It was a nervy night for Annie, who was rather put out by the cockroach and large spider (a huntsman? We're not sure) that fled the barbecue plate while cooking dinner. The night of Saturday 26th October 2013 was windy, which was not helped by Yanakie's position on a low isthmus protruding into the notoriously rough Bass Straight and the lack of effective wind breaks. In keeping with the theme of the last week, it was raining, with yet more rain forecast for the approaching week.
We woke to broken skies of rays of sunshine blasting through cumuli, a brisk southwesterly and great promise. Just South of Yanakie is the control gate for the Wilson's Promontory National Park, then we were driving through pristine bush on a ribbon of tarmac unsurpassed in quality, and all the more out of place for it. Annie was on animal spotting duty, but our late start probably didn't help the poor showing. The drive was excellent, a really windy road that would be great to time trial, though crashing in a UNESCO World Heritage Site and Oz National Park probably wouldn't be appreciated. Just in case I don't mention it when describing something specific in Wilson's Prom, the views are amazing. All of them. From close-ups of dense, seemingly untouched bush to magnificent saddle-point vistas, it's just beautiful.
Arriving in the only permanent settlement in park, Tidal River, we gawped at the enormity of the camping area, deciding to pitch near to the amenities to put some food together. We fought the wind all the while, watching that the filling didn't fly out of the sandwiches, then as Annie turned to me for the mayo, the bugger swooped. A cacophony ensued as the flock of seagulls fought over the top half of our sandwich, not even dispersing as Annie angrily chased after them with a tea towel. We soon realised that the surplus of campsites needed to be investigated, and relocated away from the amenities where the seagulls (and rainbow lorikeets) had picked up their taste for chips and, apparently, ham sandwiches.
Wilson's Promentory is a tropical desert island, or at least it might be. It was quite clear to us that while there were several activities available to us (fishing, swimming, surfing), all we wanted to do was explore. Our first day saw us meander through the campsite, over the watercourse and then brought us to a complete stop when I brought Annie's attention to the badger-sized animal immediately to our right. Talk about tame - this wombat was 5 feet away and couldn't care less about us as it scruffled for tasty greens on the side of the path. As Annie took photos (and I took photos for Annie of her with the wombat in the near background), a few more people came by, but the wombat didn't care, and kept ignoring that it was meant to be both shy and semi-nocturnal. What a badass. Seeing the wombat sustained us for most of the rest of the day, though that isn't to say that Squeaky Beach was actually quiet, or that the views weren't inspiring. Our path took us over the headland to the next bay, with great viewpoints, down to one of the finest beaches I've seen, to lunch on remarkable rocks (not The Remarkable Rocks, they're on Kangaroo Island in SA), then back over the hill to the campsite. Squeaky Beach gets it's name from the sound of ultra-fine quartz sand rubbing together when walked on - a funny sensation, though actually replicated in several places along the coast in Oz. Coming back over the hill, the importance of fire to the Australian landscape became apparent. We saw burnt stumps, but also half-burnt trees that were quite alive, burnt tree grasses redoubled in growth and many burnt hollows that were obviously housing some form of wildlife or other. From a lovely granite outcrop, the landscape could easily be divided along recent fire lines - the fewer burnt limbs above the thicker the canopy, the longer ago the most recent burn.
A nice feature on the walk (sadly amiss in many other places in Oz) was the presence of informative signs that related the lives of the traditional owners of the land and how they used some of the plants, along with details on the plants themselves. I liked learning that the tree grass flower sap hardens as a resin used for attaching spear heads, amongst other uses.
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| Old fire lines are really obvious from above |
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| Annie getting up close to the first wombat |
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| He was quite happy with close-ups |
The revelation of the evening of 27th October was that Wilson's Prom doesn't just have the one fearless wombat, rather several burrows worth of them, including a burrow right in the middle of the campsite. Stop! I know what you're going to say, and don't worry - Annie took enough photos of them to last a trip to the other side of the world, almost. After a sunset stroll on the beach, we also saw several bunnies (cue mixed feelings) then - get this - a deer. I can understand bunnies managing to thrive, even in a National Park, but deer? Deer are surely the easier feral creature to hunt/capture/remove, and I've not seen any others at all across Australia.
{one of the campsite locals}
We extended our stay in Wilson's Prom to two nights, allowing us time to scale Mount Oberon, with silly chanting and exercises on the way up the (rather dull) forest track, though unfortunately the good weather from day 1 decided not to stay with us and we reached the summit in cloud. We kept getting smug looks from the predominantly German walkers descending as we climbed. They had obviously made more of the "a few showers" weather forecast than we had, though in our defence that seems to be the only description Victorians know for anything from vaguely threatening cloud cover to all-out torrential downpours lasting several hours. Never mind, we're British, and a little rain was hardly going to keep us from our sandwiches.
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| In the clouds, Mt Oberon. |
Oh, we saw emus when we were driving out. Nice.
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| Overcast, yes. Stunning, also yes. |
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