The Clown and Poker: Prom country

Sunday, January 15, 2017

Prom country

We rented a car for a week.

Monday, we drove to the Healesville Sanctuary, to make sure my parents saw as many Australian animals as possible during their visit. They would never see a platypus otherwise, and probably not a koala. They're too expensive to house in zoos outside of Australia. My dad wasn't too excited about going to a zoo. But I think he liked it: the bird show, the echidnas, the kangaroos.

Echidas: surprisingly cute spiny anteaters and egg-laying mammals.

Tuesday, we drove to Philip Island, and saw the pelicans at San Remo, and the mud crabs in the mangroves on Conservation Hill.

Australian pelicans are big birds.

From there, we drove to Foster, Victoria, to a farm house where we had booked a four night stay. The view from the porch of the farm was pretty spectacular: rolling hills stretching off to the ocean. Well, technically the hills stretch off to the Bass Strait, which separates Victoria from Tasmania, and not the ocean.

The blue hills in the background form Wilsons Promontory.

Foster is only a half hour drive from Wilsons Promontory National Park, typically called Wilsons Prom, or the Prom. We were in Prom Country. On our first morning of waking up in Prom Country, we drove south to the National Park entrance, and then further and further south, to where the road ended at a place called Tidal River. We were going to see the national park!

Norman beach, near the Tidal River campground.

Visiting Wilsons Prom during the summer school holidays is like visiting Yellowstone during the summer school holidays. There is a lot of traffic, very little parking, and the campgrounds have been booked two years in advance. But for all that, we found some very nice walks through woods and hills and river.