This is a picture from when my wife and I road on the Puffing Billy Railway outside of Melbourne, Australia.
Tag Archive for 'Victoria'
Last year’s “Black Saturday” bushfires in Australia were the near equivalent to the Aussies as Hurricane Katrina was to the US. And just like with New Orleans’ Ray Nagin, the Black Saturday fires were made worse by governmental incompetence:
CHRISTINE Nixon was hired as our police chief not because she was a great leader. She was hired first of all because of her politics – and with the added advantage of her gender – and on Black Saturday it showed. Showed disastrously.
As she was hired, so she failed, in an emblematic indictment of these Days of Seeming, not Doing.
To be brutally honest, she seems to have panicked. When this burning state needed saving through action, not group hugs, she realised she was useless. Unneeded.
And so she fled, first to her office, where she hid for 90 minutes doing unrelated paperwork, and then, minutes after being warned many people would die, to a restaurant.
“I had to eat!” she’s protested.
So as Kinglake burned, she went to dinner. And by the time she pushed away her plate, Marysville was in ashes, too, and most of Black Saturday’s 173 victims were dead.. [Andrew Bolt]
You can read more about this police chief’s incompetence at the link, but the bushfires destroyed a number of communities I am very familiar with since I lived near these small towns. It just amazes me that while the citizens of these small towns were being burned alive the state’s police chief decided to go out to eat with friends and call it a day afterwards. As incompetent as Mayor Nagin was when Hurricane Katrina hit at least he didn’t just call it a day and go home, which makes Nixon’s incompetence that much worse.
I often get asked what our living conditions were like when my wife and I called Australia home. It was actually quite good and we enjoyed every day we lived there. We lived in very rural part of the Australian state of Victoria just north of Melbourne:
We lived in a older house, but it was more than nice enough for my wife and I:
The house was quite large with four bedrooms and a large living room and kitchen:
The front yard of the house wasn’t very big, but was nicely landscaped:
I really liked these flowers that grew in our front yard as well:
We didn’t have much grass in the front of the house, but it was enough to attract the local wildlife for a bite to eat:
These large birds are called emus and they can be found all over Australia, from the rain forests to the deepest Outback and obviously in my front yard. Emus are the world’s second largest bird behind only Africa’s ostriches, but I do think they should have the honor for being the world’s ugliest birds though. The adult emus may not win any beauty contests, but their babies are cute though:
The emus are also very curious animals which was evident when one time I heard my wife screaming outside. I opened up the door to see an emu trying to get inside the car with her:
Another time I was watching TV in my living room when I heard the screen door open and I looked behind me to see an emu looking into my home. The emu had opened up the screen door with his beak. The emus are usually harmless, but if one got mad at you they could hurt you with their hard beaks so it is best to treat them as the wild animals that they are and give them their space.
Our front yard may have been relatively small, but our backyard was absolutely huge:
So big in fact that the local kangaroos just loved hanging out in our backyard:
This is an Eastern Grey Kangaroo, which can get up to 6 feet tall and 145 pounds size. This kangaroo that used to hang out in my backyard was darn near that size:
Here is a smaller kangaroo that used to hang out in my backyard as well and he spent most of the day sprawled out like this sleeping, he was actually quite funny to watch at times:
The good thing about the kangaroos is that they kept the grass down, which meant I didn’t have to mow the grass:
If you look at my backyard in the above picture you can see a number of tree branches thrown around my backyard. These branches are from the massive gum tree that grew in the backyard. For whatever reason the cockatoos used to break the branches off with their beaks and literally throw at me when I would work in the backyard:
The cockatoos are large and extremely intelligent birds that love to entertain themselves sometimes at my expense by doing things like throwing branches at me:
The cockatoos that used to hang out in my backyard are known as Sulphur Crested Cockatoos due to the yellow crest they display on their heads:
As you can see I had a whole flock of these chicken size birds that loved hanging out in my backyard:
The cockatoos weren’t the only birds hanging out at our home as a variety of colorful birds call Australia home and they all seemed to end up in our yard:
I also had some colorful flowers growing in my backyard as well:
Then finally in my backyard we also got to often enjoy colorful sunrises:
As well as sunsets:
We obviously had a great time enjoying the scenery and wildlife around our home, which unfortuately our current home just can’t compare.
This picture was taken from the backyard of my house in the Australian state of Victoria.
This is one of the best shots I have seen of the 12 Apostles along Victoria’s Great Ocean Road.
The ferocious waves that crash into Victoria’s southwestern coast have continued to carve away at one of Australia’s most recognized landmarks:
THE Twelve Apostles are now the Seven Apostles. Neil Sander, a tour operator noticed that one of the remaining Apostles had fallen at just after 5pm yesterday.
And with the Grand Final today Mr Sander believes it could be an omen.
“The Geelong surf coast beats a Saint again,” he said.
