You know, I think life is crazy. So many horrors going on in the world. Then there’s our rat race – the money’s good, but work seems all-consuming and so people’s identities get wrapped up in their line of work. We’re constantly bombarded with messages to buy or join in on things we don’t need or like. Closer to home for me, well, work is not easy plus I’m learning to cope with anxiety around rockclimbing and the importance of enjoying it – everyone will have their personal problems.
So thank God there’s an Otways. Parks Victoria and beyondblue should get together and have a little dance. In reasonable road-trip distance from Adelaide there are tall tree cool temperate forests that enliven the senses, especially in spring.
Thursday seemed to be dog people day. They were well behaved while I hiked
alongside Lake Elizabeth and to Stevensons Falls, enjoying my solitude and watching
birds and butterflies, loving the damp green scents of the forest. Meanwhile Dan was getting to know the dedicated
mountain bike trails. While I stared at
the falls, what looked like swarms of tiny flies lit by the sun turned out to
be fine water droplets carried a good 30-or-so metres from the falls. When they hit my face I had that rain-shower
forest scent all over again.
On Wednesday Dan and I visited the Otway Fly, the longest and
highest treetop suspended walk of its kind, they say. The Spiral Tower is 47 metres and the trees
were a bit higher, and I learned that the Mountain Ash eucalypt can grow to 100
metres. We felt the tower sway, and
later on walkway I stared amazed at a mighty trunk and could’ve sworn the whole
thing swayed in the wind gusts. Also
some Otway Fly time was well worth the moments of looking between my feet at
the forest floor, or just draping my arms and chin over the railing, wondering
about it all.
These forests have to be the most tree-fern-dense I’ve ever walked among. Some sections are officially rainforests, and while the old-growth logging was people’s livelihoods before the plantation thing started, I’m so glad that what remains in this area is extensive and protected. Having said that, I’m excited to learn the Wilderness Society has a campaign for the proposed Great Forest National Park, north-east of Melbourne. Back in the Otways, Melba Gully will blow your mind (if you’re ga-ga about wild places as I am). It has among the highest levels of rainfall in Victoria at over 2,000mm a year. One day I’m going to overnight nearby, because you can go back after dark and check out the glow worms on the forest floor. Anyway, strolling among the Myrtle Beech giants, ferns, fungi and epiphytes, mossy rocks and babbling streams, lifted the cares of the world off my shoulders. Triplet Falls and Little Aire Walks also played their part in the forest love and the de-stressing – the cascades of the Triplet Falls are enormous! Thank you very much.
Melba Gully
Awesome Otway Fly treetop walk
Tree admiration, Little Aire Walk
Nearby lovable places
Finally I got to Tower Hill Reserve, near Warrnambool. This reserve was reclaimed for revegetation in the 1950s, with an old 1855 painting of the Hill to guide the project. It’s a ‘nested maar’ extinct volcano landscape of lakes and conical hills. Driving up to it from the highway, it was a nondescript hill, but drive over the ridge and you enter this verdant setting with lakes and land bridges leading visitors into the heart of the reserve. Dan and I did the peak climb, then the Journey to the Last Volcano loop, both around half an hour in duration. The crater pool was dark, deep and lush, not that you can hike down to it. The high ground reveals ridges of craters, lakes and the sea beyond, in one vista. Near the visitor centre we gave way to emus and their chicks – the centre is an impressive stone circular building and run by the Worn Gundidj Aboriginal Cooperative.
Tower Hill Reserve
The Twelve Apostles are awesome. These coastal limestone stacks are iconic and
up-there on a national tourism scale.
They make me ask if they are one of the Seven Natural Wonders of the World. They’re not, but the Great Barrier Reef is,
so that’s OK. I’m proud of my Graduate
Diploma of Australian Tourism from Monash University and in a parallel universe
I would have been an ecotourism manager, but that’s another story. At the Twelve Apostles, I was just happy to
see wide paths and viewing platforms in different places for people from all
walks of life and fitness levels to enjoy.
People love it.
Dan and I went to Loch Ard Gorge too. Geez it was bloody hot for October – the opposite of what I experienced six months earlier! The story of the Loch Ard Gorge shipwreck in 1878 was terrifying. Some visitors swam but despite my passion for nature, swimming was off the menu for me. The water was too cold, and officially not recommended probably because of the undertows, so instead I relished pockets of shade near the caves, watching birds fly in and out of the sea walls, which was ten times gentler.
I could tell you about Natimuk and my very dear friends there, some great rockclimbing at Arapiles, and then about my shiny new Subaru dramatically breaking down on the homeward journey, near Murray Bridge (then getting towed home). But I’ll leave those parts out, because I am frankly biased about the forests, coastlines and crater hills. Life is less crazy for our delightful natural landscapes.
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License.
