gippsland

fog rolling into malactoota

the south-eastern area of victoria is better known as gippsland, name after a governor  or something like that. it is generally a splendid little area of australia. in the grey, dreary, rainy skies, not so much.

after we left phillip island, we made our way to leongatha. it took us a few tries to find a caravan park that wasn't full (due to it being school holidays still). lets just say that the only reason i remember that the town was called leongatha is because we forgot what it was called so many times (and had to look it up. even while we were still in the town), i looked it up so often that it finally stuck. we decided on leongatha after we pulled into a caravan park in another random town and noticed that it was really more of a "trailer park", true to form. when i went to explore the campground and happened upon the bathroom and saw the sign that said "ladies, close the door behind you for your own safety", it sealed the deal that we should keep looking...

the caravan park in leongatha was surprisingly comfortable. not very big, not very busy. 5 minutes from town, but incredibly quiet. and green. but it didn't really make up for the fact that it was raining. we took the opportunity to get stuff done in leongatha (i like to keep saying it to make sure i remember the name). nothing particularly exciting, though we were around when the volunteer firefighter alarm went off (and scared the shit out of me). needless to say, we moved on in hopes of outrunning the rain.

kayaking in malacoota

we stopped in bairnsdale on our way out. this was, interestingly enough, one of the "random towns" an australian had told us about ("i'm from bansdale. but most people would think it was barnsdale. but it's actually spelled bairnsdale". wow. really? how interesting...). we happened upon the first actual informative person at the tourist information centre.

interesting fact: most people "working" in the tourist bureaus are volunteers. we know this because it says so on their name tags. as such, they don't know shit. for the most part, the info they provide us with has been bad, faulty or both. but finally (finally!) we found a volunteer worthy of his name tag. he was so enthusiastic about telling us where we should go that we (gasp) actually followed his advice. but before we sped off to the great dividing range, we made our way to the coastal town of malacoota.

malacoota is (i think) the eastern most town in victoria and is nestled right between the raging tasman sea and a small lake (which is technically just an inlet, but whatever). we arrived on the first sunny day we'd had in days (!). we managed to (finally) rent some kayaks and went off to explore the "lake" region. it was quite enjoyable, until the wind from the ocean blew in. shortly followed by an intense fog (thankfully, we'd returned the kayaks by then).

the guy renting the kayaks tried to convince us to stay another night but we decided we'd had enough with the rainy gippsland coast and started our drive to the great driving range.


xo