Heather's travel notes: Well of course we had to visit the Prom!

What an amazing huge chunk of land Wilsons Promontory is! Stretching rocky fingers out into the sea reaching towards the landmass it was once connected to; it formed part of the land bridge linking our big island to Tassie. We saw remnants, scraps of this ancient bridge 3 years ago when we flew over the Furneaux Island group, Bass Strait, to spend a week on Flinders Island. But I digress!

This day trip we were heading for Lilly Pilly Gully to walk the nature circuit through the rainforest.

It was a magical day. This southern rainforest is much more ancient than the typical Aussie eucalypt forests and heathland which evolved to rely on fire for reproduction. Warm temperate forests like this one are more closely related to the ancient forests of Gondwana and grow in places protected from fire. Incidentally this is the most southerly warm temperate rainforest in Australia.

It was just wonderful albeit a bit drizzly at times but that added to the magic of the place. We wandered deep into the gully through dripping rainforest - so beautiful, it took my breath away.

Halfway around the circuit we stepped onto a Boardwalk suspended over swampy land. From there the path wound uphill around the slopes of Mt Bishop. Hard going (for me) as it took us higher and higher - we climbed around 180m.

We didn’t climb further up Mt Bishop it was way to hard - for us.

That’s Tidal River in the distance this was one massive granite boulder

The Prom is one of the few areas in Australia where rivers and creeks are protected from their source to the sea and are free from introduced species (fish and aquatic plants). So the Prom is a haven for native freshwater fish. It’s also home to a number of species of freshwater crayfish. The Lilly Pilly crayfish is about the size of your thumb and makes numerous holes in the earth - we saw many. In fact much of the region we’ve been exploring in Sth Gippsland has freshwater crays.

It’s been quite a learning experience and the more we travel and look and read, the more I learn - I’m really just starting! I have learnt that the diverse range of species of wildlife living in these waters need different water flow rates - I possibly knew this at some stage and obviously it makes sense but I can’t remember which needs what but it has given me pause for thought.

This is snow or reindeer lichen. We saw similar lichen in Iceland and Canada

Everywhere else the heath has been pink or white. This soft coral colour was gorgeous against the deep green scrub.

I love the furry edge to the leaves, stems and buds of this plant.

Sadly I didn’t find any orchids but they are there I know. We did however find fungi in bucketloads - from browns, oranges and reds to white and lovely yellow and dark green as well as ‘jelly cups’ clinging tenuously to mossy trunks. Fungi, the essential forest recyclers, break down rotting matter to make it accessible to even smaller creatures like worms and snails etc. If you put your ear to the ground I suspect you might be deafened by the sound of munching!