February 4 – Nelson and Glenelg National Park, Portland and Port Fairy

We are starting our trip east along the ocean but first we had to head inland a bit to go around a couple of big lakes.  We stopped at Brown Bay (wasn’t much compared to the bays in the west)…

and visited the Glenelg National Park where we took a nature walk.  There were so many ant hills it looked like a bad case of mole invading a lawn (without the lawn).

The walk took us to a viewpoint overlooking the Glenlg River. 

The tiny town of Nelson was home of the Glenelg Estuary, very pretty…

with lots of black swans. 

We drove through a section that had been burned in the recent forest fires.  They even had signs up with traffic advisories.

We had lunch in the town of Portland and then did some exploring.  There was a massive operation at the harbor with giant piles of woodchips waiting to be loaded on ships for China.

There was a long mural on the wall separating the water front from the main street.

The downtown had a lot of old Victorian buildings with lots of steel/iron “lace”.  Love the Aussie take on Victorian Architecture.

This is the rocket shed, used to store the mechanism that fired lines to boats, to rescue people from the stranded boats.

We also drove a bit out of town to visit the Treloar Gardens.  Treloar is a major producer of roses for Australia and they have a wonderful display garden. 

On the way back into town we stopped at strawberry stand where we had fresh strawberry sundaes. 

The views at Crags Coastal Reserve were pretty great.

We also drove through Port Fairy…again, lots of old Victorian homes and buildings.

We are in Warrnambool for the next two nights.  The hotel is right on an estuary and our room (with balcony) has a great view.  

It is a fully equipped apartment so we were able to get caught up on laundry.

We had a pretty decent sunset tonight.  Right outside of our window.