You know, I still can’t decide if it was a tall story.

on our campsite in The Grampians 

two grazers for the price of one

a typical bit of the Halls Gap
mountain walk

Then we detoured about a hundred miles inland to The Grampians, another range of mountains and pretty spectacular too.  We took one short walk called the Piccanniny (yes, really) Walk where we found a good selection of half a dozen or so orchids.  This was a big change for us because flowers had been somewhat thin on the ground since Western Australia.  Our real destination here though was Halls Gap where we had a very good mountain walk.  One of those with a really early start to avoid the heat of the day.  In summary it went up for a very long way, had tremendous views from the top and came down a very long way.  To expand on that, it was a beautiful walk through some narrow gaps in rocks, tantalising distant views and even a gentle tinkling 
waterfall for cupping handfuls of water to cool off with.  At the top was, wouldn’t you just know it, a platform right on the edge of the almost vertical drop some 1,500 feet to the valley floor. 

Heather at the top

and just to prove I was there

that's our campsite down there !

Almost retracing our steps out of The Grampians we aimed for Port Fairy so that we could continue along the coast.  A more pleasant small town than we were expecting, this was where we saw our first Wallabies.  Smaller than Kangaroos

Emu on a bad hair day

and with brown heads, they’ll stand in tall grass with just their heads visible but we were fortunate and did get a couple of more open views of them.  There are just so many more animals that we hadn’t heard of or seen, Quolls, Dunnarts, Potoroos, Numbats, Wombats we have heard of, while Dingbats are not animals at all.  Wombats are burrowing marsupials about the size and build of a European Badger.  However, their pouches face backwards and when they’re a doin’ their burrowin’, the pouch doesn’t fill up with soil.  

Emu and chicks

a closer view of two of those chicks

Now we’re about to drive the famous Great Ocean Road but that will have to wait for the next blog.

they manage to guess our nationality at every campsite
and we still can't work out how they do it !