On Saturday Dominique, Kerrie, Michael and I all piled into Kerrie's car to head down to the Great Ocean Road to see the damage from the recent bush fires as well as to have a visit with Ben and his family. It takes about two hours from Michael's house to get to the coast and it was a fairly busy day as there was a race in Lorne, so we had a lot of traffic to contend with. Once to the burned section of the great ocean road it was like being on a different planet. It has this burnt out smell and all of the trees that were standing were black trunks with brown leaves. Sometimes there were just black trunks, and sometimes there were only black stumps. We drove through many kilometers of this burnt out area. Just before arriving at Ben's place at Kennit River the lush great forest came back. You can see from this photo how close the fire was to where we were visiting.

Part of the Great Ocean Road that has been burned in a recent bush fire.

Once we were settled at Ben's cabin we had some flying visitors which Michael and Kerrie were excited about as they said they had never had wild king parrots interact with them. These parrots you could tell knew humans meant food. I tried to snap one photo of everyone with at least one parrot before they decided we weren't worth the effort.

Ben

Kerrie

Michael

Dominique

Sorry, no picture of me with them, and to be honest I don't think I held one, too busy taking happy snaps with the Nikon! Like this one..

King Parrot

King Parrot up close.

After having a wonderful dinner with Ben and his family the four of us piled back into Kerrie's car and headed to lake Elizabeth to see the glow worms and stars. Because it had been so dry for so long the glow worms were not blanketing the forest as we had seen previously, however it was the first time we ever went there and didn't get rained on! I did manage to take a few picture of the nights sky which was part of the plan. Kerrie and Michael were kind enough to tolerate me and my camera while Dom had a snooze in the car. I managed to take a few nice photos but unless you see it full size it isn't anything special. But I did learn a lot about what I can do and have plans to go bigger next time I am in an area with little light pollution. Was a great day out on the coast and a big thank you goes out to Michael for driving both ways, as we did not return to Melbourne until a little after 2am!

A few shots of the night sky stuck together!

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