Wyperfeld

The light was fading and there was still some distance to go – and I wasn’t sure which direction to actually go in. An information board outside the Rainbow service station gave me details of the park but no idea which way to go to actually get there. I went inside and asked the woman behind the counter.

“Straight up the road that way” she said, pointing north.

“And how far is it?” I asked.

She looked kind of confused and gave a vague answer of “might be twenty minutes, perhaps an hour …” leaving me wondering if she had ever been out of Rainbow.

About forty minutes later, and after taking a few dubious turns at intersections on the basis that “it is probably this way”, we arrived at the camping area. With the aid of the headlights we set up the tents, fixed a new mantle on the gas lamp for some better light and cooked dinner. A cloudless sky allowed a million stars to shine on us and guaranteed a cold, frosty night.

The morning came and I lay in my tent in my warm sleeping bag listening to the birds calling. Should take some pics, I thought, so I dressed, grabbed my camera and headed out for some early morning photos. The tent door crackled as the night’s layer of frost broke and I made my way into the feeble sunshine.  It was bitter, somewhere just below zero I reckoned. A cup of tea might help, but it seemed too cold for the metho burner to light. But I was up and so took some photos, which, unfortunately, meant taking my hands out of my pockets. 

Ice on my son's tent - brrr

Frost on my tent

The sun rose a bit more and the trees started dripping as the temperature rose above freezing. The metho stove started working and I soon had a hot cuppa in hand.

The plan for the day was a shortish walk – about 8km – through some mallee scrub to a dry lake bed. We set off and strolled over the dunes as the sun started making things a bit warmer. Our jackets were soon in the backpack. The track took in a bit of a nature trail with “lift the lid” educational signs. The first message was about how spiders like to live under the lids; the second one had a spider. (How the rangers do it, I’ll never know.) I don’t like educational signs; I find them obtrusive and hate the feeling that someone is trying to control my walk and make me do what they want – you will learn!

One of the amazing things about Wyperfeld was how quiet it was. There was no traffic noise, no other people noise, no wind in the trees, just birdsong. One of my reason for travelling to Wyperfeld was that it was mentioned in an on-line forum as one of Victoria’s most remote places, and it certainly had that feel about it. Wandering over a dune from the camping area and there was this feeling that there was no-one else around. Hiking around the walks and the view was uninterrupted Mallee. The only intrusion was these stupid signs telling me that there might be emus about. There were emus about – they are quite large and I noticed them without the help of the stupid sign.

Emus - hard not to notice them really

The extensive views. Quite an amazing landscape

Apart from the emus there was quite a bit of other bird life and I managed to take about two hundred photos in two days. About six are reasonable. (My high school photography teacher used to give us a roll of 36 and tell us that if we had more than two good shots we weren’t being critical enough so I got into the habit of throwing away photos early.) The wonderful night sky photos that are all the rage these days are still beyond me, which is disappointing as the stars were magnificent every night.

The green parrots were the most frustrating, never staying still for a photo. Until, on our last morning, midway through packing the tents, I noticed one sitting in a hollow not far away. I slowly made my way forward, taking photos as I went in case it flew off, until I was close enough to get something that might prove half decent (maybe I should just buy a bigger lens?). and so, after playing cat and mouse (camera and parrot), the green parrot - a Ringnecks - decided to put on a modelling show and was safely captured in pixels. I could depart happy.

Galah

More Galahs

Another Galah

The Ringneck

Brown-headed Honeyeater (I think)

The End