Incidentally, there is no lake at Kinglake. The park is named after a guy named Kinglake.
| In February,
we started arranging camping trips with our new friends
from Canada, Jason and Lara Lacharite. The first trip was
to Kinglake National Park.
Despite Mike's packing prowess, the micra was
cram-packed, and all of us ended up with a bag, a cooler,
or a pillow on our laps during the 1.5 hour drive to
KingLake National Park, about 65 windy kilometers on the
other side of Melbourne. By the time we were settled at
The Gums campsite, it had started to rain. Not to be
undone, Jason lead the four of us on a drizzling hike
through the forest in the north-eastern section of the
park (where we were camping). We saw no mammals though
(despite the fact that the park supposedly has 40
species) but we did see an enormous black bird with
yellow hemispheres on each side of its parrot-like beak,
which cawked like a parrot. We stared at the guy for 10
minutes or so before we convinced that it was a black
cockatoo. That alone made the walk worthwhile. Incidentally, there is no lake at Kinglake. The park is named after a guy named Kinglake. |
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We camped out Saturday night, able to build a fire even with the rain--the ranger actually provided us with free firewood! And the following day was beautiful. We went for another small hike on the way out of town. Below is a photo of the four of us on the trail to Mason Falls. |
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| On the way back to Melbourne, we stopped by an organic berry farm, and picked beautiful blueberries and blackberries, and even a few rasberries (the owner had told us they were not back around yet). Our ~1 kg punnet filled up rapidly, despite the fact that we probably ate a quarter of what we picked. We paid a very reasonable $9.00 for the 1 kg punnet of berries and then headed back to Melbourne. Below is a rather large photo of Lara and Jason picking blueberries... |
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