Back to Melbourne

While waiting for the Eden Killer Whale Museum to open at 9:15, we wandered a bit around Eden.  It was a cloudy, cool day, so no spectacular sun rises.  We went to a lookout point, drove by the wharf and strolled in the neighborhood of the museum.

The museum turned out to be another very good one--it is the only museum in the Southern Hemisphere to have a complete killer whale skeleton.  Unlike most of the other local museums we have visited, this one was started in 1939 and not as a part of some 1980's effort to save a historical building or create a tourist attraction.  The motivation for this museum was, in fact, the death of a particular Orca named Old Tom in 1930, whose skeleton is the one hanging in the museum.
Old Tom and his ancestors had been assisting the local, shore-based whalers in Twofold Bay since the mid-1800's by "hearding" the prey whale (sperm whale, right whale, etc.) into the bay and alerting the whalers by flop-tailing.  They would further assist by slowing the whale after harpooning by grabbing the harpoon rope in their mouths, prevent the harpooned whale form sounding (diving) and even covering the blow hole to expedite death.  As a reward, the whalers let the Orcas eat the lips and tongue before dragging in the carcass for processing.  This phenomenon apparently only happened in the Twofold Bay area.  At Old Tom's death, the Orcas failed to return and the whaling industry died (although it was dying in any case).  A couple years after the last whale was taken, Old Tom's body was found floating in the Bay and some locals then came up with the idea of a museum dedicated to this unusual inter-species partnership akin to human-canine partnerships.
There are other stories about the positive relationship between humans and the Orcas at the museum, but some of them have an air of legend or myth.  One other interesting aspect is that according to Aboriginal stories, the Orcas had been helping humans long before the arrival of Europeans.  Because the Aboriginals did not hunt whales in boats, the Orcas would simply drive whales onto the beach where they could be harvested.  The story goes that is was some of the Aboriginal crew members for the early European whalers who established the relationships with the Orcas.  In any case, it is a remarkable story.
The museum also has some of the expected items of local history:  WW I, WW II, early economic activity (logging, fishing, whaling, farming), maritime history, etc.  All in all, well worth the two hours that we spent there.

The skeleton of "Old Tom."  Many of whales in the group were known by name as the whalers could recognize the dorsal fins.  Apparently no humans were ever hurt by the Orcas and there are many stories of the Orcas helping/protecting whalers who had been knocked into the sea.

This is a piece of equipment used for rescues from disabled ships.  It's on the same principle as a harpoon gun, but it only to get a rope to the other ship.

We next headed south on the Princes Hwy again, shortly passed back into Victoria and stopped in a speck of a town called Genoa for lunch.  Expecting only to eat, we spent another 30-45 min walking/driving about, reading historical markers, inspecting the old wooden truss bridge, etc.  I truly believe that you can pick any spot, no matter how insignificant, and find and interesting story or two.

The truss bridge at Genoa.  (Apologies to the non-engineers, but this brought back so many memories of statics class that I had to include it.)  The deck is obviously not in great shape but the cool thing is that the truss compression elements are of wood and the tension elements are steel rods.

The afternoon was spent driving, with two stops for short walks.  The first, directly adjacent to the highway, was a 1-km walk through the McKenzie Rain Forest.  It was a bit different because the rain forest fragment was very small and most of the walk was  through the transition zone from eucalyptus forest to rain forest.

One of the suspension bridges at the McKenzie Rain Forest.  Typically lush with lots of ferns...

The second walk  at Cabbage Tree Creek Flora Reserve was also short, but it required about 14 km on some rather rough gravel/sand/dirt roads.  There we walked through the southern-most population of cabbage tree palms.  We were able to make Lakes Entrance (another great Australian town name), situated about a four-hour drive from Melbourne.

The cabbage palm trees among the other trees.  They are the palms with the more or less spherically shaped tops.

The cabbage palms were 8 km off of a paved road but still had three well-maintained picnic tables.  Aussies seem to be passionate about picnics and grilling.  Most parks have electric or propane grills available and I think every motel has a barbecue available for guests.

Lakes Entrance, in spite of an intriguing name, is primarily a typical ocean resort town, and a very linear one stretched along the waterfront.  It didn't have much to interest us (although we didn't look too hard) save a dry place to sleep and a few interesting wooden sculptures dedicated to WW I soldiers (WW I seems to hold a particular dear place in the hearts of Australians) which Susan and I surveyed on a morning walk.

Wodd carving of a WW I nurse as a memorial in Lakes Entrance.

From Lakes Entrance, we backtracked a bit to Buchan Caves Reserve, with a brief stop to help a woman and her four kids change a flat tire along the way.  She was trying to use a scissors jack by crawling  under the car and lifting the axle directly, so I moved the jack to the lift pad on the rocker panel so no one had to crawl under the car to lift it.  There are three different caves (actually only one cave, but three tours for different parts of it) and we opted for the early tour through Royal Cave.  The cave was quite beautiful with a wide array of formations and the ranger leading the tour did a good job of explaining the processes that led to the different formations.  Its scale was rather small (the entire tour was only 500 m), especially when compared with something like Carlsbad Caverns, but we were much closer to the features than in a large cave which was quite appealing.  The cave was only discovered in 1910 and opened for tours in 1913, so it's a fairly recent attraction.

