Thursday morning and Crack and I killed time until check out whilst Pie frantically dispatched emails....we knew this was the last of the on tap wifi!
Crack played on the "big bikes" whilst I watched parrots at the bird table. Mainly rainbow lorikeets, but also saw a pair of Little Corellas and a Crimson Rosella.
Then we hopped in the car and headed south west again. It was a 3 hour stretch but our destination was worth every moment in the car! And the Lamington lunch!
Wilson's Promontory National Park, otherwise known as The Prom, is the southernmost tip of the Australian mainland, and covers more than 50,000 hectares of beaches, rainforests, mountains and offshore islands. It is BIG and very little of it is accessible by car, so we decided whilst planning the trip, that we would push on for most of the week, leaving us two days to explore the Prom.
We stayed just north of the park with wonderful views across Corner Inlet Marine National Park to the northern spine of mountains including Mt Singapore, Mt Hunter and Chinamans Knob (I kid you not!).
At least, that was the view we were expecting.....but when we arrived it looked more like Scotland! Very low cloud and heavy drizzle and more forecast. I started to worry that, even having two days there, we might not get a break in the weather! But after Zack's nap, the rain eased, and we decided to drive into the park to see whether we could spot any wildlife.
It was very reassuring (given the weather lol!) that the fire risk was only high!? Thank god nobody ordered a Code Red :-) (only A Few Good Men will get that one!)
But when we saw these signs, we thought we had better stop and take a photo, as this might be the closest we'd get to the real thing!
Fortunately, just around the corner, we came across these.....wild emu!
Very exciting as we hadn't seen any emu in our previous adventures and especially so as, given the weather, we weren't really expecting to see anything!
And then, whilst watching the emu, we caught a glimpse of a wombat waddling across the road! We abandoned the car (and the emu), went around the bushes and came face to face with a gorgeous wombat! He was totally unconcerned with our presence, even with Crack shouting 'wombat, wombat, cuddle wombat?' over and over again, letting us come within touching distance.
You can see how laid back he is if you watch this video - sorry about the sound, it was quite blustery!
Eventually he moved off into the bush and we went off for a walk, on which we saw no wildlife! But returning to the spot of the wombat encounter again on our way home, we saw a mother and baby wombat disappearing into the scrub (not enough time for a picture I'm afraid!). So we went home for dinner feeling very lucky and hoping that Friday would be at least as good!
Friday morning dawned cloudy but dry, so we took our chances and headed for Mt Oberon. On the way there we spotted a swamp wallaby (first of many as it turned out!), very strikingly different from the eastern grey kangaroo which is more common.
The view from the top of Mt Oberon is said to be 360 degrees and fantastic, but it was a rather boring uphill trudge along a maintenance track to get there. Not much wildlife in sight, a few birds like Scarlet Robin, Eastern Yellow Robin and Superb Fary Wren. All very pretty but also very small and fast, so I didn't get any photos. Here's a few of the walk up.
Finally we reached the end of the track....and the beginning of the stairs! Here they are!
We were lucky that the clouds were high and we got a lovely, if very windy (hence my hair!), view from the top!
Views across Norman Bay, Squeaky Beach and Whisky Bay.
The view south - the southernmost tip of mainland Australia - next stop Antarctica! And here's a panoramic showing the whole western coast, pano's always curve round a bit but the effect is quite pronounced here compared with the actual coastline!
We had lunch in Tidal River, where Crack met the biggest kangaroo yet!
And we learned why you shouldn't feed the wildlife!
And then we headed back to the cottage for nap time. On the way back we saw not one, but two echidnas! So cute, about twice the size of a hedgehog, but not quite as laid back as the wombats, they scuttled off quickly, but not before I'd grabbed a few pictures!
That evening we took another walk, along the 'wildlife walk'. We saw lots of kangaroos but not much else, except a couple of helicopters taking off from the emergency airstrip, which of course were far more exciting for Crack than the mobs of kangaroos bounding away!
A lone Galah, well actually there was a whole flock of them, but this is the only photo I got!
Curious kangaroos
Crack looking thoughtful!
Squeaky Beach really does squeak - something to do with the rounded quartz sand. Click here if you don't believe me or you want to hear it for yourself!
Apart from the squeakiness, the beach is also gorgeous! Soft white sand, lovely views out to islands, up to mountains and with a small stream running down the beach, through some massive red boulders and out into the blue bay!
Crack had a great time, wave-jumping with Daddy, building sandcastles and collecting shells with mummy to decorate them, as well as exploring he big boulders.
We all loved The Prom. If we lived within a couple of hours, we'd spend many many weekends and holidays exploring. It's such a beautiful place, so much wildlife and so few roads that you really have to do some overnight hikes and camp out in order to see most of it. Clearly we didn't have the time, and Crack can't do the miles, to do it this time....but I'm hoping that just gives us a good excuse to come back!
It was time to leave all too soon. From here we drove the 2.5 hours to Melbourne - our final Australian stop off (although we are hoping to do a couple short trips) before we fly to Hong Kong next Tuesday!
It's starting to feel like we'll be home soon....less than a fortnight left! :-(
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