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Unveiling Victoria

Many U.S. tourists stay away from the picturesque state at the southeastern tip of Australia. They don't know what they're missing.

By WILLIAM ECENBARGER
Published January 29, 2006

[Photos: Susan Ecenbarger]

The 165-year-old Mount Sturgeon sheep station is at the foot of the jagged granite peaks that make up the Grampian Mountains in the Australian state of Victoria.

	Great Ocean Road may be Victoria’s top attraction. The 175-mile drive presents magnificent views of the ocean, rain forests and animal life.
	Mathilda is one of the orphaned kangaroos at the Cape Otway Centre for Conservation Ecology.

DUNKELD, Australia - No need for an alarm clock. First come the cockatoos, whose full-throated chatter begins well before dawn. Next the magpies alight in the eucalyptus trees and start screeching and mimicking each other in high-pitched yodels. Then the kookaburras arrive, firing rockets of laughter skyward.

By the time the sun pops up, there is no sleeping.

Nor should there be, for this is a sheep station, or ranch, and it's already well into the work day.

Rubbing sleep out of my eyes, I ignite the kindling in the fireplace, then add chunky redgum logs. Soon the flames are cracking their knuckles, and the fire is pushing the night's cold out the door, where the sun will deal with it.

I step from my cottage, one of eight old shearers' huts that have been converted to guest lodging for modern visitors to the 165-year-old Mount Sturgeon sheep station. The air is heavy with the tang of wood smoke, the giddy aroma of things blossoming and the lusty scents of animals and damp earth.

I walk down a graveled path. On either side, sheep are huddled like fallen clouds in the fenced pastures. One of the sheep walks over and regards me as though I owe him money.

In the distance is Mount Sturgeon itself, the beginning of the 400-million-year-old jagged granite peaks that comprise the Grampian Mountains, in the state of Victoria.

I exchange G'days with workers, whose boots are caked with mud. Overhead, in the dazzling morning light I can see peregrine falcons perched on nearby cliffs, looking for prey. The morning shimmers and sparkles with promise. It's going to be, as the Australians would say, a ripper.

Tucked away in a cartographical corner on Australia's east coast, Victoria isn't often on the itineraries of American tourists, who tend to stay within one of the world's great cities: Melbourne. That is the visitors' mistake.

To be sure, Victoria is small by Australian standards - indeed, the smallest state in mainland Australia. Victoria is, however, roughly the size of Utah, and within its borders is an amazing diversity of forests, mountains, lakes and ocean.

Victoria offers great scenery, unique wildlife experiences and engrossing brushes with Aboriginal culture. Plus one of the world's greatest drives. And precisely because it is not overrun with tourists, Victoria offers a closer encounter with the best feature of any trip to Australia: the Australians.

"I call it iconic tourism," says Noel Nicholls, dismissively, as we speak of the usual tour itinerary: Sydney, Ayers Rock, Great Barrier Reef.

He pulls a sausage big enough to gag a shark off the barbie, drops it in a bun and hands it to me. "People come to see what they came to see, and then they go away - many of them disappointed. Now these Grampians" - he makes a 180-degree arc with his hand - "they're not going to disappoint anyone. They are real.

"Here's where you want to be."

After lunch, we climb back into his van with "Grampian Personalised Tours and Adventures" emblazoned on both sides. Nicholls drops it into four-wheel drive and declares, "Let's go back to the bush."

As we roll along, he squints intently through the windshield and points out wildflowers and ferns. Kangaroos are everywhere, hopping, sitting, standing, eating.

Nicholls tosses another monologue on the fire:

"I've been running these tours of the Grampians for 10 years. A lot of Australians and a lot of Europeans. They really appreciate the nature. But I get no more than four Americans per year . . ."

We are on a dirt road in Grampians National Park. Through the forest we glimpse the lofty summits and ridge lines. The ground is practically foaming with blossoms. The lowlands teem with wildlife - emus, kangaroos, possums, koalas, wallabies and more than 200 bird species.

