Grampians

Melbourne and the Great Ocean Road in pouring rain .. I did not really feel like stopping and getting soaking wet, so I continue driving until I came to the next mountainous destination: the Grampians in Victoria. The Grampians are situated about 250 km northwest of Melbourne. There are sandstone cliffs, swamps, waterfalls, eucalypt forst, lakes and dry sclerophyll forest. It seems to be a bit touristic in some places, in others you can walk in peace ..

At the bush camping site there are some kangeroos again - and wallabies (smaller version of kangeroos). Mother wallaby is quite used to campers and does not mind me coming close and take some photos. Her child (do you call them puppies - or miniwallabies??) is rather afraid of me and tries to convince its mother to run away by making strange noices. Mother does not care, so miniwallaby just sits there and stares at me from a "safe" distance.

Spooked mini wallaby

mother wallaby left having lunch, mini wallaby right

Beautifully flowering Melaleuca bushes grow everywhere there ..
And what I also found:

A wet site with Utricularia dichotoma, a terrestical small bladderwort (carnivorous plant ) :D

Plants have the nice characteristic that they just grow somewhere and usually don't run away. Bird photography is more difficult - at least when not having a decent tele lens amont the equipment. Actually I thought of bringing one. The problem is just that in some point of that trip I'll get rid of my nice rental car and will be backpacking, trekking. Actually I already have too much / heavy equipment for a typical trekking vacation .. let's see if I come up with some solutions then.

Back to bird photography ..

My first encounter with an emu in an olive tree plantation prooves to be rather unsatisfactory in a photographic sense of view: When it sees me it runs like hell.

Evening atmosphere at a bush camping site in the Grampians (video, youtube): eveningvideo