A Breathtaking Somber Visit

Since we still had the hired car and Anthony on holiday, we wanted to continue taking good use of the car so we piled back in to venture inland and away from the water. We opted to visit Kinglake National Park.

Kinglake National Park is located in Kinglake, Victoria, Australia, the closest national park from Melbourne, about 65 km (~40 miles) north east. You may recall in early 2009, those in the States heard about some really bad bush fires in Australia. Well, this was a big part of it. February 7, 2009 is known as Black Saturday here. About 400 individual fires were recorded on that day, burning 1.1 million acres resulting in173 confirmed deaths, 414 injuries, and over 3,500 houses and structures burned. The hardest hit was the Kinglake area in which 98% of the national forest was burned including all the park lodgings and essentially decimated an entire town.

NASA image of the Killmore East-Murrindindi Complex South Fire, Victoria, Australia, taken on 2009 Feb 14. "This image from the Advanced Spaceborne Thermal Emission and Reflection Radiometer (ASTER) on NASA’s Terra satellite on February 14 shows the large scale of the bushfire damage to the Kinglake area (left) as well as a close-up of the burned area northeast of Yan Yean Reservoir (right), one of the reservoirs that supplies Melbourne’s water.

7 February 2009 MODIS Aquabushfires burning in Victoria satellite image of smoke plumes from bushfire burnings in Australia.

We drove towards Kinglake National Park knowing the severity and impact of the fires but nothing could prepare you for seeing first hand the charred remains of trees, growing in density as we moved further in. Driving upward on winding, circling, and very narrow roads, despite my growing nausea from a bit of motion sickness in the car, the impact of seeing the aftermath of the fires, even almost a year later, was not diminished one bit. As we climbed higher, as far as the eye could see, we saw nothing but black tree trunks. I can imagine if we saw this place before the fires, it would have been breathtaking with the valleys of thick trees. But now, it was sad and you could not but feel the weight of the loss of the land and it's inhabitants, big and small.

Here are some pictures that I attempted to take as we were circling up the mountain in the car. Because the path was so narrow, there was no place for us to stop to take pictures so they had to be taken while on the move (again, while I was nauseous).

The hills off in the distant are all black tree trunks. There are some fresh growth, as you can see, but many are still black and bare.

Most of the house/structure sites look similar to this. Many are still in temporary housing while the main lodging is being built. However, there was also quite a bit of For Sale signs where people are choosing to move rather than rebuild.

Sharp drop off to our right as we climb up this winding path up the mountain. Remember, we drive on the left here.

 

Our rental car. So as you'll know, Anthony was chagrined in not being able to take it off road here.

We found a dirt road and pulled off to the side for a walk. The road looked a little too uneven for a regular sedan to travel down so we opted to hoof it. Most of the park is still closed whether due to construction/renovation, unsafe, or high fire hazard (since it is the summer here).

Found myself a walking stick!

Hope in a sea of darkness......

Appreciate this picture, it took us 5 attempts before we got most of the words on the sign.

And of course, I have to mention that Anthony wants to go back so he can ride the trails on his bike. I told him he shouldn't ride the road here since it's narrow with tons of blind curves. But the likelihood that he'll heed my warning.....none!

Oh and take that last picture from the previous post of Anthony and Sete sleeping and imagine it's here because the exact same thing happened when we got home.

- julie

Hi Ho! Hi Ho! It's Off To The Beach We Go!

With a hired car available to us, we wanted to take advantage of it. Having been relegated to being stuck at home for the last couple weekends without a car, we took the opportunity to get out of the city area. Anthony had made a quick trip in the winter to the renown Ocean Grove area so we loaded up the dogs, packed a few finger food snacks, our cozzies (swimsuits), and headed out!


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About an hour into our drive and getting closer to Ocean Grove, Anthony recollected that there was mention of a dog beach between Point Lonsdale and Queenscliff, which is just to the east of Ocean Grove. So instead of following the signs to Ocean Grove, which probably would have been packed with people on holiday, we headed towards Queenscliff.

