ajft

I decided to get away from people for a while and go for a walk up along the Erskine river, the town and the beach are packed cheek-to-cheek with New Year's revellers or people here for the Falls Festival. Ten minutes along the banks in the cool and I couldn't remember whether the sign had said 3 hours return o r 3 hours one way... I guessed I could walk up to the falls and then catch the shuttle bus back (I'd seen the bus in town advertising free shuttle between the Erskine Falls car-park and the Tourist Information centre).

I reached the falls at five o'clock to discover that not only did the signs say it was three hours one way, but that the shuttle bus only ran from 8 to 5 and that they had to be booked from the Tourist Information centre, in person, back in town! Debated for a while about trying to hitch a lift with the festival traffic, but with the idiot P-plate drivers and amount of drinking decided to take the easier option and hike back the way I'd come. Another hour and a half and two tired legs and I was back where I'd started. Seems I'd taken three hours twenty minutes for two three hour walks!

Plenty of birdlife to be seen and heard, in a strange coincidence, a brilliant yellow male, and drab grey female, Golden Whistler (Pachycephala pectoralis) shot out of the scrub and perched for a few seconds only a metre from me — odd since I don't think I've ever seen them previously, and on Boxing day at Kathy and Cec's house we saw a Rufous Whistler (Pachycephala rufiventris) for the first time. White, Black and Gang Gang cockatoos screeched about in the forest overhead, while numerous small hard-to-identify brown birds flitted around.

Sadly, also met two feral cats in the forest; the first was a tiny scrawny thing, the second much larger and darker, not quite up to the purported size of the Otway Panther, but equally devastating to the local wildlife.