Melbourne Adventures

 This is a one-stop shop to access the story of our trip to Portland, Dunkeld and Ballarat. Day 1 to Portland Day 2 Historic Buildings and Sams Loop walk Day 3  Cape Nelson, Harbour and Gannets Day 4 Mainly Cape Bridgewater Days 5 and 6 Dunkeld and Ballarat (lots of photos so likely to take a while to load if hotspotting)

 We went to Williamstown this morning mainly hunting Great Crested Grebes, being promised lots of them by our friend Elke.  They delivered for her, and us!  But first a map of our route at Jawbone, and some other species. There were lots of Pied Cormorants perched on rocks etc. 3 Male Blue-billed Ducks were nice to see. So were some Pied Stilts and Royal Spoonbills. We saw one Great Crested Grebe pretty much as soon as we looked at the liquid.  Then another 11 as we crossed a small bridge on to a wee island.  (I have missed one from this snap.) A couple of portraits. Overall I wrote down 35 species here.   We then moved on to Point Gellibrand where a few more birds were seen.  More Pied Cormorants and lots of Crested Terns were the feature species. This is the Ball Tower at Point Gellibrand.  The history of this site i s extremely intersting and we must make sure we are there when the ball drops! Our final call was at the very pleasant Williamstown Botanic Gardens ,  These palms are

When we visited the Southern Grampians a couple of years ago we were most impressed by the wildflower display near Dunkeld.  As it is (sort of) on an alternate route back from Portland we decided to give it another go.  Before leaving Portland we did a Harbour walk.  A very old-fashioned PO Box. As well as the shell work in the park we came across this mosaic armchair ... ... including the names of the kids who made it. The aim of this was to tick a Kelp Gull, which we managed: see arrows. A couple of snaps of our accommodation. En route to Dunkeld we passed through Heywood where the water tower caught our eye.  This is part of the Silo Art trail, even though it isn't a silo.  A plaque nearby explains about the interpretation of the work.  I hope you can read this.  While some of the text is rather touchy feelie it covers the landscape elements (eg Budj Bim, lava flow) better than the silo art page . Heading North  on the Henty Highway we got some early views of the Grampians, with