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After Mansfield we drive to the south, to the forests of the Great Dividing Range again. After the real disaster, the great fires of last December where As far as you could see, only burned forests, for tens of kilometres were visible, now we came to an area without a trace of fire. The forest were lush and build up in layers.

, Absolutely interesting plant, like this blue plant with berry like flowers.

On this location this flowering plant was abundant, but earlier and later we did never see this plant.
We make stop to make a trip trough the rainforest, fascinating as always with the fern trees.

We continued our trip and made a walk though the impressive rainforest. Under the fern trees it is so dark that

few plants can survive here.
We continued our tour to the upper part of the Yarrah river. Some 50 years ago a dam was build here and the location where the labour force was temporarily housed, was transformed in a camping. Some buildings were here. As there is power from the dam and lots of fresh water, these facilities were available. On a huge terrain only a few campers were here. We made a stroll through the rainforest and we noted in Tasmania that the trees were higher here than the giant trees in Tassie. And they were very high.

The rainforest was build in various layers, here a picture of the lower layer

The Yarrah river formed a romantic little river

with an amazing colour scheme of all shades of green and brown

It is a real romantic area.

Mariska was fascinated of all that interesting trees and plants.

Here is an area covered with the common ground fern (Culcita dubia)

the fishbone Water-fern (Blechnum nudum), the bats wing fern (Histiopteris incisa) and Mother shield-fern (polystichum proliferum) abundant available.

Beautiful was the interaction between the creatures in the moderate temperature rainforest.

The forest floor was even interesting

We kept making pictures of the magic of the forest

The camping, operated by the National park was enormous.

We chosed an isolated location under a tree

In this remote area, the night was very dark without lights, we could see the Milky Way and even a big nebula

Next morning we paid a visit to the dam

and had a good overview of the reservoir. It was for drinking water of Melbourne, and the level was visibly much lower than required, highlighting the water problem.

Then we continue to the highest point about 40 kms east of Melbourne. The trip was awesome and few tourist came here to enjoy the magic of the mountains. From 1250m we have a good view over the forest

From here we could look in the direction of Melbourne and surroundings

At 1250m high the trees were smaller than at a lower altitude.

Interesting was how the forest

was structured.

This was in fact the last peak of our rip to Australia, but the forest at lower altitude is more dense, so we decided to take another walk in the rainforest, between the giant Mountain Ash trees. Here are some impressions of that detour

. With a different exposure it looks different on the picture

The light plays through the rainforest, that gives incredible effects

WEE enjoy the forest quite a lot

and take the opportunity to make pictures for the last time we are here. It is indeed impressive.

Even a dead tree has its charm

Mariska enjoys it visibly.

Still some pictures and then we have to leave for Melbourne.

We leave the mountains ans set course to Melbourne. A huge town, for 50 kms we drive through this enormous metropole.

The plan is to go to the caravan park close to the Britz campervan company, rent an apartment and pack our luggage and to clean the car.

The camping however is fully booked, so we have to travel another 30 km to a van park west of Melbourne. Next morning we travel to an other well equipped caravan park and rent a bungalow there.

We clean out the car, pack our baggage and bring the campervan in showroom condition.

Next morning we drop off the campervan, get back the 5000$ bond as we had no damage. Not insuring saved us 2300$ but you have to drive very carefully.

We took the taxi to the airport. took off at 1600 local time and were next morning 06.28 in Amsterdam. That is within 2 minutes of the travel schedule we got in November.

We took the train to our home and enjoyed our memories of a great trip. \

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