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| View of Lakes Entrance |
Lakes Entrance is a small holiday town in East Gippsland that lies on a man made channel linking the Gippsland lakes to the Bass straight and Tasman sea. Barnadi picked me up from work on Wednesday and we started the 5 hour drive along the Princes Highway stopping only once in Moe to switch seats. By the time we pulled up at the Great Western hotel it was already dark, and we were greeted by an overly cheerful receptionist "We had begun to think you weren't coming" who gave us a map and pointed out some key attractions in the area before allowing us to escape to our room to rest after our long drive. Rather than going straight to bed we decided a walk along the waterfront as far as the bridge that took us out to the sea front. As we crossed the bridge over the Cunninghame arm and away from the street frontage it got noticeably darker and the sound of the crashing waves became our only clue that we were heading in the right direction. The darkness however became complete as we passed over the sand dunes and onto the beach, it was then that as we looked up we noticed the stars for the first time. It was a clear night and in the complete darkness of the beach the stars were so unbelievably bright and numerous, with the dense band of the milky way marking its course across the middle of the sky. We slept well that night.
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| 90 mile Beach at Lakes Entrance |
We only had one full day in Lakes Entrance and so we decided we had to make the most of it, we got up early and took a walk along the 3km of beach and the windswept wooded sand dunes that run between the Bass straight and the Cunninghame arm, from the bridge in Lakes Entrance right up to the man made inlet and back again. The walk finished with a hot but bland breakfast of bacon and eggs and a watery coffee in a cafe along the waterfront, but by that point I was too hungry to care. After breakfast we got in the car and drove inland to the small town of Buchan and area famous for it's limestone caves. The limestone of Buchan is black in colour, and stone from quarries in the area was used to build the six black pillars inside the shrine of remembrance, some of the stones were even shipped to the UK and used in the building of Australia house in London. While in Buchan we joined a tour of one of the caves known as the Fairy cave, a narrow winding tunnel decorated with translucent stalactites and stalagmites, strange formations contaminated with iron salts that had the appearance of streaky bacon and waterfalls of sparkling calcium crystals that gave the cave its name.
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| Inside the Fairy cave at Buchan |
On leaving Buchan we headed back to the waterfront and a small town called Paynesville where we could catch a free ferry to Raymond Island, a small Island in Lake King that has a colony of koalas living on it. The short ferry ride took us straight onto the path of the koala trail, but it wasn't until a couple of locals pointed out one in their front garden that we managed to spot our first koala. Once we saw one however it didn't take us long to spot another and another and another.
Feeling very satisfied with the days activities we drove back to Lakes Entrance for dinner at a Greek restaurant called Miriam's where we shared a 1kg seafood platter filled to the brim with Bass straight bugs, oysters, muscles, prawns and a selection of other fish. Barnadi washed it down with a glass of wine while I had to make do with a glass of water. It is times like this when I miss being able to drink the most, but it wasn't enough to ruin what was an incredible day.
On Friday we had to head back to Melbourne, Barnadi was working and we were expecting more guests from the UK.
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| Sleepy Koala |
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