We first pulled into this parking lot off a beach but the signs showed that dogs were not allowed between the hours of 10 AM to 8 PM.

We asked around a little, got some vague directions as to where it might be so we piled back into the car and made another attempt, hoping we'd find it before Anthony reached his breaking point on patience. We pulled into a dirt parking lot hoping that it was for the dog beach and headed down the path. Seeing some wet dogs coming down the opposite direction gave us hope!

Eureka! We found Narrows Beach, the dog friendly beach!

We stuck along the rocks to the right of the actual beach since the tide was out. You can see in the below picture that the rocks are rather large.

You may ask yourself, "why is Senna on the leash?" Well, being our vocal, crazy, teenager, she has the tendency to run away from sheer excitement at seeing something. So we thought it was best we kept her on the leash.

The water was clear, pretty, and cold but bearable to swim in, as Anthony will try out later! The sand was smooth too. Makes you want to just sand there and wiggle your toes.

It's funny to watch them hop over the waves!

Sete romping!

Anthony tricking the kids further in!

Run for the hills!!

Sete was the only one brave enough to venture back out after Anthony tricking them earlier.

Only about 15 minutes after we got there and literally a minute after Anthony just mentioned we should be careful if the tide comes in......a much bigger wave comes rolling in! I happen to be filming at the time but being jolted by a cold wave slapping my butt, I didn't catch all of it. The wave came in so quick and so much higher that it swept up Sete and Chili and flung them towards the rock then actually pulled them back out a bit before Anthony caught up to them and quickly picking them up and tucking each one under his arms.

I was tethered to Senna by the leash in one hand and filming in the other so as soon as I realized what happened, I made a mad dash towards the rocks because Senna was in a running panic and I didn't want her to lose her footing if she ended up getting caught up by the end of the leash. There was no worries of Senna being slammed into the rocks or swept out because she made a beeline for the rocks and scaled it like a mountain goat! It took several urgent coaxings from me to get her down from the rocks so that we could run to the beach and away from the rocks before the next big wave came.

The little exposed head and shoulder is Anthony swimming out to test the water.

The scene shortly, and I mean very shortly, when we got back home.

Now the hired car.....well, let's just say it looks like 3 wet, sandy, and shedding dogs had a party in the back seat.

- julie

Let It Snow! Let It Snow! Let It Snow!

Okay, so not really. In fact it was a rather nice day, so nice and warm that we headed out to the beach! After a lazy morning for Anthony to enjoy not having to get up to go to work, we headed out in the early afternoon to a wide open field that we checked out before in the Altona Costal Park area. We wanted to let the kids run and burn off some energy.

Once we get there and let the kids run around a bit, Anthony spots the beach area and we were both surprised as to how expansive the beach area was considering the last time we came the water was much closer inland. So we headed out that direction and walk out to the beach to find that it was low tide thereby exposing acres of white soft sand with sections of very shallow water. Although warm that day, it was much cooler near the water where the wind was whipping plus I didn't have sandals on unlike Anthony. So he takes the kids to the waters edge, about 300 meters out, while I stayed on the last bit of dry sand before the shallow pools became a barrierr.

The kids LOVED it! They ran like they were nuts across soft sand and shallow pools. We chatted up an elderly gentlemen and he mentioned that it's like this everyday during low tide. Being it was Christmas, there was only 4 or 5 other dogs out there but he says there's usually quite a few dogs and people out there.

The water was so clear and shallow enough in many of the areas for our low clearance dogs to walk or briefly dog paddle over plus the deeper areas become a natural barrier to preventing Senna from running too far away.

While we still had the hired car, we agree, we'll be back out here!

After heading back, later than expected, I started Christmas dinner which ultimately meant a very late dinner, but we had a Christmas dinner nonetheless. Being just for the two of us...we'll be having leftovers for a while.

- julie