Wilsons Promitory

Today we are leaving Wilsons Prom, so we got up nice and early (8.30 am) and packed up the balance of the van, as we did as much as we could the night before, we finally left the Prom at about 10.00am. We had decided that we would drive to Inverloch and spend the night there as some one told us about the RACV resort, and we thought that we would give it a try.

It took us just over an hour to drive to Inverloch, finally found the resort which is about 5 km to the west of town. This place is really impressive all the RV sites are concrete and well set out we chose one with an en suite at it was a little pricey for a van site at $51.00 but we wanted a bit of luxury, the standard sites are $31.00 but the amenities are close by to all the sites. We also went out to a place call The Caves this is where they have been finding dinosaur fossils but the tide was wrong and the we just missed the palaeontology team from Monash Uni who were working there until the 22^nd Feb.

Inverloch is a very nice place and has some of the charm of the old Ocean Grove including some of the décor, we have both decided that we would like to come and spend a bit more time in this area sometime in the future.

On our travels we went through Wonthaggi, and I can remember when dad was alive and Aunty Barbara was burnt out we spent just about every weekend traveling down there so dad could do the renovations on her new home, I have tried to find the old house but have not been able to yet, and the only thing that looks the same in the place is the pub with the whale bone out the front, I can also remember us kids walking to Cape Patterson, well there is a lot of development in the area now including a caravan park. The average house prices all the way through the area that we traveled seem to be well above the even in some of the out of the way towns that we went through although I found a really nice house up on the side of a hill with uninterrupted views of Bass Strait and Wilsons Prom, for a cool 1.7 million (not a large block or house either).

Well we’ll sign off as tomorrow we will be making our way back to home base.

Hope you enjoyed our little tour and will be keeping the site up to date with anything new.

 Here is a Banksia in flower which is very common along the coastline.

This is quite depressing saying goodbye to Wilsons Prom.

 A last farewell look before heading home.

 This is our last stop overnight at RACV Resort at Inverloch. What a beautiful place that little brown building behind our car is an en suite and its very nice inside. The Resort won the Victorian Tourism Awards for best Deluxe Accomodation 2011-2012.

 We visited a place called The Caves. Can you see the staircase in the far left hand side of the picture ? Well Peter told me not to move so I panicked and started to swat my legs with both of my arms thinking it was a large March fly trying to bite me which has happened quite alot on our traveling. Then he grabed my arms and said not to move and pointed to the bottom of the staircase there was a snake right beside the bottom step that I was about to step onto. It was a pretty little thing you could see it's forked tongue moving around then it started to rain the snake moved away.Lucky !!!

 A close up view of the rocks at The Caves with the tide comming in which stopped us from looking around.

 This is where the Palaeontologists come to find fossils.

 Look at this the day started out fine then one hour after we arrived at Inverlock it started to rain again!!!

  An inside view of the camp kitchen at the RACV Resort.

Robyn and Peter.

Still at Wilsons Prom and having fun.

Monday was our first full day at the Prom, we took a look at our map that showed all the walking trails and also indicated how difficult they were, we decided on a couple that were about 1.5 to 2km in length but rated as easy. We also decided that we would do one in the morning this being north to a place called Lilly Pilly Gully and if all worked out we would do the second one in the afternoon, this would allow Rob to see how she was travelling and have a rest prior to trying the second which is a track that follows Tidal River out to and along Norman Beach.

They advertise that the Lilly Pilly Gully walk is great for viewing animals such as kangaroos, emu’s, wombats and birds, well we did catch glimpses of birds, and plenty of evidence of wombats, but did not see any of the other advertised animals.

During the day I also had a chance to drop a line and went fishing on the rocks at Norman beach, although I had no luck with the fish, it was nice to sit on these massive boulders and take in the environment.  

Tuesday did have some plans for a couple of other walks in the area, but nature got in our way and there were showers some quite heavy most of the day the van held up well and although it was humid we were very comfortable, I was daring and tried my luck at fishing again this time in the rain and at Squeaky Beach I did catch a couple of small ocean trout and then the bloody seagulls flogged what was left of my bait so I had to come back to the van early.

At about 6.00pm the sun poked its head from between the clouds and we did the Tidal River walk again it was a beautiful evening and a magnificent sunset.

Today is our last full day and tomorrow we are heading off to spend the night at Inverloch where we hope to find something interesting to put into Wednesday or Thursday’s blog

Well that’s all for the moment.

  Walking along Tidal River at low tide.

 Peter's friends at the mouth of Tidal River.

