Michel had suggested Sunday lunch on the deck of Gapsted Winery. Their website does a much more comprehensive job of explaining what’s what than I could here, so go look. Suffice to say that they make “cool climate” wines in “Australia’s Alpine Region”. Right. Michel is a member of their club and it looked like a jolly splendid place to while away an hour or two staring at some of their vines from our table.

There is a menu from which you can select individual dishes but Michel, an old hand at this caper, was keen on their degustation menu – three modestly sized courses that might actually leave room for our evening meal. You can choose to have just the food  for A$40 or get a glass of wine chosen to complement each course for A$49. No contest, bring me a drink! Actually, the first drink was a glass of bubbly. Michel, once again being designated driver, had to keep donating alcohol to be shared by Francine and myself. Ahhhh! For those who will undoubtedly ask, here’s the menu. 😉

And here, just to complete the detail, are the three individual courses that the above menu referred to.

Suffice to say it was an excellent lunch and far from extortionate. All their wines had been good so I couldn’t resist buying a bottle of their Tawny Port to help down some evening cheese. Carrying the port to the car was slightly delayed when Francine was distracted by a Superb Fairy-wren (Malurus cyaneus) which began hoping about the grass near the vines. It was an opportunity too good to miss.

We made it to the car but our departure was further delayed when progress came to an abrupt halt before getting off the property. Just before reaching the main road, Michel slammed on the anchors. “Echidna!”, he exclaimed, excitedly. Not surprisingly, really, as echidnas are rarely seen and here was one rummaging around on Gapsted’s front lawn right beside us. The echidna began nosing around in the detritus littering the Gapsted sign. I approached cautiously, thinking it would be nervous and wary. It did curl up once or twice, exposing its defensive spines, but essentially kept on with its business despite my watching it. Then, to our joint surprise, Edna Echidna began marching swiftly straight towards Francine.

We thought Edna would veer away as she approached Francine but no, she kept going and headed straight beneath a crouching Francine and between her legs. There she finally stopped, up against her right foot. Now what? After a pause we noticed movement, not forwards or backwards but a sort of shuffling, wriggling movement. Every now and then, we saw one of its powerful digging feet appear from under the skirt of spines. It seemed to be sinking slightly lower in the ground. Yes, it was excavating a hole, immediately beneath Francine. Whether it was beginning to construct a burrow under Francine’s backside or was just digging in search of food (echidnas are ant-eaters, BTW), I know not. We watched chuckling; mesmerized. Francine was besotted, as well she might be. What a privilege.

[Aside: I should just point out that Echidnas are monotreme mammals; that means, not to put too fine a point on it, “one hole for everything”: urinating, defecating and egg-laying (yes, it’s one of those curious egg-laying mammals along with the Duck-billed Platypus). I have no idea how one might actually sex an active, spikey, one-hole-for-everything kind of creature so Edna implies nothing as to gender and was simply a name we couldn’t resist. Edna is a Short-beaked Echidna (Tachyglossus aculeatus). Yes, there’s more than one echidna species, though this is the only species in Australia, I believe.]

Fresh from our chance encounter, a couple in Stanley, friends of Michel, had invited us all around for drinks and nibbles in the later afternoon. Coincidentally, the couple owns a property in Marseillan, one of our favourite parts of France, so it is possible that we may meet again. We sat around a roaring wood fire – it gets cool up here in the evenings – in an open hearth in their garden and passed a very convivial evening in jovial company.

Nothing was going to top Edna Echidna, though. What a thrill.

Time to be escorted again. In Stanley, at about 750m elevation, we are already in the high country but Michel had designs to take us up into the really high country. We were heading over 1500m to Mount Buffalo. The drive was 95 km and would take 90 mins, if you went directly there, that is. Naturally we didn’t.

The scenery on the way gets quite alpine-looking apart, that is from the fact that the trees tend to be gum trees. I’ve noticed a woeful lack of gum trees in the Austrian alps. Above a certain elevation, as the road winds and twists its way around the side of the mountain, the white lines suddenly switch to yellow. This is because yellow shows up better in snowy conditions whereas white tends to  … well, you get the idea. Part way up we stretched our legs beside a bridge over a stream with waterfalls tumbling down. From here, through the tree canopy we had a glimpse of a more precipitous waterfall near the beginnings of the water course up at the 1500m level where we were heading.

