Weekend in Marlo

We took a three-day weekend in mid-November and drove over the ranges to Gippsland, the eastern region of Victoria which extends all the way from the eastern Melbourne suburbs to the NSW border. By the map it is four hours away, but the road over and through the mountains is winding and I'm sure it took us at least an extra hour for the drive. Our route through Gippsland to the coast was absolutely beautiful - rolling green pastured hills, steep river valleys, and the striking eucalypt forests recovering from last year's fires.

Looking down to the town of Omeo

Driving through fire-affected areas near Tambo Crossing,
almost a year of regrowth on the eucalypt trees

Our destination was Marlo, a seaside resort and fishing village where the Snowy River flows into the ocean. Our first afternoon was pretty low-key, and after we booked into our caravan park we took an enjoyable walk along the estuary and through the coastal forest.

Snowy River estuary

Spotted some delicate bluebell creeper along our walk.

The next day we took an outing to the Cape Conran Coastal Park, where we walked from Sailors Grave to the East Cape. It was like no other walk we have done before - the entire area affected by last year's fires, the eucalypt and banksia trees were re-shooting and the undergrowth had completely come back. We saw massive areas of kangaroo apple, an interesting native plant in the Nightshade family, so prolific we wondered at first if it was an introduced weed. It was also very hot, an exposed walk without any shade.

Eucalypt regrowth

Banksia regrowth and open seed cones

Bushfires are of course not unknown to Australian native
plants - most banksias utilise fires to release the seeds from the cones - however
the magnitude and intensity of last year's fires were unprecedented.

A new banksia sprouting out of the sand

Ferns as far as you can see.

Kangaroo apples

It was quite a sight to see the ocean through the trees.

Burchardia, milkmaid flowers.

Because it was a hot day, we were looking forward to dipping our toes in the water when we reached East Cape, but unfortunately luck was not on our side on this day and the water was filled with blueys (blue bottles, Pacific man o'war jellyfish). But it was another thing to tick off our Australian list - I had never seen them before. A beautiful rocky beach nonetheless - we enjoyed walking around the rocks and the crash of the waves. And fortunately for us some cloud cover blew in, so the trek back to Sailors Grave wasn't quite so hot!

If you look closely you can see the water is full of them.

A very peculiar creature.

Through the bare kangaroo apple forest.

 

One of the highlights of our visit to Cape Conran was seeing the Xanthorrhoea grass trees all in flower. We have seen grass trees in Tasmania but this was like nothing else I have seen before, a really incredible sight.

 

Shape of the dunes under the trees.

Salmon rocks

Yeerung River estuary

A quiet beach

Warm afternoon light on the dunes

The weekend went much too quickly, but all in all it was a very enjoyable holiday! Next time I hope we have more than a weekend.