Heading for Melbourne

We were now heading southeast, on our way to the Melbourne area, having just left Adelaide. We'd seen a lot of coastline and there were a few highlights, but, the much-hyped 'Great Ocean Way' (you know, the famous one where they show the collapsing seastacks called the 'Twelve Apostles') was unfortunately, a Great Disappointment.

This picture isn't of the famous view, it's a little further along from here. The famous view was so crowded you couldn't even get into the parking lot for all the tour buses. From the road we could see a huge mob of selfie-taking people on the viewing platform and we just kept driving!

There were other interesting things to look at, like this group of pelicans, which were fascinating to watch as they preened themselves on the seashore.

Having enjoyed ocean views for a while we were looking for a change of scene. We read about an old gold rush town, Walhalla, in our guide book. It sounded interesting, so, we went inland and up into the hills for a look. It was a typical gold rush town, most of the original buildings had been quickly built of wood and haven't endured, but, there was enough left to get a feel for what was once there. The town had done a good job with interesting historical plaques and we spent an enjoyable morning just walking around the town and soaking up the historic ambiance.

Gold was discovered here in 1862 and the town was quickly built in the surrounding, steep valley. The population soared to 5,000 at its peak and there wasn't much room to expand. A lot of the buildings, like this one, which was the original hospital, had to be built higher and higher up the side of the vertical slopes. It would have looked very different during the town's building phase as the hills were stripped totally bare of trees at that time.

The population dwindled to just ten people in 1998. Many of the original founders can be found in the local cemetery, also built on the side of a hill, so steep that the graves seem to be barely hanging on!

Now, a day out just wouldn't be complete without having a look at the local birds we encountered. Here are two we hadn't seen before.

The best part of the day was finally seeing a kookaburra in the flesh. Since arriving in Australia, we'd often heard the kookaburra's maniacal 'laugh' off in the woods and it always brought a smile and spot of brightness to the day. However, we'd never seen one. Walhalla seemed the most unlikely place to get a closeup view, but, this one just sat and seemed to pose for us. What a charmer. Surprisingly, it looks rather like a fluffy kingfisher with a brushcut. Although I don't think this is a particularly good example, you can listen to a kookaburra's 'laugh' at  laughing-kookaburra (click on the audio file at the bottom of the page) or, you can listen and learn about many other birds at the same website, Birdlife Australia):