Near Warburton, Victoria

So we begin here blogging the saga of our drive across (most of) Australia. We have had some trouble with getting wifi. Our host somehow thought that 5.5GB of data/month would be more than enough (well, it is for him!) and in the first two days we burned through half of that. So we are limited to using our phones at the house (we have have unlimited slow data there) and seek out wifi at cafes.

We are currently sitting at a cafe on the street facing the Indian Ocean. Really, it is just across the street and the foreshore park. But before we got to the place of shorts, T-shirts, and exotic oceans, we started in the goldfields of Victoria. Our first stop was at Warburton. Near there we found the Donna Buang Forest Gallery.



This is an elevated walkway through a section of the forest to give a feel for the nature of ancient forests. What a place!

The trees and ferns are huge and magnificent.

In a few places, we could see all the way to the tops of the trees and the small opening in the sky above.

The Yarra River that reaches the sea in Melbourne, starts here as a small stream that loudly seeks the lower reaches of the mountain.

Some of the trees are quite old and, apparently, dead. We saw lots of fallen trees on the ground as the cycle of life repeats for this old ones.

The bits left standing, living or dead are covered in moss. This is a rain forest or at least a rainy forest. Lots of dripping all around us. No birds at the moment.

The rush of the water makes for a pleasant roar to fill the silence of the eternal forest.

Where you may ask, does this water come from? We drove on up the Donna Buang Mountain in an attempt to reach the top. We were thwarted by the seasonal closing of the final leg at the top, but even in the upper reaches we could get to, we found snow. The mountain reaches about 1250 meters and were at about 1000m or so when I took this photo. It was cold but not frigid.

As we blog across the southern stretches of the country, we will see a dizzying array of landscapes and climes. Then, one day, on the southern coast, the temperature jumps up above 20C and we break out the shorts. Until then it says plenty cool enough for long pants.

Bear with me while I finish getting photos processed and sorted. I can't guarantee a post every day as I usually do. I'm about 1/3 way through the process of the of the 800+ photos taken on the drive and more are coming in nearly every day. The lack of handy wifi makes this slower as well.

Hang with me and I'll get journey all out there for you to enjoy.