Day 43 - Wednesday at Wye

Wednesday has brought more sunshine to our hilltop retreat. Some day I’ll try to get up before it, but until then, there’s the blog.

It was my turn to pick the destinations and I really only wanted to see one thing.

The Otway Fly. This is an excellent link.

It’s a dead straight forward place to get to, about 33 kms, but I thought it might be good to go via the forest rather than the coast road.
We had visited Grey River Road with Nicola and Trevor on Sunday but had only gone a short way up the road. We, as explorers, would see where the road led to.

We’d only gone a little way ourselves when I spotted a royal blue mound at the side of the road. On getting nearer the mound moved and there before us was an elderly man, weather beaten and hair and beard as white as snow, under an Alan Mailley hat!

We decided to stop to enquire after his health and discovered he was probably fitter than the two of us together.

He described himself as a Swag Man.

Years ago, these guys were quite a common sight. Not today however. He was a joy to listen to. At first we were sceptical about just about all he said. But, after listening to his description of all things rural, and his genuine knowledge of the world about him we were enthralled.
It would have been brilliant to get him and Seymour McCleave together. They have very similar outlooks on life I think.
He told us he was going to the picnic ground / car park about five kms up the road and we gave him a lift. Everything that drew his attention on the very slow drive up the gravel road, gave him recollections from a very very interesting past.

We spent some time with him at the car park. We’d packed a picnic to eat here, but because he declined our invitation to share our food we couldn’t very well have it there.
We drove off, leaving him with his very heavy back pack lying in the grass. I really wanted to take a picture of him, and tell Rachel it was Santa on holiday. Because of the tremendous respect we felt he deserved I kept the camera in the car.

We still have the memory of our meeting the swag man in the bush.

After driving through bush and scrub for a while it turned into lush verdant rain forest.

We had the Otway Fly in Tomtom and we headed for the sky.

The “Fly” if you’ve followed the link is a great day out.

We climbed up into the tower, which seemed to be swaying, but it was the trees. We were up over a hundred feet in the tree canopy. Below us, tree ferns ten or more feet across look like wee flowers.

Back down from another breathing difficulty induced climb we tried the “Cantilever”.

This is a structure that stretches into the trees with no real visible means of support, except for two cables. When you’re at the very end looking down to the forest floor, the movement of fellow travellers approaching scares the bejasis out of you. All you want is to get to somewhere a bit steadier.

Driving back along the coast we pondered on how tiring doing nothing is. It would be an early day today. We went back to HQ and fed the parrots and discovered some other fascinating and brilliantly coloured birds.

There’s nothing wrong with sitting about at night even on holiday. The thing about doing that here is every time you get settled, something better is happening out side in the trees. I wonder if I’m turning into a peeping tom? Still, if it’s only the feathered birds I watch…………..