 This walking track reminded me of the forest Snow White got lost in. Narley Tea Trees lined both sides of the walking track intertwining with each other and it was getting dark and the whole walking track was soaking wet from the day's rain.You just had to be there to experience the astmosphere.   

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 Rocky hills shelter both sides of the beach if you look closely there are people swimming in the seaspray up close to the hill.

  Having a last look at the beach and watching the clouds form over the hills.

 Walking along Tidal River back to the caravan park keeping an eye on the weather.

 The beach with a man walking at the bottom left just to show you all the size of the hills.

Robyn and Peter

Finally at Wilsons Prom

Well we have finally arrived at Wilsons Prom, the entry gate is about 30 kms from the actual camp ground, and the road is still a bit chewed up with some big potholes here and there, I managed to miss most of them but a big one caught me by surprise and bounced the car and van around a bit.

We arrived at the camp ground at about 1030 and then proceeded to our site, only to find that some really nice person had parked there car there and plugged in to the power to charge their phone, they had then taken off on a little hike, (stuff you mate I’m all right).

We did finally manage to get on to our site and I parked the van as close as I could to the side of the offending vehicle, unfortunately I was out walking when the driver came back but, he did manage to extricate his car with no damage to my van (don’t care about his car).

The facilities lived up to expectations, there are decent sized sites but none of them have water or sullage, not even the powered sites.

After setting up we had a quick tour of the main area, the beach as well as tidal River. The main beach here is wide shallow and great for swimming it is flanked on each side by large bolder encrusted hills, and the water was cold.

The weather is still warm but it is quite humid so it feels hotter than it actually is.

You can also fish in the area so I am hoping to wet a line tomorrow, will let you know how I go.

Well I’ll sign off for now as we are about to have dinner.

 The main beach at Tidal River beautiful shallow and sandy.

 Looking to the North East from the camp ground

 This bloke tried to retrieve his boat from the beach, if you look closely you can see both his car and boat trailer are bogged to the axels, the Parks Nissian Ute could not pull him out so they called in the tractor, lucky the tide was going out not in.

 Rocks on the bank of Tidal River

 Rob can't resist taking bird photo's.

Peter and Robyn

Foster and surrounds

Yesterday we headed off from Sandy Point and headed in an easterly direction we really had no idea where we were going to stop, anyway we had only travelled for about 40 minutes when we arrived at Foster, the place had that country town atmosphere (this is from some one who lives in Swan Hill) well we liked it and found the caravan park.

The park is really well set up, although it does not have a large number of sites they are all grass and some have trees which provide nice shade in the late afternoon.

They have a really big camp kitchen and the amenities block is easily accessible and not to far from the sites.

There is a lot to see and do in the area and the location is quite central the other positive being that it is only about an hours drive to Wilsons Prom, there are some good fishing spots on the beach or rocks and as yet I have not been able to wet a line, maybe we should look at coming over this way for our “boy’s” weekend.

On Saturday we did a bit of a tour around the area and went to Fish Creek, which has the Gallery of Celia Rosser who was commissioned as a Botanical Artist ( she drew and painted plants) for botanical reference books, the work is extremely fine and detailed, and some of the prints of the originals were selling for $1,700. From there we went to Walkerville, the road to Walkerville is a made road and a fairly easy drive and there are the remnants of some old lime kilns on the beach which are massive. Then on to Cape Liptrap, the road to the Cape Liptrap lighthouse just about shook our teeth out, it is heavily corrugated over about 8 kms, and my speed was down to about 5kph over most of it, but the views from the light house are great.

Around the Walkerville area there are also some beautiful beaches (not much surf) but great for swimming or fishing.

Tomorrow we head of to Wilsons Prom for a minimum 3 nights, we are not sure if we can get mobile signal there so we don’t know if we will be able to update our blog, but keep and eye out for our next installment.

 Setting up home for the next couple of day's.

 

 The camp kitchen at the Foster caravan park.

 A view of the Walkerville beach looking west.
 

 One of the old lime kilns on the beach at Walkerville

 The Cape Liptrap lighthouse.

 The view looking towards Bass Strait from the Cape Liptrap lighthouse

Peter and Robyn.

Our progress from Phillip Island

Well, we spent 2 nights at Phillip Island and suddenly all these motor bikes started turning up, we thought what there was a bikie convention on or something, we were close, we forgot about the motor bike GP  that was on at Phillip Island this weekend.

