Trestle Bridge and the Koala

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The fairy cave

Google seems to be best friend when we can get online. Great for finding local area attractions and things to see.
I found an interesting travel spot about 40-50kms out of town, called Buchan, (pronounced Bucken) and aren't the people there happy its not called Fuchan.
There is a set of Limestone caves there that can be toured through and sounds very interesting. Anything that the girls have never done before i think is a winner.

Buchan countryside

We head off for a 1pm tour but as we grab MacDonald's for a quick lunch on the way, they run way overtime by 12 minutes and we have to rush to get there. We miss the 1 pm main tour through a cave called the Royal cave. We have to book the next cave but what a great thing to have happen because the next cave is called the 'fairy cave'. Now because we have time up our sleeve we can take some great little photos of our girls under some awesome lighting conditions. Their are kangaroos sleeping here and there, so a couple of photos were taken and the girls were hopping around like Skippy. The most gorgeous colours are at Buchan at this time of year. I could easily spend a day photographing the streams and township etc...

30 feet away

20 feet away

Colourful trees of Buchan

The Beginning of our walk to the caves

Georgeous Lily

Beautiful Mia

Cool Tree

 Onward to the cave and we wait for our guide "Heather' to arrive we have a quick chat with fellow cave goers on the cool steps at the entrance. All different travellers from around the world.

This Fairy cave is 500 meters long and the first part of the entry is straight down a very steep set of stairs which are all dripping wet and dark. The cave was discovered in 1906 and is as it was when found. I new i would be photographing dark areas so i definatley took the canon in for its low light capability. I shot the following photos on 5000 ISO for you photographers out there. That is quite extreme settings for those of you that are not photographers. And hand held at 25th sec.
Down we go as the tour guide tells us the story that has been going on for millions of years underground. drip drip drip the limestone travels down the stalactites. It takes about 100years to form only a 10 cm formation.
Not to mention the ocean floor shells that where stuck to the ceiling in a 10 meter high chasm. Now that's a long time in the making. Not just 7days. Sorry I'm an atheist.

Stalactites

Curtain Formation

Cage for protection

 The girls loved the fairy cave and all the time while travelling through the twinkles and sparkles from the Strategically placed lighting made the girls stay on the lookout for a fairy or 2.
the tour took 45minutes and was worth every cent of a mere $30. What a beautiful place to visit. 10 out of 10

Off home for a rest.. the girls are pooped after walking half a kilometer through the underground wonderland.
A little video of our day for you.

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Lakes Entrance

Arrival at lakes entrance - My Sexy Wife!

Work catch up today. 

Heather takes the girls to an antique coffee shop for a while while i can call some enquiries and do some office work.
In the afternoon we took the girls for a quick bike ride across the footbridge which is huge and expands across the Lake to the main beach.
Plenty of black swans in this area and they come right up to you for a feed and obviously some photos.

Lakes Entrance foot bridge- Race you to the other side Lily!

Oh No! more children coming...

Ahh! cookie and hot chocolate

A storm was brewing and gave me an awsome backdrop for the girls to have a photo with their bikes before we head back to the van.

A massive electrical storm keeps us indoors for the evening and wets the entire anex floor. Oh well rain had to come at some stage of the holiday..

If it keeps up tomorrow we will take the girls to the indoor swimming aquatic centre for heated pool swimming...
The people who run the van park couldn't be beter hosts and we feel we've known them for years. a chat soon turns into a half hour talk on life.. very nice indeed.

Lessons on the beginnings of life

Stormy backdrop

90 Mile beach

Mackenzie Rainforest Walk & Orbost geese

Move to Lakes Entrance

A quick pack up today and make our way out of Mallacoota to steer towards Lakes Entrance. Our trips now are being planned for quicker shorter distances as the girls don't cope well with being in the car any longer than 2 hours at a time. The perfect trip planned with 2 stops on the way. Are we there yet?  Are we there yet? is all we seem to hear and today we hear it within the first 10 kilometers. The movie players are a good investment for these types of days. 'Despicable Me' was their first movie followed by 'The cat in the hat.'
We arrive at Cann river and stop for coffee and to grab a map from the Information centre. 10 minute break is enough because our next stop is only 20mins further at MacKenzie Rainforest Boardwalk.  We prep the girls for a 1 kilometer walk through a very wet but lovely rainforest area. Please see video.

