Today was a day with not a lot planned initially, but a wonderful day of adventuring and exploring Portland!
We headed down to the Visitor Information Centre first thing this morning to see if there were some interesting things we could do today. The guide there was really helpful with a few ideas, and we ended up setting off on Walk Portland’s Pride – a decent walk around the town, seeing a really wide variety of things. The walk started out looking at some of the first buildings built when European’s arrived (and we learnt that Portland was the first place in Victoria that Europeans landed) – and during this part of the walk, it was good to see acknowledgement that this first arrival of Europeans brought death and destruction to the Gunditjmara people, who had lived here for tens of thousands of years before their world was invaded.
The walk then headed on to Fawthrop Lagoon, a beautiful estuary teeming with wildlife and plants that sits just to the side of town. We enjoyed watching black swans, and a bunch of different ducks and other birds just swimming and flying around. But the highlight was seeing 3 different koalas in the gum trees alongside the lagoon! They were just happily sitting high up in their trees, having a snooze. Eventually, we watched one of them gradually move up a branch to get to some more leaves. It was an amazing experience and sight!
The walk then took us back into the centre of Portland, looking at some more historic and interesting buildings. As we finished up, we decided hot chip sandwiches for lunch would be perfect, and so we grabbed some chips and headed back up the road for lunch – we’re staying quite close, so Eliza, Alexander and Debbie actually walked home while Daniel and I waited for the chips.
After a bit of down time hanging at home, we decided to take a drive out to Cape Bridgewater. While we were here in Portland, we’d hoped to be able to take a tour to see the seal colony at Cape Bridgewater – but the tours unfortunately finished up a week or two before we arrived! We knew there was still a few things in the Cape Bridgewater worth seeing, so we jumped in the car for the 15 minute trip across.
Our first stop was the Petrified Forest – a collection of limestone “tubes” that have been created over millions of years. It was cool… but, a bit underwhelming? I feel a bit awful saying that, because overall it’s pretty amazing how they’re created. But there just wasn’t much to it. (Also, as much as we’ve loved watching all the wind farms in our travels the last few days, they slightly ruin the view of the Petrified Forest…)
Walking around the whole area of the Petrified Forest, seeing the sparse nature of the volcanic landscape, and yet again, watching water crashing against the edge of the cliffs. As we wandered across to the Blowholes Lookout, we spent so much time there, continuing to just watch waves crashing. You’d think we’d have seen enough of it by now, but the screams of excitement from the kids would say otherwise.
If we couldn’t go on a seal tour, we wanted to head on a bit of a walk to see if we could at least spot some seals. Unfortunately, the viewing platform is a good 2 hour return walk, and very hilly – so we weren’t really prepared to attempt that with the kids. We’d had a tip from the guide at the Visitor Information Centre that sometimes the seals hang around on the wharf and boat shed where the seal tours leave from, which is only about 15 minutes along the track. So that’s where we headed. We did see a seal off in the distance, but none just magically hanging about on the rocks near the wharf. Equally, the fact is was very late afternoon by now, and the sun was on its way down probably didn’t help. We still enjoyed wandering around the rocks for a little while before heading back.
And that was the day! A slightly unplanned day that was really enjoyable. We’ve definitely got things planned for most days throughout this holiday – but after today’s adventures, I definitely feel ok with not having everything completely planned out and just rolling into the day and seeing what unfolds.