Time for plan B try to get into Wonthaggi, nope no luck booked out due to Motorcycle GP, alright plan C Inverloch, guess what also booked out, what  do we do now as we are not booked into Wilson Prom until Sunday. So off we go and took a punt, on a caravan park at a place called Sandy Point, talk about reminiscing David, Diane, Garry and Sharron would all relate to this place, it was like living our surfing days over, with some of the caravan parks that we stayed at even the colour scheme was the same.

Having said this the beach at Sandy Bay is beautiful and reminds me a lot of the Ocean Grove beach even the breaks which were not large were even and consistent, and the beach seemed to go on forever. If you are ever down this way you really should take the time to visit Sandy Bay, but be prepared it is like opening the pages of a seventies commercial.

We spent the day having a look around the area including Shallow Inlet, and then walking up the beautiful beach.

Forget the mobile phone and wireless internet service there is virtually none, reminds me a lot of Pritchards. 

The wind was again blowing a gale and as a precaution we did not lift the roof of the van, and the wind blew with vigour and the van rocked and shook all night (from the wind nothing else).

Today is still windy and we are going a bit further east, lets see where we end up this time.

 

 The main beach at Sandy Point looking west.

Rob said it was cold I was wearing shorts and t-shirt.

 
This is the beach at Shallow Inlet, looking south you can drive for a couple of km's up the beach but the walk is better.

 The amenities at the Sandy Point Caravan Park

 The main entrance.

Peter and Robyn.

On our way to the eastern Victoria

The ongoing saga of our travels continue, with us heading off from Swan Hill at 0830 on Tuesday morning, our plan was to travel to the east of Melbourne somewhere and camp for the night and then follow our nose until we ended up at Wilsons Prom, as we approached Melbourne on City Link we hoped the gods were going to smiling on us for an uneventful journey through the Burnley Tunnel and then down the Monash Freeway, and they did and it was a dream journey down both (I may live to regret this as we have to go back this way).

As we came out of Melbourne and joined the South Gippsland Hwy, we had some big decisions to make, where were going to stop for the night. I was having a chat with Rob and found out that she had never been to Phillip Island so the decision was made that was our destination.

We arrived at about 3.00pm and then proceeded to find a caravan park, Bushypark (thanks Dave) the one we stayed at during our surfing days is no longer there so we finally decided on one called (removed to protect the author).

Well you can tell that this is a tourist town for my little square of land for 2 nights I thought I was going to have to mortgage my house not to mention the 4oz gold nugget deposit for the key to the amenities. Having said this, it was a very quiet location and we me another couple there who were tenting it with 3 young boys, there was also this TV presenter and crew who were doing a session on a van I do not know the guy’s name but he does one of the caravaning shows on tele, we kept on  upsetting their filming because we had to drive past them to get in and out of the park.

We went out to the Nobbies for a trip to have a look at the penguins and seals, well I think it was blowing a force 10 gale, the penguins were learning to fly it was that strong.

Well we’ll sign off for the moment, keep and eye on the same bat channel for our ongoing adventures.

The supervising the artistic set up of my photo.

View towards Tasmania from the Nobbies.

 Does my bum look big on this seat.

 The penguins looked amazingly like Cape Barren Geese.

Pete and Rob

Well we have been offline for a while the main reason is I forgot my password and could not get back into my Blog, thankfully we have access again, and we are heading off on our next trip.
So to give you the ten cent tour of our last trip we went to Port Lincoln via Port Augusta, the first part of the trip was fine between Adelaide and Port Augusta, but the trip down the Eyre Peninsula was a pain we had a head wind all the way and in some places it was a struggle to maintain 70kph.

But here are a few photo's of the trip albeit a bit late.

These first few are sculptures which were part of a large exhibition at the Arid Gardens in Port Augusta, if you are near the area you should drop in and take a look you can also buy the seeds of the plants.

 Yes it is the figure of a woman in a bed.

 You need to make up your own mind about the meaning behind some of these?????

If you look closely you can see the back of a whale.

 This is the view of one of the free campsites in the Lincoln National park notice where the caravan is million dollar views,  there is a toilet the long drop variety but all the rest is b.y.o

This is the view from our caravan site at the Port Lincoln caravan park, very nice place to stay.

Well that's a bit of an overview of where we have been and the next post will be where we are now.




This time we are heading off to the east coast of Victoria, Rob and I have never been to Wilson Prom so this will be our primary destination, and we will see where we go from there.

But we have not been idle since we went to Wilpena Pound although we have not done as much traveling in the van as we would have liked but we hope to change that from now on.