The Grampians
It’s fall in Australia, and we’re visiting the Grampians as the trees are coloring up. The weather is crisp, the sky is bright. I’ve rarely experienced a climate like this since moving to California from New Jersey in 1958.
The Grampians are a range of limestone mountains. They remain largely unexploited, probably because there is so much good land for farming and grazing elsewhere in Australia. By the time developers’ interests awakened, conservation had become a priority in Australia, and the Grampians were protected as a national park.
The usual signs abound inside the park, warning that vertical terrain can be dangerous.
A member of our party defiantly ignores the warnings. If that ledge were to break, a fall of hundreds of feet await him.
We’ve been reading about terrible wildfires in the State of Victoria caused in part by a drought of several years’ duration coupled with an extremely hot summer and high winds. But fire is a part of the ecosystem here. Four years ago (more or less) a large part of the eucalypt forest in the Grampians burned. We walked a track through blackened tree trunks.
The usual fire prevention efforts take place here, just as in US forests. I suspect though that fire management is a thorny problem for foresters. Too much suppression causes buildup of undergrowth and fuels resulting in intense fires that reach the canopy, killing the trees. Too little, and public pressure forces stepped up suppression efforts.
Ground fires burn away small wood and brush. Larger trees, although their trunks are blackened, put out new leaf and branch growth. I found this burned-over forest to be bursting with life, a green and pleasant place.
The two foreground plants, the ones that look like yuccas, won’t even bloom until a fire has burned through, improving the competitive picture for their offspring. Fire is essential to the environment.
Lake Bellfield is a reservoir completed in 1969. Impounded waters irrigate farmland valleys. It’s quite beautiful, and is open to the public for swimming, boating,and fishing. Motorboats do not disturb the placid scene: they’re not allowed.
But all is not well at Lake Bellfield. The water’s surface has sunk to about forty feet below normal levels. It should be lapping at the walkway visible on the left.
These are times of drought and high fire danger. Water use restrictions are in place. Everyone is conserving. Reminds me of California in the 90s, when a green lawn meant you were a water hog. Is this just a drought that will end in good time? Or is it an artifact of global warming? If the latter, Australians are in trouble.
Communities dependent on visitors and tourists were hit hard by the fires four years ago. Nobody wanted to come here to view the smoking ruins. The town of Halls Gap (pop. 300) holds an annual wine festival (pop. 6,000) designed to encourage Melburnians to return to the Grampians. For us, the festival proved to be a good place to get lunch.
We stayed at a motel called the Kookaburra Inn, so called because the eponymous birds congregate there. We heard their distinctive calls in the mornings and evenings, but managed to see only one, during a walk high in the Grampians.
That sound that used to be a staple of jungle movies—HOO HOO HOO HOO HA HA HA—that’s the call of the Kookaburra. Hearing one was another lifetime dream come true.
Small patios extend off the back side of our motel rooms, each separated from the next by a thin hedge. From the patio next to ours, I heard the noise of chairs scraping and the flicks of Bics followed by the smell of cigarette smoke. Then a voice screeched, “Shut ya cake hole, Ma!”
The rasping calls of the cockatoos were, by comparison, mellifluous.
Evening fell as we sat there. Ma and the cigarette smokers drifted away. One by one, cockatoos arrived. I was transfixed by the proximity of wildlife until one of our party offered a piece of pretzel. A cockatoo eagerly gobbled it up.
Yes, the birds come there for a handout. They’ve clearly lost all sense of pride, milking tourists for all they can get. “Spare change? Got any spare change?” Bums.