Francine, having strappy sandals on her feet, was not dressed for scrambling so I took my life in my hands armed with Francine’s camera and descended a slope of mostly loose-ish soil to get to the stream itself down at our current level. I wasn’t worried so much about falling into the torrent but if I’d damaged Francine’s camera … Luckily all went well. As I was scrambling back up said slippery slope a damselfly unexpectedly landed temptingly on a fern beside me. By the time I’d told Francine, it had performed a very effective disappearing trick.

Atop Mount Buffalo is a so-called Chalet. I say “so-called” because it’s bigger than anything called a chalet that I’ve ever seen. It was clearly grandiose in its day and is now the subject of some serious restoration work. It remains impressive but apparently lacks some modern tourist expectations, like en suite bathrooms. Michel remembered to snag a picture of it on his phone.

Opposite the chalet is the obligatory view point allowing us to look back at the way we had ascended.

Having played tourist at the chalet area long enough we drove around on top – it’s a something of a high plateau and found somewhere for a bite of lunch (water bodies but no odos – still too cool up here, I suspect) and paused to take in the atmosphere of an alpine lake that belies the altitude. Does this look as if it’s at 1500m? I think not.

On the way back we called into Bright, which, off season, was a pleasant enough town complete with a grassy recreation area (and a brewery) beside a picturesque river. It was still quite busy now though, so in season, would be absolutely heaving with tourists and would be best avoided, for those who prefer peace and solitude.

For the last couple of days we have at last been joined in Stanley by Francine’s sister-in-law, Sandrine, who has hitherto been otherwise occupied in Sydney. We’ve had a hoot re-educating her to drink wine instead of fermented tea which is:

1. as disgusting as it sounds (I tasted it), and
2. allegedly good for your gut (friendly bacteria, and all that).

Today we were off to continue the vinous education by poisoning a few more friendly bacteria. Between Stanley and the Hume Freeway lies Indigo Vineyard, the owners of which are in the habit of staging lunchtime Jazz in the Vines events. As the title implies there is, of course, music. Food is also available but centre-stage is wine with water provided for the unfortunate drivers.

As the title also implies, these events are usually held amongst the vines of the vineyard. On this occasion, regrettably, there are storms floating around in the forecast so a wary organizer had relocated the event closer to the facilities buildings where a selection of gazebos covering  an array of tables had been erected, just to be on the safe side.

We coughed up our A$15 each entrance fee, grabbed a table under a gazebo and sat with our new Australian friends, a couple that have a place at Marseillan in France, who had also pitched up to enjoy the four piece set of musicians entertaining us as we drowned bacteria in alcohol and nibbled. As the sky darkened to several particularly threatening shades of slate grey, we revisited our gazebo decision and grabbed most of another table further under cover in a more substantial building beside the stage.

We were just in time. The wind announcing the storm front blew through. Several other bacteria drowning attendees hung on to their respective gazebos lest they got relocated back to the vines again. The wind was soon accompanied by lashing rain. Good decision, Mr. Organizer.

The music was good, the wine was good and the company was good. What more could one want? Well, some more typical Australian weather and less of a British squall, perhaps. We are 12,000 miles away, after all.

We’re braving a day further afield by ourselves. As we drove in from Melbourne airport along the Hume Freeway, we past an area called the Winton Wetlands, “a wetlands restoration project of national significance” [it says here]. Places with wetland in their title are usually of interest so off we set. It was about a 1-hour drive and, for want of a better target, we headed for what appeared to be a visitor centre on the map.

It didn’t quite make the dizzy heights of a visitor centre, as we would know it. It was basically a car park with a cafe and toilets but, though there were information boards at various points, they all contained a 400-word essay so they’d lost me. Besides, a gale-force wind was blowing so strongly that it was difficult to stand up whilst reading more than a few words. White caps were marching their way across the large water body of Winton Swamp.

Simple to assimilate information was scarcer than we’d have liked. For example, we saw a finger sign pointing to “woodland walk”. What there wasn’t was a distance quoted. Neither could we see details of how long the walk might have been once we arrived, assuming we did. We didn’t. We did head off in the direction indicated. though, but progress was admittedly very slow because I was being distracted by odonata, most of which were hunkering down low in the vegetation against the wind. One of them was a gaudy male Aurora Bluetail (Ischnura aurora) which I had been hoping to see.