We climb higher and the mountains contort the road. Above the tree line there are heaps of boulders shoved into place during the Ice Age.

"I can tell you one thing, mate," says Nicholls in the stereotypical accent, "you're a long way f'm Melbun."

That's Melbourne to the rest of the world, and it's where a tour of Victoria naturally begins.

Melbourne is to Sydney as San Francisco is to Los Angeles: more artsy and less frenetic. Indeed, like San Francisco, Melbourne was populated by a gold rush in the 1850s.

Today it has a vigorous cultural life, broad ethnic diversity and a stunning physical setting that features Victorian architecture, wide boulevards and spacious parks.

But Melbourne is also about food, and its ethnic groups draw liberally and imaginatively from the surrounding ocean, farms and vineyards. The liveliest food venue is the Queen Victoria market, with more than 1,000 stalls. If you can't get it here, it's just not available.

Specialty butchers in ankle-length blood-stained aprons shout out their prices on exotic items such as the meat of the female pig (it's more tender than that of the male, according to one hawker).

Seeking some authentic Australian "tucker," or food, I head for the Tjanabi Restaurant, where the Outback theme is done in walls of corrugated iron, upholstery made of burlap sacks and men's and women's toilets fashioned like outhouses.

The menu's 16 entrees include fillet of saltwater crocodile, fried Broome crocodile tenderloin, kangaroo fillet port wine jus, Tasmanian wallaby rump with peppercorn sauce, and emu fillet with quandong sauce.

I play it safe with the garlic prawns.

Some of Victoria's most celebrated residents live a few miles to the south of Melbourne, on Phillip Island, and every night without fail all 2,000 or so of them waddle ashore just after sunset. For about $10, you can view the parade of the penguins from the 4,000-seat stadium, but for about $60, you can join what is called the "Ultimate Penguin Experience."

The dozen of us the night I was there got "rugged up" - that's Australian for dressed warmly - in wet-weather gear and briefed by a park ranger, who then handed us night-vision goggles and headphones. We trundled, kind of penguinlike, into a needle-cold wind until we reached a dune. There we sat on rubber mats, donned our headsets and goggles, and waited, clenched like fists against the cold.

Night came on quickly, and soon the sky was carbonated with stars.

Just as I found the Southern Cross, the penguins showed up in groups of five and six, green and blurry in our night goggles. They shuffled and wobbled across the beach toward their burrows. All the while the ranger kept up her whispered commentary in our headsets:

"They spend their day out at sea, mainly fishing, and they come ashore at night to avoid predators like sea eagles . . . They'll leave again tomorrow morning before sunrise."

Arguably, Victoria's No. 1 attraction is the Great Ocean Road, a relentlessly picturesque, 175-mile stretch between Warrnambool and Torquay that presents magnificent views of the ocean, rain forests, shipwrecks, penguins, whales, seals and the nature-sculptured beauty of unusual rock formations.

Driving is a great way to see Victoria. The initial difficulties of motoring on the left side of the road are more than offset by wide, well-maintained and clearly signed roads, courteous drivers and police who are vigilant about safety, especially speeding and drunken driving.

The most scenic section of the Great Ocean Road is between Apollo Bay and Anglesea. The cliffs arch their backs against the pounding waves, and the Bass Strait, between the vast Southern Ocean and the Tasman Sea, seems to swallow the sky. There is nothing but water between here and Antarctica. But the most interesting stretch is between Cape Otway and Port Fairy; it is known as Shipwreck Coast because 700 or so vessels lie beneath the water here.

"At the height of the Gold Rush in the 1850s, anywhere from 50 to 100 ships would pass by here every day," says Craig Donohoo, cultural manager of the historic Cape Otway Light Station.

"The ships from Europe shortened the five-month journey to Sydney by sailing along Australia's southern coast, threading between Tasmania and the mainland near Melbourne, a perilous route through the rocky Bass Strait. The irony is that many ships went for months without seeing anything but water, only to literally crash into Australia."

