My Road Trip Diary 2024: Upper Murray River and Gippsland, Victoria Australia

We arrived at West Cape jetty, Cape Conran, right before sunset, as I'd hoped - it was really magical, exploring the lichen covered rocks.

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I even caught a bird in flight, a White-bellied Sea Eagle - my lens was not meant for this!
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Part 2 of the previous post. I finally remembered to use the Panasonic Image App to use my phone remotely to take a selfie.
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Nearby at the Yeerung River estuary. Observing an effect on my camera screen while swiftly changing from portrait to landscape orientation, I switched to a slow shutter speed for an interesting outcome (photo 3 is that version of photo 4).

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We journeyed towards the NSW border, planning to head up to Bega, but bad weather forecasts turned us back at Mallacoota. Here's some things we saw while there.

1. Pop-top houseboat on its trailer in a caravan park site - apparently the water levels were too low to launch it.

2. A very short vintage caravan, and cool old signage.

3. Classic Peugeot hot hatch.

4. Red phone booth driveway decor.

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The Mitchell River Silt Jetties was an unexpected highlight. Thrusting out into Lake King for some 8 kilometres, they are the second-longest silt jetties in the world. I'd never heard of such a thing before: these landforms were caused by the way silt was deposited from the mouth of the river, creating two very narrow, parallel strips of land at times only wide enough for our vehicle. The river between is navigable by water craft. The unpaved road along the southern jetty is only one-lane wide, but takes you almost to the very end.

Best captured with a done, which I don't have!

The third photo shows pelicans perched at the end of the north jetty, which had no road along it.

Read more at Wikipedia:

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The star on this screenshot shows the furthermost point of the silt jetties.

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At Nicholson the old railway trestle bridge is now part of the trail trail. We saw some enormous feral rabbits from it (photo 3).

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More boats, and a rope swing, along the Nicholson River.

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This was also the place where I noticed (hard not to, really) pelicans hulking on light poles. Good view, I guess.

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The highlight of our trip happened when we switched tack, heading into the hills to Walhalla. We'd wanted to go there for so long, but it really wasn't the aim on this trip; we ended up camping four nights before heading home.

Walhalla was the site of alluvial gold, then soon after a seam was discovered, so investors threw a lot of money at it. A railway was built to remove the treasure, and Walhalla did not become an ornately-decorated town as all the wealth went elsewhere.

Apparently the entire faces of the valley's slopes were eventually devoid of timber, felled to continue mining operations. Now, nature has reclaimed its rightful place, and it had a cool rainforest feel.

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From the Mountaineer Brass Band rotunda, there's a steep walk up a staircase to the old tramway, now a walking trail, which provides different perspectives of the village.

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An impressive amount of wealth passed through the Walhalla branch of the Bank of Victoria. The vault is all that remains.

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This was my first time seeing the colourful wild King Parrots up close, although I didn't get to see them as close as other, more touristy types did. There are around a dozen in the next photo - a shop owner feeds them seed at the footpath.

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One of Walhalla's best known attractions is the cricket ground, which was not able to be established near the town due to the severely steep, rocky terrain; locals put their mining skills to a new use, and carved out an oval from the top of the mountain, about a kilometre from town. A steep walking track up to it was claimed to provide the home team an advantage over visiting teams. We did not walk up there to feel the pain firsthand!

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However, there's a drivable track to the oval, which takes about as long to drive to as the shorter climb takes on foot. Four-wheel or All-wheel drive recommended.

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Another of Walhalla's famed features is one I had read about decades ago, and was keen to see: the cemetery. I was not disjointed.

The site, which can only be reached on foot during daylight hours (unless you're on grave business), is very steep, and not easily navigated. It's particularly precarious as many graves are surrounded by ornate fences with pointed tips - you'd not want to lose your footing, you might be interred next!

Many of the graves are walled along the side facing the valley, due to the extreme slope. Around 1,100 people have been buried here, right up tp modern times.

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The Satin Bowerbird makes a nuisance of itself, scratching in gardens, and looking for food scraps at the campground. I'd not encountered them before, and didn't know what these relatively drab birds were, but eventually figured out they were females and juveniles. We did see a couple of the iridescent blue-black males around town, but not near enough to get a photo.

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Walhalla Railway is one of the top tourist attractions, and is maintained and staffed by volunteers. We weren't inclined to ride, opting instead to watch the train arrive at Walhalla Station.

Hearing it coming around the final bend, I was surprised there was no steam billowing from the red engine - I hadn't done my research! It didn't occurr to me it would be diesel.

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We watched as the engine was unhitched, continued to the end of the track, then reversed into position behind the cars for its next journey.

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Twenty minutes down the valley is its only other station at Thompson River.

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What's amazing about the railway is that, "By 1991, the former railway had been completely eclipsed by trees, undergrowth and landslides – only the ruinous remains of the bridges were still in place." A lot of work went into restoring this piece of history. Read more about it here: https://www.walhallarail.com.au/history/
 
Here's my final post, at last! A couple of random snaps around Walhalla.

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I was overjoyed to see my very first in-the-wild lyrebird right behind our camp: it was scratching in the undergrowth, and I had time to get my camera and grab a shot and some video before some idiot (who shall not be named) slammed the car door, sending it shooting off into the brush. It's not a good shot, but at least I got one!

This young Australian magpie was begging for food, but I didn't give in.

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Thanks for coming on this adventure with me 😊

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