We eventually covered about a mile where Francine ended up playing with some trees with wet feet, too. Still seeing nothing that looked as though it might be the woodland walk, we decided to head back to the meagre information centre/cafe for coffee and a chat. I finally found a map and mentioned dragonflies which, as so often, caused raised eyebrows. [The subtext is usually, “what, not birds?”] I explained the wind that could’ve blown any interesting specimens into the northern hemisphere and asked if the man knew of any more sheltered locations. “Not really”, he replied, “I’ve never known it this windy”. We headed for the worryingly named Boggy Bridge Road.

Having turned off along Boggy Bridge Road, there were some exhibition artworks tagged “Art in the Landscape”. We’d certainly gone the right way; as we stepped out to snag the artworks the wind was noticeably less and Francine’s hair stayed on her head. [Mine, of course, is already missing.] We came across pieces called Martin’s Barge (colourful cows in a floating pen affair), Boggy Bridge Fish Trees (colourful images of fish split across several individual tree trunks) and The CFA Tank (a water tank covered in monochrome portraits). Colourful, one in a black and white sort of way, and quite good fun but, as usual with modern art, one is left wondering why? Well, I am anyway but then I am a self-confessed artistic numbskull.

In between a couple of these works of art, we found another of nature’s works of art: a dragonfly that looked new to me was zooming about energetically over a small pond. I stalked it for some time, managing a handful of in-flight shots – it showed no signs of pausing. It showed no signs of pausing, that is, until it found a female and mated. The tandem pair began ovipositing just a short distance from me. A static shot at last.

Avoiding a road recommended only for 4×4 vehicles, we made our way back over safer gravel tracks for a well earned libation.

It does rain in Australia. Today we’ve got clouds and occasional rain, some of it quite heavy. Still, we are in Victoria’s high country and it is early spring. Michel said he’d distract us with a guided tour.

40 kms west of Stanley, where we are based, is Milawa, the so-called Milawa Gourmet Region. I suspect that it is self-styled. Here, there is a concentration of various gastronomic businesses offering tastings. A tourist can hop from one to another sampling and, of course, buying. 🙂

An enjoyable 30-minute drive through the picturesque countryside in these parts got us to our first port of call, The Milawa Cheese Company. According to Michel, this place is usually heaving. However, on this wet day out of the main tourist season, we were able to enjoy a relaxed cheese tasting, conducted by an attractive young lady, all by ourselves. We were led through goat cheeses and blues, in an order that didn’t confuse the palate, very much like wine tasting. We bought some soft creamy goat, some hard goat with a texture similar to parmesan, and some 3-month matured blue that had a very rounded flavour. Excellent use of money. 😉

Next stop was Milawa Mustards. Here, an ex-Brit from the northeast had about a dozen mustards arranged in a sequence from mild to fierce, that you could help yourself to and taste on cracker fragments. They were pleasant enough and may well have been fine mustards but they were all wholegrain mustards [he couldn’t afford the type of grinder that is required to produce finely ground, smooth mustard, I overheard] which I find a limited use for. Michel bought a jar but we skipped it.

OK, we’ve done various wine tastings before but they are just for wimps. Up next was something that sounded much more interesting for real men. We were off to Hurdle Creek Still where we indulged in a gin tasting. The couple running it were very informative and entertaining. They had apparently considered distilling whisky but that needs maturing for a minimum of two years so there’s a long lead time before any return after ones investment. You can start selling gin much more quickly so there’s much less waiting for any profit. Sensible chaps. I was happy ‘cos I’m not a great whisky fan anyway, preferring clearer, cleaner-tasting spirits. There was a basic gin with an array of botanicals on show (containing a few red herrings to obscure the actual recipe). I skipped the cask strength version – I find that just too much alcohol to be enjoyable. There was a Dutch-style Jeneva, too, along with a cherry gin, similar to a sloe gin, I suppose. There was another but I can’t for the life of me remember what it was. Gin’ll do that to you. Francine and I enjoyed it, as did Michel but, being the designated driver, he was forced into modest restraint; he did buy a bottle of the regular gin to take home, though.

Back in central Milawa, we popped into Gamze Smokehouse for lunch. It had opened just a week earlier, which is often a good time in a food business’s life to try it. We opted for a sharing platter of smoked tasters washed down with a beer. Australian beer all seems to be designed for warmer weather – crisp, light and refreshing. I’m finding I could do with something a little more chewy. Still, it washes the food down.

