Swan Watch XV: Wet Down Under

The record-breaking drought seems to be a long distant memory. Melbourne (and Victoria) are getting weather more reminiscent of our tropical north rather than the Mediterranean-type climate we usually have. We are experiencing large thunderstorm systems passing through every day or two. The downpours on already sodden soils are causing localised flooding.

These couple of shots were taken at the nearby town of Whittlesea the other day. They show a park near the main street. The Plenty River has burst it’s banks and is spreading across the parkland.

Nearby, someone has spread bird-seed. It had attracted some local birds, neither of which I have shared with you before.
Crested pigeons.Aren’t the colours on their wings beautiful?When they fly their wings make a distinctive whistling sound.

And I snapped away and didn’t realise until after that these cockatoos weren’t the long-billed corellas I have shown you before. These guys are actually another species called little corellas.

On the subject of birds our baby swan is still well. Baby is still much shyer than when mother swan was around, which is good, it helps keep him/her safe. He/she is still growing and is getting closer to adult colouring.Just in case you missed my post of last night Kathleen Jones posted a wonderful review and interview on her blogs yesterday. Sorry to keep banging on, but I am excited (Kathleen's Blogs are well worth a look anyway).

A Grey Day

Well all good things must come to an end.
Unfortunately our holiday fitted into that category.

On our last morning the early cloud didn’t burn off as it had on every other morning. Through the morning the weather alternated between windy and grey and windy, grey and wet.

We elected to meander along The Great Ocean Road in the direction of home.

We have travelled this piece of road on a number of occasions. The scenery is so spectacular we just can’t seem to get enough of it.

In spite of coming along here before we managed to find spots we hadn’t caught before.

Like this spectacular cove at the end of a little track, and from the same point turning about 90 degrees to the right.The sea was of course reflecting the sky and instead of deep blue it was grey and green.

At one point along the cliffs I found these fellows: Long Beaked Corellas, an Oz cockatoo.
These guys are normally associated more with the dry inland than the coast. They usually nest in hollow trees. I would have guessed they were looking for possible nesting hollows along the cliffs, except they don’t begin nesting until mid-winter (July down this end of the world).

A little further on was this feature, called strangely enough “The Arch”

Near Loch Ard Gorge the sun briefly poked out from between the clouds.

We elected not to stop at the famous “Twelve Apostles, because we have seen them before and with the holiday they were simply unpleasantly crowded.

Just to the East of the Apostles are “Gibson’s Steps”.Deb waited at the top and snapped a few photos.
This is Deb’s isn’t the look of the sea a total contrast compared to just a few days before?
Then as she waited a slightly portly, amateur photographer with pretensions to publushing came into sight at the base of the cliff.
It was so cool I had pulled a woollen jumper over my T-shirt.

While I was going down the stairs and from the beach I captured these piccies of the cliffs.Then it was a matter of climbing back up the stairs to see if Deb had blown away.
Now that is it, my protracted description of our holiday has come to an end.

Next time: an odd word

Warnambool (or Uncle Harry's slide night.)

Well I haven’t posted for a few days. My excuse is that I have been off gallivanting. Deb and I enjoyed our run down to the Great Ocean Road the weekend before last, so much that we decided to have a look at the section we didn’t see.

Being almost entirely selfish we left the sprogs at home to fend for themselves and took off mid morning on Saturday.

I have to admit I went totally nuts with the camera and have come back with around 500 photos from about a day and a half. This kind of leaves me with a dilemma of how to share the experience. I suspect it is a little (or a lot) hard to even give a hint of the spectacular coastal scenery without taking a number of posts. The problem is I don’t want to end up with a blog that seems like Uncle Harry’s slide night.

To all those Uncle Harrys out there, no offence is intended and I am sure your slide nights are both educational and entertaining.

We cut across inland to just past the far end of the Great Ocean Road, to Warnambool about 290 km (180 miles) from home.
We took our time stopping along the way for lunch at Inverleigh. I photographed this pub there, Aussie bush pubs do not normally look like this. Built out of Victorian Bluestone and with a Welsh slate roof this is a type of building that was put up mainly from the 1850’s to 1890’s apart from the local stone I suspect it would look just as happy in a village somewhere in the UK.

As we pulled in to the outskirts of Warnambool I spied a flock of cockatoos on a patch of grass by the side of the road. Thinking they were Sulphur-crested Cockatoos I pulled over to get a photo. They were in fact Long-billed Corellas .


The ground was soft from rain the night before and they were digging clover and grass roots for food.

After checking into our accommodation and having a cuppa we went out to Logan’s Beach which is famed for whale watching. From a lookout up in the sand dunes we quickly spotted whales just off shore. In fact a mother and calf were just beyond the surf maybe 15 to 20 metres from the beach.I think from the tip of a nose they were Southern Right Whales.
They just mucked around just beyond the breakers for more than half an hour.
Eventually a very cold wind drove us away from the shore.

Well Uncle Harry has had a long day, so that is all for now.
I’ll just leave you with a hint of what I might talk about next time.