Thin stalactite that resembles a shark fin.

Shallow pool with stalactites/stalagmites.

Susan in front of a flow formation.  My photos don't really do the colors justice--hear are some better imagegs from the web.

Leaving Buchan a bit before noon, we drove towards the coast where the goal was to do some walking/beach combing at 90 mile beach--a beach that is literally 90 miles of continuous sand on the southern coast of Victoria (apparently they decided to not change the name to 144 km beach).  On the way we stopped at Bairnsdale for a chilly picnic (high of only about 17 C today) and happened upon a beautiful Catholic Church right along the highway.

Exterior of St. Mary's Shurch in Bairnsdale.  It is a very large, ornate church for a rural town of under 15,000 residents.

The interior was painted by a local, out-of-work painter during the depression.

Unfortunately the weather was a bit rainy and cloudy, so views views were somewhat restricted, but we lucked out with no rain while on the beach and even had a ray or two of sun.  It was truly remarkable standing on a beautiful sand beach and seeing nothing but sand and surf for as far as the eye can see (in both directions) and not a soul in sight (a slight fib--there were two fishermen at our first stop who left before we did--otherwise, nobody).  There was also an array of shells and sponges on the beach for Susan to collect.  How they come home is the next question...

View eastward along 90-mile beach.

View from the same spot westward.  The two fishermen were the only other people we saw on the beach.

Susan struggling to hold the shells she had collected plus a sponge.  It was a bit windy and as the Aussies would say, a bit "'fresh."  (cool)

In places, there was an abundance of shells, sponges, etc.

We made a few more km towards Melbourne before stopping for the evening in Rosedale, a small town of maybe 1000.  Even this town has something interesting to offer in the form of a statue commemorating the winning of the 1915 Melbourne Cup by Patrobas, the only horse from Gippsland (the region in Victoria where we are) to ever win the cup.  (I've discussed two other famous horses in earlier posts and also discussed the national importance of the Melbourne Cup--as witnessed by this horse still being the local hero more than 100 years after its victory.)

Statue commemorating Patrobas's victory in the 1915 Melbourne Cup.  Australians seem to love horses.

We left Rosedale for our last day on the road in Australia, planning to arrive in Melbourne after dinner.  On the way, we wanted to divert a bit up into the mountains and first headed for the small gold mining town of Walhalla.  From a brief description in on of our many brochures, we thought we would only spend a little time there and then head up to higher elevations where they even have ski resorts.  As it turned out, Walhalla was a very interesting place and we spent the entire day there.  While it is almost a ghost town (about 20 permanent residents or so), had lost a lot of historic building to fire over the years and was very much a tourist town, it was still quite appealing.  Many tourist towns focus on boutiques, coffee shops, B&B's and souvenirs, but, while Walhalla certainly had some of those, it focused more on its own history.  The  two major activities for us were a short ride on a narrow-gauge railway through the narrow canyon approach and a tour in one of the last active gold mines in town.  We also wandered to read many of the historical signs posted about town and stopped in at the three museums in town.  Since I am traveling with Eberts, we also made a stop at the local cemetery  to speculate about thee fate of various people of whom we have absolutely no solid information.

A look down the valley in Walhalla.  In it heyday, this town had over 4000 people, as compared with a couple of dozen today.  Some of the building are original, but many are reproductions since many have been lost to fire over the years.

A view of the "CBD."  Things are mostly along this single street, but there are a couple of side streets that go up to higher levels.

The old fire station, now a museum, straddles the creek because there was no other flat space in the valley at the time of construction.  Somewhat amazingly, this building has survived all the fires and floods.

A view of the locomotive with one of many bridges ahead.  The railroad did not reach Walhalla until 1910 and by 1915, the mines had closed, so it basically arrived just in time for the town to die.  It's been resurrected as a tourist train during the past 20 years.

View down the valley from the train.  One of the motivations for the train was to carry wood into the town.  The mines used so much wood for boilers and mine bracing that the hills were completely denuded for 20 km in every direction.  In 1910, this view would have been of bare hills.

Moving the locomotive to the front at the turn-around point.

One of the hoist cars used to take rock out and lower men into the mine.  This mine goes into the hill over 200 m, has 8.5 km of tunnels and  31 levels, some to a depth of 900 m.  This mine produced 13.7 tonnes of gold over a 50-year life. 

Susan helping our guide demonstrate the technique to drilling with a hammer.  This is quite similar to the lead mining operations in Platteville in the early to mid 1800's.

View of the Walhalla cemetery.  Note the large stumps of pine trees.  These were planted in the 1880's and most have been removed.  I think pall bearers must be young, strong and nimble to get the coffins to the upper-level grave sites.

The afternoon in Walhalla was drizzly so we didn't get to visit the cricket ground, created by removing about three meters of rock (by hand!) from the top of a mountain to create a flat space for sports.  (The story goes that the local team always had the advantage because of the long walk up to the pitch on top of a grueling  trip up to Walhalla.)  We arrived back safe in Melbourne about 7:45 pm after going through some heavy periods of rain.  All in all, we only have had three days so far that were impacted in any way by rain.  A few days without packing will be welcome, but on Thursday it will be on to New Zealand.