Otways National Park

In my opinion, it wouldn't be a proper long Easter weekend without a decent trip away to some remote wilderness and luckily in Australia and New Zealand one is never far away. Our friend's Anna and Damian booked out their share car for Friday and Saturday - www.goget.com.au, and we packed our bags and headed off to a B&B in a little country town called Forrest in the Otways National Park in Southern Victoria. Our hosts for two days were Sheryll and Brad, a couple who had moved to Forrest from Apollo Bay a few years earlier and setup this great big house as a B&B. It turned out that Sheryll and Brad were animal lovers, particulary birds, a list of some of the animals they have includes - two yellow crested cockatoos, one cockatiel, four million goldfish (inside and out) and most curiously of all a fox - yes that's right I'm not kidding they actually have a real live wild fox as a pet. Apparently, they found him sick as a baby and decided to rear him in captivity. Not everyone's cup of tea but hey each to their own right. Well, we arrived reasonably late on Thursday evening and were pretty tired after working all day and then a two hour drive. So we made some small talk for a bit then hit the hay ready to wake up energised for a couple of days in the country.

Okay now for a little background - The Otways is a beautiful mostly gum forest national park and unlike most of Australia they actually get some decent annual rain, usually around 2 metres which is impressive even by New Zealand standards. All that water has to go somewhere, so there are plentiful rivers, streams and waterfalls throughout the 13,000 hectare park. On Thursday Brad had mentioned that every morning he feeds the local parrot population. This is quite a novelty for me because in NZ, apart from the odd pesky Kea you don't tend to see too many parrots on a daily basis. The locals in this region included Galahs, Cockatoos and my personal favourite the King parrot. There were heaps of parrots having a feed on the porch and Brad suggested that I feed them by hand which was pretty awesome. For wild birds they were exceptionally tame, although the males seemed somewhat more relaxed around people than the more jumpy females. Having a parrot feed from your hand is pretty cool, and I reckon it was worth the trip just for that (see the photos below).

Okay my typing hand grows weary, but there is so much more to say. On Saturday we went for a couple of bushwalks - including the novelty of the treetop fly walk through the rainforest. This is a system of suspended steel platforms that take you up into the forest canopy, including a dizzying 47 metre high tower. We also managed to take in lunch near Triplett falls which although were a little low on water, still seemed reasonably impressive. And to top off a truly awesome day, we headed over to the coast to take in the sights of the Twelve Apostles - some absolutely amazing rocky monoliths standing in the ocean next to huge weather beaten cliffs.

On Sunday before heading home, we took a guided Platypus tour on Lake Elizabeth. We managed to spot about three of the elusive mammals and the trip on the canoe in the lake was a truly great experience as some of the photos below show.

How great are long weekends? We have had a great time already and there are still two days to go.