The Far East    

Away from the rat-race with bird watching, beaches, boats, botanical bounty, bliss…add fishing, numerous walks and short drives, a shutter-bug’s paradise and you have marvellous Mallacoota.

We stayed in a charmingly eccentric adobe mudbrick construction built on four levels with superb views over the Inlet to Goodwin Sands and Gabo Island.  It featured inset glass bottles, intricate mosaics and an outdoor setting studded with mirror shards.  The garden housed bush rats, skinks and a wide variety of birdlife, including Whipbirds and Lyrebirds, merging into bushland and walking tracks on the property.

Friends of Mallacoota and Parks Victoria have excellent maps and notes of self-guided walks around the town and Inlet.  We tried the Heathland and Casuarina walks to experience two different habitats.  These revealed a treasure trove of plants, many familiar, but some new gems were revealed:  exquisitely flowering grasses, Rush Fringe-lily, Many-flowered Mat-rush, Lilac Lily (with the great name Schelhammera undulata), Leafy Purple-flag, Branching Grass-lily, Wombat Berry, orchids, guineaflowers, peas, Erect Violet, Heath Milkwort and Hairy Fan-flower.  Bird sightings included Mistletoe Bird, Sacred Kingfisher and a face-to-face encounter with a Southern Boobook Owl.

Short drives took us to orchid-studded Bastion Point and Betka River, before a more adventurous trip to Shipwreck Creek with a winding walk to the beach where waves crashed, soaring Wedgetails broke the solitude and the sea was like watered taffeta.

Dawn and dusk were special times, inspiring the camera enthusiasts.  One such was a silver dawn, rippling silver sequins on the sea, the fringing mountains pearl grey, charcoal banks of clouds apricot-edged.  As the sun rose, the whole was suffused with a gold mist, blinding in the east.  The sky became incandescent gold with a layer of eggshell blue.

A highlight was the half-hour boat ride to Gabo Island, to be greeted by a pair of White-bellied Sea-eagles.  We revelled in the vegetation as we crossed the island to the pink granite light-house, beautifully constructed.  Below it was a bevy of golden-brown hussies – fur seals – lolling on the rocks.  Whales then appeared, after which we visited a monument and cemetery and noted the rookeries of Little Penguins and Shearwaters.

Further expeditions to Genoa Peak and the Gipsy Point Cemetery rounded out our week of field studies, encapsulated in an epitaph:  He loved birds and green places and the wind on the heath and saw the brightness of the skirts of God.

Terri Allen