Yackandandah is a nearby 1-street town, another historic gold mining village with a quaint western feel. We were out unescorted for the first time. Scary stuff. We found a place to abandon our rental ship and wandered up and down both sides of the single street. There is a fair collection of coffee shops together with the usual bric-a-brac/antique (i.e. junk) shops in the mix of businesses, some of which looked as if they would benefit from some TLC but a visit made a pleasant little interlude. The best way to describe this is to let a few pictures do the talking.

One curiosity that kept Francine distracted for some time was a series of colourful flaking wooden picture frames artfully arranged in an old, weathered wooden wagon, seen in one of the pictures above.

What kept Franco amused for some time was Commissioner’s Creek, flowing through the village, where I found a few more mature examples of my Australian odo, the Common Flatwing (Austroargiolestes icteromelas). Here, there were some females, as well as males, so now I had the set.

All this tourism and odo-hunting forced us into the Yackandandah Hotel to refresh our feet, trigger fingers and eyeballs before making our return trip to Stanley via Beechworth Historic Park, through which is a narrow one-way road. Michel had driven us through towards the end of yesterday’s return trip so we’d know where we were going when we visited alone. Here, there is Spring Creek, a waterfall area I’d been told about by my Australian dragonfly e-contact. There’s room to park just two or three cars near the bridge over the falls but fortunately there was just one car there already so we managed to get parked. Actually, I’d have preferred no cars to be there ‘cos this one car had clearly delivered a pair of boisterously noisy rugrats that were now splashing in the waters of the falls. Nonetheless, a moderately gentle scramble upstream, beyond the parents of the noise generators, got us to some more gently flowing, calmer odo territory away from said rugrats. Here, we found the same three suspects we’d met at Woolshed Falls, yesterday, plus a new friend: a Blue Skimmer (Orthetrum caledonicum).

We left the odos to their basking away from the rugrats and, on our way back home, called in to another newish water body that Michel had introduced me to: the Stanley Barge Dam/Wetlands Project. A cyclist had beaten us to it. In the conversation that followed we discovered this gentleman had recently completed a cycle ride across Australia from Perth. Double YIKES! Spotting the camera slung across my shoulder on a monopod, “what are you looking for”, he enquired. “Dragonflies”, I responded. “Oh, I haven’t seen any”, he informed. Whoosh! “There goes one”, I smiled, pointing. How many times does that happen? People just tend not to see dragonflies.

It was a good stop to have made; a red job that I foolishly assumed would be the same red job we’d already encountered at Woolshed Falls actually turned out to be a new suspect. Meet the Red Percher (Diplacodes bipunctata).

Time for a beer or two to celebrate another two new friends. 😉

We are based in Stanley, Vic. Stanley is a small village containing what we’d think of as a village store and a pub (apparently with a less than jovial barman). The nearest town to source supplies is Beechworth, about 10kms distant. Francine’s brother, Michel, took us down to introduce us to it by means of a walking tour.

Beechworth is a cruciform town with a roundabout at the centre of its four arms, each arm being roughly ¼ mile long. The arms of the cross are lined with angled parking bays on each side. Out of tourist [known as terrorists in these parts] season, the town is calm and parking is easy. We swung into a free parking bay and took to Shanks’s Pony.

Now, this is wine country with valleys that make so-called cool climate wines. What it used to be was Ned Kelly country. Ned Kelly was the infamous bushranger [an Australian outlaw] portrayed by Mick Jagger on the silver screen. Ned’s trademark suit of armour weighing over 90lbs is on display in one of the associated museum exhibits in Beechworth. You can walk into the small lock up where Ned was held in 1871 awaiting trial. We poked our noses in as we wandered up and down both sides of each of the four cross roads. The architecture feels quite old western, in a way, though there is some use of ornate wrought iron work on balconies that I don’t think the outlaw Josey Wales would have seen.

As a bit of a foodie, some of the produce available in Beechworth was the most interesting to me. There was a great butcher, who also would take orders for fresh fish according to availability. We got some very tasty lamb chops for today and ordered some fish called Flatheads for the following day. The vegetables in the greengrocer were all locally sourced and stunningly tasty. I was particularly enamoured of the sweet red peppers which must be the best I’ve tasted. I may well be looking for an excuse to use more of those – a man can’t have too many red peppers. 😉

Almost inevitably, our walking tour finished in a local bar to refresh our feet and legs.

