Tower Reserve/Grampains

Tuesday, April 23, 2013

The rocky part is part of the rim of the volcano.

Emus in the field

A couple of wallabies

The koala we saw.

We decided to go to the Tower Reserve outside of Warnambool. I had read that we could see koalas in the wild. That appealed to us. The other interesting thing is the reserve was a volcano 30,000 years ago. We entered on the rim and went down into the crater. As we entered, we saw emus roaming in the fields. We stopped at the first car park and walked to the peak. We saw some kangaroos and wallabies as we were going up and back down. It was a good view. We could really see the rim of the volcano. We headed to the visitor center next. We still hadn't seen any koalas, so we took another path out into the old volcano. We wandered around for a while with no luck. As we were coming back to the car park, we saw people looking up at the trees. There was a koala. The kids were complaining that we walked for 45 minutes for no reason. That's the way it goes.

There are kangaroos and emus in the tall grass.

A kangaroo

emu

You can see how close you can get to a wild kangaroo.

Our next stop on our road trip is Grampians National Park. We are staying in Halls Gap for two nights. We stopped at the information/cultural center as we came into town. It was interesting to learn about the Aboriginal People from the area, and we received information on what sections of the park we should visit tomorrow. The ranger also recommended a short walk that started at the information center. As we walked up a hill and entered a field, we could see emus and kangaroos. There were quite a few of them. As we continued on the path, we came across even more. It just seems strange to see so many and that they don't run away.  You can really tell that there are no predators down here.

This is a plastic dinner plate.

Sydney checking the moth out.

As we went to our hotel, we saw quite a few kangaroos in a field. This was just the tip of the iceberg. When we went for dinner at dusk, every field we passed had 30+ kangaroo, and they were all over the town.  It was crazy! We also some red deer.  We are having fun spotting all the wildlife.  When we got back to our cabin, there was a huge month by our door.  Dagan wanted no part of it, but Sydney couldn't wait to pick it up.

 We have a big bushing walking day planned for tomorrow, so after a game of cards we headed to bed.