“I went ‘oh my god’.”
He arrived on the scene with a tour group of nine people and instantly noticed the missing apostle.
But by the time the group had arrived there wasn’t much to see, according to Mr Sander.
“Just a little bit of rock sticking out. The water was murky too, almost an army green mixed with a creamy colour.”
The apostle was one of those nearest the Loch Ard Gorge and Port Campbell and just before the remains of the Island Arch formation. [Herald-Sun]
If you haven’t already I highly recommend reading my prior posting of my visit to beautiful Port Campbell National Park, which is where the 12 Apostles are located. There you can see great pictures like the one below of this beautiful coastline:
Here is a video from the 1,805 meter summit of Australia’s Mt. Buller:
You can read more about my visit to Mt. Buller here.
A place a have gone to many times that is a day trip away from Melbourne and yet feels like a world away is to the lovely Mt. Buller:
Mt. Buller is about a three hour drive from Melbourne and the closest major ski resort to the city. The mountain is about a 45 minute drive from the small, but historic city of Mansfield that lies on the plain at the base of the mountain:
Mansfield and the Mt. Buller area is well known in Australia for its stockmen heritage that keep The Man from Snowy River legend alive:
Besides it stockmen heritage Mt. Buller is also famous for its wintry weather that provides some pretty good skiing for a mountain so close to Melbourne. Here is a picture from the top of Mt. Buller during the ski season just last year:
This year the mountain received so much snow that the ski resort opened the earliest in its history. In fact it is not uncommon for Mt. Buller to receive a dusting of snow even in the middle of the summer on Christmas Day:
Mt. Buller is the tallest mountain in the area, taller than both the nearby Mt. Stirling and The Bluff, but it is easily the most striking peak in the region with its 1,805 meter summit rising abruptly up from the plains that lies to the west. The best thing about Mt. Buller is that anyone can access the mountain due to the well maintained paved road that goes to the ski resort on the top of the mountain:
During the ride of the winding road to the summit of Mt. Buller it was good to see how much the bushland around Mt. Buller has recovered from the 2006 bushfires which devastated the mountain and even threatened the ski resort:
Something that is quite humorous when driving up the mountain is to see the animal warning signs with kangaroos and wombats wearing skis:
And yes that is an American license plate on my Jeep you see. It is possible to get an import license to ship your American vehicle to Australia for a limited amount of time like I did.
Besides the animal warning signs there is a gnome crossing sign as well:
And even a gnome home built into this gum tree:
No one has never accused Aussies of not having a sense of humor, that’s for sure. After about a 30 minutes of driving up the winding and twisting road we got to the top of the mountain wear the ski resort is located. Unlike American ski resorts that are located at the bottom of mountains, in Australia the ski resorts for the most part have to be located at the top of the mountain. The Thredbo Ski Resort in the Snowy Mountains is the only resort I can think of that is actually located at the bottom of a mountain in Australia.
Anyway I drove through the resort and pulled into the parking lot where the trail head to the summit of Mt. Buller is located:
As you can see it is only a 4.1 kilometer round trip hike to the summit of Mt. Buller so it is a pretty easy stroll with some great views of the surrounding high country such as Mt. Buffalo in the far off distance to the north:
The trail begins with only a slight ascent up the mountain and eventually gets high enough to where my wife and I could make out the 1,749 meter (5,738 ft) summit of Mt. Stirling:
We also had a great view overlooking the Mt. Buller Ski Resort:
Mt . Buller was first skied in the 1920′s which back then there was no ski lifts to take skiers up the mountain. It wasn’t until the 1950′s that a first generation lift system was built to help take skiers to the top of the mountain. Today there are ski lifts that access every corner of the mountain.
Along the way up the trail it passes right by a one million gallon water basin that was constructed to provide water for the resort back in 1965:
Between snowmaking and water usage at the village the Mt. Buller Ski Resort uses 400 million liters of water a year. The precipitation that falls on the mountain every year is not enough to meet that need thus there is a pumping station further down the mountain that pumps water up the mountain from Boggy Creek.
Here is a view of the summit of Mt. Buller from the reservoir:
On the top of Mt. Buller like other high country mountains in Victoria, grass lands is abundant because the higher altitude is generally too cold for trees to take root. This abundant grassland is what made the Victorian high country such a prime cattle grazing spot in the summer months for the region’s stockmen. Though the top Mt. Buller is mostly grass that doesn’t mean a few hardy gum trees weren’t able to take root at this high altitude:
These gum trees known as Snow Gums can only be found in Australia and have been found to grow at altitudes as high as 1,800 meters. Past the snow gums the trail then starts to make a steep ascent up the mountain where we could really make out the rocky features of the mountain:
There are stairs that help make the ascent easier and at the very top is a fire look out that has an incredible view of hundreds of square miles of bush land in the region:
It is believed that the first westerner to climb Mt. Buller was the botanist Ferdinand Von Mueller in 1853. He climbed the mountain as part of his expedition to record flora in the region. At the time much of the flora had never been recorded by western scientists. Some readers may remember that Von Mueller was also responsible for planting the variety of species of plants in the Town Hall Gardens of the then gold mining boom town of Beechworth just north of Mt. Buller.
