Rainy Seaside Retreat

Between 2nd and 6th of October 2023, Rebecca and I had an opportunity to do what has become our yearly tradition: a holiday to a seaside town. This time we chose Lakes Entrance, and rather than drive the car we caught public transport – buses and trains – to get to and from the town, and walked while there.

The train from Wangaratta arrived in Southern Cross a few hours before the train to Bairnsdale a due to depart, so we did some shopping, got some lunch for Rebecca, and went for a walk in the Docklands area, a km or so from the Southern Cross railway station. The site of what is now the Docklands precinct was originally swamp land became a busy dock area in the 1880s as part of the Port of Melbourne. It a network of wharves, heavy rail infrastructure (including a number of long railway freight sheds adjacent to the Spencer Street station (as Southern Cross was then known) and light industry. As containers became more the norm for shipping traffic, the Docklands area fell into disuse and by the 1990s was virtually abandoned. The construction of Docklands Stadium in the late 1990s attracted further developer interest in the area and in 2000 the urban renewal of the area gathered speed with a number of privately developed areas. After this the Docklands experienced an apartment boom and became a sought-after business address, becoming the location of a number of the national or regional headquarters for banks, retail giants, and government agencies, TV media companies and others. The architecture of the Docklands suburb is a mixture of contemporary and older heritage, and is the home of the Melbourne Star Observation wheel. We limited our exploring to the Victoria Harbour precinct.

Lakes Entrance is a seaside resort and fishing port in eastern Victoria, Australia, between Bairnsdale and Orbost. It is situated approximately 320 kilometres east of Melbourne and is home to a fleet of fishing and pleasure boats and has an artificial channel that connects the Gippsland Lakes to Bass Strait. The town was originally called Cunninghame and the original Post Office that opened on 5th February 1870 carried that name. The town was renamed Lakes Entrance on 1st January 1915. The nearby Gippsland Lakes has the largest number of inland waterways in the southern hemisphere, and pleasure cruises by a number of operators ply their waters. Some of the islands in the lakes are privately owned. The Ninety-Mile Beach ends just to the west of the entrance, and is a big tourist attraction. There are also a number of Gippsland’s national parks that touch the coastline of Lakes Entrance. There are various walking tracks from the main shopping part of the township, as I was to find out during our time there.

The weather was forecast to be good for the first full day we had there, and then maybe 2 full days of rain, not exactly good “beach” weather. Thankfully only one full day was inclement, with lots and lots of rain, and strong winds and the other 2 days was either good and ok weather.

On the Tuesday I did the Entrance Walk, looping back on the main ocean beach to town. The Entrance Walk follows the inlet side of a peninsula that is more or less parallel to the Lakes Entrance main street. The peninsula is accessed via a well built concrete and steel bridge that connects the town with the peninsula and the main ocean beach.

While there was plenty of natural interest on the walk, there was also historical interest. The entrance itself was man-made, because the entrance used to close naturally from time to time, and nearby there are historical relics and a number of historic houses. There are also remnants of the tramway and machinery that was used to build the entrance.

Not to be outdone by the man-made aspects of the entrance walk, nature revealed itself in the form of groups of seals sunning on the rocks, a large number of sea birds perched on the man-made structures, and dolphins swimming in and out of the entrance.

My plan was to meet Rebecca somewhere along the main ocean beach. She didn’t want to do the longer walk that I did, but in reality where she met me on the beach meant her walk wasn’t much shorter than mine – maybe a km or so different.

In the afternoon we booked a 3 hour boat cruise around the Gippsland lakes on this very seaworthy looking vessel.

The SS Minnow it wasn’t, and we didn’t have to worry about our ‘3 hour cruise’ stranding us on some island somewhere in the middle of the ocean, a la, Gilligan’s island. The captain of the vessel gave a running commentary of various things of interest. At the start and end of the cruise, we went into the entrance itself and saw the seals and dolphins close up.

Sitting on the open air rooftop seating area, we saw all 5 types of cormorants in Australia, a pair of Sea Eagles with their nest perched high up in a large tree near the water and one of them bringing a fish to it’s young, and various other types of sea birds including Swans, Pelicans, Spoonbills and plenty of smaller water birds. And then there was the lake side town of Metung, and various inlets and islands that we saw as we floated by. All very interesting. Apparently the water that comes into the lakes on the tide is a different color (a light-ish green), to the normal lakes water color, which is more blue. The captain described how this works in some detail, and pointed out when we had left the lake water and moved onto the tidal inflow.

All the while we were on the cruise we could see and smell the smoke from the bushfires off in the distance, and could see the approaching cold front. Once the cold front hit us, it started to rain and the temperature plummeted so we retreated to the interior of the boat. Along the way, one of the people that runs the cruise started baking scones somewhere in the boat, and so while we saw the various sights, our noses smelled the aroma of baking scones wafting around us. Once the scones were baked they were given to each passenger, along with a home-made berry and cream jam dolloped on top – delicious!

By the time we got back to the township, the rain had set in. And by Wednesday it had intensified to not just rain but rain-and-wind-storms. Not a very pleasant day to be outside. I ventured outside around midday on Wednesday to go for a walk thinking there was a break in the bad weather, but I quickly got drenched, or at least my trousers did – I had a water proof raincoat on which keep most of me fairly dry.

On Thursday, with the weather getting more pleasant and little rain being forecast I ventured out on a longer 10km walk to Kalimna Jetty. Rebecca, though, didn’t venture out, at least not till later in the day. The walk I did went along the town centre side of the North Arm, then across the highway bridge and on to the Kalimna Jetty walk, then looping back on another trail into Kalimna itself that gave good views across to the entrance, lakes and islands. It was a bit windy and cold at times, but at least it didn’t rain, and it was definitely good to be exploring outside again.

And then it was our last night at Lakes Entrance.

Due to the rains, the rivers that empty into the Gippsland Lakes, the Thomson, Mitchell and a few other rivers, were in flood. On the train journey home between Bairnsdale and Melbourne, we could see first hand the flooded rivers and paddocks. There were also some major fires in the Gippsland region the day we traveled to Lakes Entrance, and the day after we arrived there the railway line was closed due to the possibility of fires. But the abundance of rain pretty much took care of them! A real mixed bag of weather and conditions.

On Friday we were up very early to catch the bus to Bairnsdale, then train to Melbourne, followed by a train to Wangaratta and a bus to our home town.