Eden and Twofold Bay.

Tucked into a sheltered inlet in Twofold Bay, across from Red Point and Ben Boyd’s Folly, is the quiet fishing port of Eden. Even at the height of tourist season this place stays calm and relatively quiet. At six hours drive from Melbourne, and six and a half from Sydney it is seen as “a little too far” even for Aussies.
The town sits in the hills immediately around the port.
There is a small fishing fleet that still operates from here.
This piccie represents for me how hard these fisher folk must work.
Looking across the bay in a landwards direction it is easy to see how undeveloped this chunk of country is. Largely because the Great Dividing Range extends almost down to the coast here.
As in many places in Oz there is wildlife in abundance.
Beautiful like Banksias
Cute and beautiful like a Rainbow Lorikeet.
Cute, tiny and too quick to get a decent photo. (A Superb Blue Fairy Wren). And oddly beautiful, but definitely not cute.
Eden wasn’t always so quiet from the 1840s until 1930 there were shore based whaling stations here. Whalers set out in longboats from the shore to hunt whales using hand harpoons.

One station, the Davidson’s, was operated by the same family for four generations (from 1843 – 1929).
One of the Davidson’s old cottages still stands.
This is the Davidson’s front yard (my youngest sitting at the bottom being contemplative)
While nestled in the corner of this idyllic inlet
are the remains of the station including: “trying” vat for boiling down the blubber and the capstan that was used to haul the whales up onto the beach.
The whalers, in particular the Davidson family, received significant support from an unlikely source. Perhaps uniquely, several pods of Orcas assisted in the whaling operations. The killer whales assisted in a number of ways: alerting the whalers that baleen whales were nearby by breaching and tail slapping; driving the baleen whales into Twofold Bay and into range of the harpooners; and harrying the larger animals as the whalers killed them.
In payment for their services the Orcas were allowed to take the lips and tongue of the baleen whales after they were dispatched.

There is one tale “Old Tom”, a male killer whale, becoming quite irate when one of the Davidson’s managers tried to renege on the deal.

If anyone is interested there are a number of websites that feature information on Eden’s orcas.

A Scotsman’s Folly

On the South Coast of New South Wales, almost exactly half way between Sydney and Melbourne and about six hours drive from each, lies Ben Boyd National Park. Hidden in the park are some fantastic places.

Examples include: many kilometres of isolated and undisturbed beaches;

and The Green Cape Lighthouse.If you drive into the main entrance of the park from the Princess Highway and head for Red Point you come to a car park. From there you follow a little path towards the point.

At one spot you catch a glimpse, through a window in the bush, down to the sea. The pounding of the sea has exposed the rich red siltstone that gives the point its name.

Then suddenly ahead you glimpse over the storm twisted Melaleuca trees this unexpected sight.
Looking as if it would be more at home in the UK, this is Ben Boyd’s Tower one of the legacies of an eccentric from the early days of European settlement.

Ben Boyd was a Scotsman who in 1840 raised £200,000 in venture capital to fund development in the Colony of NSW.
Boydtown was founded nearby in 1843 as a port to support a large pastoral empire and as a base for a whaling operation. Four years later a visitor, speaking of the town, mentioned its Gothic church with a spire, stores, well-built brick houses, and "a splendid hotel in the Elizabethan style".
Boyd’s tower was built as a look out to give his whaling boats an advantage in spotting whales as they came north along the coast and he had ambitions that the government would use it as an official lighthouse.But Boyd was too grandiose and by 1849 he was bankrupted. He travelled to the California Gold fields, but had no luck. Finally he disappeared at Guadalcanal in the Solomon Islands in 1851.
Today the Tower that still carries his name is a shell.
Inside the floor joists are still in place but the floorboards are gone.From the tip of the point you can see across Twofold Bay to Eden, the port that took over as the local whaling harbour as Boydtown fell into ruins.And facing down the coast to the south, is more of the rich red stone that contrasts beautifully with the blue green ocean.This stretch of the NSW coast has to be one of my favourite places on the whole planet.

Next: Eden, a well named slice of country.

Wildlife and Warrnambool

Well we pulled in to Warrnambool a couple of hours before sunset. The first thing we did was head up to Logan’s Beach to see what sort of show the whales were putting on.
That sounds casual doesn’t it? In our limited experience it really is that easy to see whales at Warrnambool. What is special here is that while Southern Right Whales come to many places all along the South Western Coast of Victoria to calve, there is a group of females who consistently return to Warrnambool every year.

On this afternoon there were a number of whales fairly close inshore. One calf in particular was especially frisky and put on a good show.He/she was breaching half way out of the water and splashing back down on his/her back.
From Logan’s Beach we went into town and checked into our hotel. Then as the sun began to set I went for a stroll to see what the evening light would reveal. The war memorial gardens in Warrnambool are high and look out over the lagoon, foreshore and harbour. I thought this photo was worth posting because it captures the evening light beautifully.
Then I spotted this little fellow.
A New Holland Honeyeater.

Named for the old Dutch name for Australia, they have the odd distinction of being the first Australian bird to be scientifically described. They are quite common, but are a bit hard to photograph because they are very active.
He was flitting all over the place, but with a little patience I got this rather nice shot.
I am not sure what the flower is, a Hebe maybe?

The following morning we headed back east along the Great Ocean Road, turning off to look at Childers Cove which we did not see last time we came this way.
The country here is covered with depressions, I suspect caused by small sinkholes in the underlying limestone.
Many of them fill with rainwater run-off to make little ponds. On this one a black swan was nesting. They collect vegetation to build a platform in the water, where they lay their eggs.

Initially not being very photogenic it popped its head up for a look after I made a bit of noise.

We came down to Childers Cove, which like so much of this coast, is worth a photo or two.
In this second photo there are a couple of Australian Shelducks.
I’ve blown them up for you here.Shelducks are quite large, about halfway between most other duck species and geese in size. Unusually for ducks these guys usually nest in holes in banks and cliffs.

Next: I get nearly as boring as Uncle Harry