From the summit of the mountain easily the most striking mountain that can be seen is the rugged slopes of the 1,725 meter high plateau known simply as The Bluff:
The next most prominent mountain would be Mt. Howitt, which rises to the East of Mt. Buller:
Off towards the south we both could make out the 1,482 meter (4,862 ft) summit of Lake Mountain that was devastated in early 2009 by the massive bushfires that also destroyed the beautiful town of Marysville at the base of the mountain:
Here is the view towards the north with Mt. Buffalo once again off in the distance:
Also towards north Mt. Cobbler can be seen. Here is a closer look at this scenic mountain that I need to get around to climbing some day:
Finally here is the view looking towards the west which is dominated by grazing land and a few rolling hills which the rugged peaks of Mt. Buller slopes down towards:
There is actually a trail from the summit to where you hike down to the bottom of the mountain from here, but I just didn’t have the time to do so on this day, but I would love to do it some day in the future. Mt. Buller is just one of those mountains I just never get tired of visiting and I’m sure most other people probably feel that way to once they get a chance to experience this great mountain.
From the Mt. Buller area there are a number of four wheel drive trails I have taken my Jeep on that really provides some stunning views of the beautiful Victorian Alps. I have taken the four wheel drive road from Mt. Buller that takes visitor to the beautiful campground at Sheepyard Flat along Howqua Creek. Further down this road from the campground is the trail head to the hike up the massive plateau known as The Bluff that is absolutely an excellent day out hiking. However by continuing passed The Bluff the four wheel drive road actually becomes a circuit around the imposing Mt. Buller:
All along this road there are a variety of views of the scenic Mt. Buller which begins with views of this great mountain from the South:
Mt. Buller rises above the tree tops in the distance.
A closer look at the 1,707 meter (5600 ft) summit of Mt. Buller.
Also along the road are a number of other great views of the rugged Victorian Alps:
Along one of the spurs off the main four wheel drive road to Mt. Stirling is a road that descends steeply into a valley where there is a short trial to the Bindaree Falls:
The bush here was quite overgrown when I visited and the trail in need of some definite maintenance:
However, these conditions shouldn’t be too surprising considering how remote this area is. When I got to the falls there really wasn’t much to see as there was just a trickle of water coming down the side of the rock outcropping:
There is a small natural cave here so I could definitely see at one time this place being used as a camp site for the Aborigines whenever they foraged deep into the Victorian Alps.
If you haven’t noticed from the prior pictures, these mountains were hit with a severe bushfire back in 2006, but the forest continues to grow and recover with signs of life continuing to sprout out everywhere:
As the road goes further past The Bluff it actually loops back around Mt. Stirling which is famous for its Man From Snowy River fame.
The 1,749 meter (5,738 ft) summit of Mt. Stirling in the distance.
As Mt. Stirling got closer and closer as we continued down the road, The Bluff behind us became less and less imposing:
The Bluff can be seen in the distance.
As I approached the slopes of Mt. Stirling the bushland was once again greatly burned due to the bushfires from two years prior, but still clearly the vegetation was making a come back.
The drive along the slopes of Mt. Stirling just has some spectacular scenery to include one of the most rugged hikes in the Victorian Alps which is to Mt. Howitt and the hiking across the Cross Cut Saw:
Out in the very far northern distance I could even make out Mt. Buffalo:
Another prominent peak that can be seen is Mt. Cobbler:
Here is a closer look at the summit of this scenic, but isolated mountain deep in the Victorian Alps:
Along the road I came to the turn off to the Mt. Stirling summit and the road was sealed due to some work they were doing restoring the area so I didn’t have a chance to get to the top of the mountain, and instead would just have to make do with a picture of its summit from a far:
By now my wife and I had completely looped around Mt. Buller and were on the North side of the mountain which provided some great views of this peak:
From the North side I could even make out the Mt. Buller Ski Village on top the mountain. During the summer time it is hard to believe this place gets enough snow during the winter to support skiing, but it does:
All in all if you have a four wheel drive vehicle or even a vehicle which just a little ground clearance this trip around the mountain is a good day out. Just make sure you bring some food and water in case you get stuck and definitely bring a good map to ensure you don’t get lost. It is important to use common sense when driving or hiking in the Australian high country.
Here is a short 360 degree video from the 1,986 meter summit of the tallest mountain in the Australian state of Victoria, Mt. Bogong:
You can read about my bushwalking trip to the summit of Mt. Bogong here.
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