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After this we pop back into the car for another drive to 'Orbost'. This should put us about 55kms from Lakes Entrance and definately within reach. As we approach Orbost it looks like a one horse town in the middle of nowhere. Slowly driving down the main street we see 2 geese walking along the road. All traffic is giving way to them but then we find a sign that says Give way to geese.

Check the video Below. Apologies for the creaking sound during any raw video footage but any movement from me will produce these pops and crack noises. I will try my best to eliminate as time goes by

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These 2 geese are just walking along together window shopping at the seemingly empty run down shop windows... Amazing to see and quite funny for the girls. 

Orbost road sign

St James church

There is a parking area at the end of town for caravans and that's where we stop for lunch. Lunch today is pancakes for the girls and mummy and daddy are eating the fish we caught from the day before. a good size Tailor from our boating expedition and daddy caught a pretty nice little flathead the night before while the family were sleeping.

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After lunch some photos of the girls playing at the park and a couple of mummy at the derelict Butter factory. Nice one Mummy!

all aboard for the final push to Lakes Entrance.

Afternoon arrival.
We are absolutely astounded at the tiny sizes of the caravan parks here... it looks like owners have converted their back yards to make a van park. How they expect us to get in there is pretty tough. Although we found (thank to a local gent that guides us) a great little park that has enough space for us due to its larger size grounds and we book into our first en suite stay. En suite stay parks have a little bathroom at the side of your van for showers etc and toilet. Very handy and a nice change from our squishy little bathroom. Fish and Chips for dinner tonight and we are done... Tomorrow we are expecting rain so we might plan to do some indoor stuff with the girls. Some phone calls must be done as well so Daddy will be kept busy doing that..

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Time to catch a fish!

This day is the day to catch a fish with my girls. Just across from us we chat to Charlie the hire boat owner. this man works in Mallacoota for 6 months and then goes to live in thailand for the other 6 months. 'what a life'
The rates are cheap and so for $60 we have a 2 hour run in a little motor boat. The distance we need to cover to catch our fish is too far for our little inflatable to handle so its just better off to hire the boat here.

  Charlie tells us where to go for some taylor and thats just what we go for. In the first 10 minutes we hook up a couple of littlies and one good size form My Rod. Then we let the girls real in their forst ever fish on their own fishing rods that poppy bought fort them at Christmas. The video camera was running out of battery but we managed to capture it all.. See the video...

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We head back in with our little catch and intend to go for a drive to the Double Creek rainforest boardwalk just up the road. However the rain sets in and a quick storm puts and end to those plans. This day sees our first rain since we started our trip and i guess 1 storm out of 17 days travel is pretty good.

Good photo Mia

can't fish without popcorn

lily ready go reel one in

Watch closely girls

Mum in the sun!

More south travel tomorrow will hopefully put us at Lakes Entrance area.




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Arrival at Mallacoota

The eastern most point of Victoria is 1.5 hours away. We stop for a picture at the border crossing ( see below)  and then after we turn off the main road to head into Mallacoota  itself it is about 23kms of extremely winding roads which slows us down considerably, but after a while we make it.

Robertson's hit Victoria



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Mallacoota Fishing Village

Jetty

 Mallacoota foreshore caravan park is based on the ocean inlet and has van positioned right along the lakes edge. Fishing is the main activity here and there are pelicans everywhere.

Pelican on a pole

 The ocean smell is pretty cool and definately is better than the rotting sheep bodies around the shearing quarters that where at Aunty Beths place at Cooma. After a quick set up we pop up to the local shop ( all 10 of them) to stock up on some supplies for the next 2 days. We sit down to a lovely lamb chop BBQ and settle in. 

This is our first un-powered site stay and Heather is a bit unsure. Vodaphone does not exist all around here so NO phones or internet what so ever. We will survive i'm sure.

Some Area Photos

Feeding the Seagulls

Fake smile Mia!

View south through the trees

5 photo stitch

5 second exposure.. Very late in the evening