The 300-foot-high lighthouse, which was commissioned in 1848, beamed its light as much as 45 miles into Bass Strait, until the lighthouse was closed in 1994. Now a guided tour includes the lighthouse, the light keeper's residence, a workshop and the telegraph station.

The visual highlight of Shipwreck Coast are the Twelve Apostles, natural rock formations jutting out of the sea like high-rise buildings. Wind and wave are relentlessly reshaping the pinnacles - indeed, there are only eight left because the others have collapsed. The views just off the road at cliff's edge are fine, but the best way to appreciate the scene is from one of the helicopters that fly tourists over regularly.

Striding along, Lizzie Corke clasps her hands behind her back and says, "We hope we are living by example here and showing that it is possible to live comfortably and sustainably. We want to encourage other tourism operators . . ." She whirls in mid sentence and raises an admonitory finger: "Mathilda, you are not coming on this walk!"

Mathilda stops and lowers her head. Corke turns, resumes her discourse and we continue our walk. She tells us she awoke at 4 a.m. this day, to bottle-feed a menagerie of orphaned koalas, wallabies, possums and kangaroos - such as Mathilda.

Ever since Lizzie and her partner, Shayne Neal, opened the Cape Otway Centre for Conservation Ecology in 2004, people have been bringing injured and orphaned animals for nurturing.

The self-sustaining center, which adjoins Otway National Park near the wild coastline, is run entirely with solar power and uses only collected rain for water. The couple, both in their mid 20s, built the place, which blends tourism with wildlife education and research. An important part of any visit is walking the miles of nature trails.

Leading our group is Wombat, a part-this, part-that dog whose specialty is spotting wildlife. He stops abruptly and barks, looking directly into a tree where a koala is curled into a sweet ball of sleep.

Behind us, Mathilda is still following at a safe distance.

Midway between the villages of Port Fairy and Tower Hill along the Great Ocean Road is the Tower Hill Reserve, whose manager greets me by introducing himself:

"Tanwarr gnootook Ienyoong Mrloo."

Then he adds: "I just said, "Hello, my name is Jamie Thomas.' "

In addition to his official duties, Thomas is a senior ceremonial leader of the local Aboriginal people, who have lived in this area for thousands of years. Today the reserve is a haven for wildlife, a fascinating ecological site and a showcase for indigenous culture.

The first thing I notice as we set off for a bush walk is that Thomas is carrying a 6-foot-tall stick with a feather pasted on top.

"This is mating season for the emus," he explains, "and the males can get pretty aggressive. They see this feather and they think it's an emu bigger than they are, and they leave you alone."

He pauses, then adds: "They aren't very smart. In fact, they're probably the dumbest animals on Earth."

Next he has a tip on dealing with copperhead snakes. "They are deaf, but they are very sensitive to vibrations, so if you stand still, they will feel less threatened."

He plucks a fat fruit from a tree. "This is a kangaroo apple. If eaten before they ripen, they can be used as a contraceptive. How do we know that? Trial and error over 40,000 years."

- Freelance writer William Ecenbarger, part of the Philadelphia Inquirer team that won the 1979 Pulitzer Prize for its coverage of the Three Mile Island nuclear accident, lives in Lancaster, Pa.

FOR MORE INFORMATION: Check out these Web sites:

Tourism Victoria: www.visitmelbourne.com

Mount Sturgeon Cottages: www.royalmail.com.au and click on "Cottages."

Grampian Personalised Tours: www.grampianstours.com

Philips Island Nature Park penguins: www.penguins.org.au

Cape Otway Light Station: www.lightstation.com

Cape Otway Centre for Conservation Ecology: www.capeotwaycentre.com.au

Helicopter tours: www.gorhelis.com

Tower Hill Reserve: www.worngundidj.org.au

[Last modified January 27, 2006, 09:58:02]