Sunday, March 15, 2020

Australia Day 4 - Last Day in Victoria

We had wind and rain much of the night but it had let up by the time we met around 8AM for a final walk around the Bimbi grounds.  This time, we walked down the main road which was a new area for us.  It didn't take long to find a wet koala:

After a night of rain...

We also found a few more new birds.

Red Wattlebird:
Red Wattlebird

White-eared Honeyeater:
White-eared Honeyeater

We found a bunch more koalas on this walk:

Still adorable...

Koala close-up

They can sleep anywhere

Some still hadn't woken up.

Balancing act

Another Koala

After the walk, we still had some time before we had to check out so we decided to do some road cruising looking for echidna.  However, after an hour or so with no luck we headed back to Bimbi to pack up.

We checked out of Bimbi Park and headed to Apollo Bay for one last meal there.  It was here that I tried my first scallop pie and...

I LOVED it!  The US just hasn't adopted the whole meat pie thing but I loved all of the ones we had on the trip.

After lunch, we stopped for ice cream again but this time it was Tiny Dots.  It's something we had never heard of but was quite good. I guess it originated in the US but since we don't get out much the craze must have passed us by.

After lunch, we made a stop at Kennett River to look for more koala because you can NEVER see too many koala.  We drove up Grey River Rd this time and went farther up that we had walked previously.  Tim parked the car and we walked up the road looking for more koala.  As I was walking up ahead of everyone else I heard some chewing which I thought was from something on the ground.  It look me a minute or two to pinpoint the origin of the sound which turned out to be a koala on a pretty bare tree.  It was eating at first then started to climb.  It was the most photogenic koala of the trip.




That was the last of 7 more koalas we saw on this walk which added up to 37 total koalas seen.  We were pretty careful to count only ones we saw in new areas so as not to have any repeat sightings. But, even if we are off by a few that is still an impressive number.

Our last stop was back at You Yangs Regional Park.  Since we were passing by why not stop again and look for echidna here, right?  So, that is what we did.  However, we struck out on echidna there again.  But, we did see our last "swampy" of the trip:
Last

We also got good looks at some Galahs:
Galah

With that, Tim drove us back to the airport where they needed to catch a flight home and we needed to check into our airport hotel for the night.  We got to the motel around 6:30PM and said some temporary goodbyes since we would meet up again soon.

We really enjoyed our 4 days in Victoria.  There is some great wildlife and scenery there and I think we saw a lot in the little time that we spent there.  It was definitely a great way to start the trip.

Plus, it was great traveling with Tim and Andrea again.  We enjoyed their company a lot and Tim was in top form for this portion of the trip.  Since I have some extra writing room for today, here are a few "Tim-isms" I thought I would share:

- First off, he casually mentioned early on that the word "echidna" meant "bad fart" in the aboriginal language.  We should have known better but we had a whole conversation around this and he did convince us.

- Later, he said that the word "kangaroo" meant "wet fart" and that's when we realized that he was messing with us the whole time.  If he hadn't pushed his luck, we might have repeated the meaning of "echidna" to others during the trip so in hindsight I guess we were lucky he pushed the envelope.

- We spent a lot of time looking for echidna and as an incentive Tim said that the first one to find one gets a big hug.  Later, after we hadn't found one, he "sweetened" the reward by saying the first one to find two gets a big hug...from behind.

- Tim would also whisper some street signs that we regularly saw along the roads.  So, every now and then I would hear "soft edges" or "concealed entrances" whispered to my right.  It was funny every time I heard it.

- If Tim had a mantra it would be "keep your eyes peeled".  He constantly said this as we drove around and would check on each of us occasionally to be sure our eyes were actually peeled.

Ah, good times 😁

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