Much refreshed, Michel was keen to help with a wandering dragonfly enthusiasts desire to look for a few new friends on a new continent. He drove us on to a local R&R spot called Woolshed Falls where there is also a waterfall that might provide some entertainment for Francine, too.

I know it’s quite early in the dragonfly season, this being early spring Down Under, so I wasn’t necessarily expecting to see very much, if anything. However, as I gingerly picked my route over some of the smoothed rocks beside the water course, a damselfly did flutter into a bush in front of me. I lost track of it. Fortunately, it reappeared and I kept track of it as it alighted in another bush. My first ever Australian odo was an immature Common Flatwing (Austroargiolestes icteromelas).

Further exploration revealed a dragonfly patrolling up and down a narrow water course. It flew constantly and never seemed to rest – nothing unusual. Following the watercourse upstream, we came across a calmer pool where a couple of individuals were flying back and forth. Yet again they were flying constantly without any sign of rest. An in-flight shot was the only option. This, my first Australian Anisoptera, is a so-called Tau Emerald (Hemicordulila tau).

As Francine was investigating the water fall, I found a second pool and a third new Australian friend. This gaudy red character is a Scarlet Percher (Diplacodes haematodes).

My thanks are due to a local contact, Reiner, for help with confirming/correcting my dragonfly identifications. Concerned about luggage space and weight, as well as wondering how much use it might be given the earliness of the season, I did not bring my field guide. Whoops! 🙂

We touched down approaching 10:00 on a fine, sunny morning after our 9-hour overnight flight from Hong Kong. Amazingly, I seemed to have managed to sleep a little. This is just as well since there was a 3-hour drive ahead of me to get to Francine’s brother’s pad at Stanley, Victoria. Time to brave immigration.

We spotted a string of those accursed automated passport reading machines as well as two or three warm bodies in conventional booths. We first approached the passport reading machines but there was a wrinkle; these Australian contraptions didn’t actually seem to read passports but demanded a “ticket” instead. Que? How does this work? Clueless and not wishing to solve challenging puzzles at the end of our lengthy journey, we gave up and joined the queue for the warm bodies. As we watched from our queue, others appeared to be using a pre-passport reading machine to read their passport and issue said ticket. They then went to the camera equipment which read the ticket and gave them the old once over with its mechanical eyeball. Weird. Our queue advanced and our warm body let us through; we were in.

Time for Francine to declare her mother’s ashes at last. You pretty much have to tell Australian Border Control about anything you’re bringing in by ticking  various boxes on the immigration card. There’d been some debate on the plane as to whether Francine’s mum should come under the “meat and meat products” category or “soil”. Francine had scribbled “ashes” on the form. All was well, with no eyebrows raised we cleared the second hurdle.

Our bags eventually turned up – just teasing – and we left the arrivals hall to find our rental car. A chirpy Avis agent got us a better car than had been ordered – not many were available for a lengthy 3-week period, it appeared, as Moto GP teams were in town for some testosterone-fuelled motorcycle racing and local services were stretched. Bonus: our car, a Holden [Australian GM] was not only spacious and comfortable but has a built in satnav. Just as well since Francine was having trouble kicking our mobile phone alternative into action. We hit the road.

The vast bulk of our journey was along the Hume Freeway. After 2½ hours including the standard pee-break and leg-stretch, a message from Francine’s brother told her he’d meet us at the freeway exit to shepherd us in. Francine leapt into his mark 1 open top Mazda MX5 and left me following for another 30 minutes or so to our base for the next two weeks.

The house is a single storey building on a slightly sloping rural plot with little in the way of a view of neighbours. This looks like our preferred kind of environment. The plot is substantial and matters improved even further as we were greeted by King Parrots and Kookaburras in the many surrounding trees. There were Rosellas, too, but they are shy and have thus far eluded my camera.

Time evaporated as we did the obligatory tour of the property, camera in hand. I’ve no idea what some of the plants were – neither, it seems, had anyone else – but several were photogenic and gave me something a little less flighty than the birds to play with. I’ll just let the pictures speak for themselves.

This is old gold mining country from the 1850s. Stanley nestles in hills at ~800m altitude and, though we’d arrived in the first really sunny, warm [25°C-ish] spring day so far this year, things can cool down noticeably in the evenings. We’ll be putting our packing choices to the test, I think.