Si's Year Out! (Plus Europe! Plus Morocco!): Wilsons Promontory to Bairnsdale

At the end of the day I drove about 200km to Sale, the next big city after Melbourne. By the time I got there it was too late to do anything so I found a place to sleep and cooked some dinner.

The next day happened to be the one day of the month that there was a big market on. It was all a bit cowboy-ish...there were old boys singing country songs, lots of hat and belt stores and even one selling farm animals!

After that I drove to a part of 90 Mile Beach called Golden Beach. 90 Mile Beach is amazing...it just seems to go on forever whichever way you look....

Next I drove to Bairnsdale and then a small fishing village called Paynesville. For once I had actually read my guidebook and it said that there was a small island right next to Paynesville called Raymond Island. It was supposed to have a healthy Koala population and a free ferry so I thought I'd check it out. I found the ferry point and could see the ferry on the other side of what I thought was a small river. After waiting about 15 mins, the ferry came over to my side of the river and I got on. The ferry then proceeded to go to the other side of the 'river' and the captain said 'enjoy your trip to Raymond Island'! The other side of the 'river' was actually the island and it was so close I could (and would) have swam it in under 5 minutes!

Anyway, the wildlife in this place was amazing, as I got off the ferry all I could hear was the screeching of hundreds of parrots, bright green, blue and red ones in all the trees, waiting for people to drop them some food! I walked through the holiday homes to the rainforest-ish area of the island. Saw loads of weird looking birds and a really small snake but I was really looking for some eucalyptus trees for the Koalas. Once I found them there were koalas EVERYWHERE! The first two I saw were a mother and baby clinging onto a branch and then every other tree had some lazing around in the branches. They didn't mind people walking around at all, they just lied in the trees watching the world go by and if you were lucky they'd turn their head as you walked past! At one point there was a rustling in a bush I walked past...after seeing the small snake I thought I'd leg it just to be safe. As I looked back a big Koala emerged from the bush, jumped onto the tree, found the first branch and just laid there!

After that It was back to Bairnsdale to see a church with hand-painted ceilings and I also came across the house of a woman who made amazing sculptures just out of different kinds of eggs.....strange but very cool!