Portland

I've had a Family Parks voucher for a free night in my wallet since I renewed our membership last time we stayed at Cotton Tree almost two years ago. A few weeks ago I decided I needed to make an effort to work out where I could use it, so checked the website and discovered there are not very many member parks anymore, but there is one in Portland. We were planning to stay in the Portland area for a couple of days before a family wedding south of Ballarat, so that worked out well. The park itself wasn't very flash, and there wasn't much of a beach to walk along, but the view from above the rock wall was lovely.

Whimbrel

Black-faced Cormorant

Little Wattlebird

Last time we were in Portland we didn't walk along the beach or around the port, so I was keen to explore that area a bit. The beach was quite pretty, and the water was very clear.

There was a great view of the port from the breakwater. We had seen the pilot and tugs go out to this ship the previous afternoon to bring it in to port and it was being loaded with logs.

Even though we had seen the gannets last time we were here we wanted to go back so Dazz could take photos with his new camera and bird lens. We were both really disappointed, though, as there was a bit of haze rising from the vegetation, which made everything blurry, through both the binoculars and the telephoto lens. This was as good as it got...

There was another guy hanging around the lookout who started chatting to us and he suggested we would need to get closer, but we knew the view from the fence was not as good because it was too low, even though it was closer. He asked if we were going to be around at 5:30pm because that was when the volunteer opened the gate and took people into the area, but we didn't want to hang around that long. After a few more comments and a rattling of keys we realised he was the volunteer! He had been waiting for some friends and they hadn't shown up, so he offered to take us in. 

He was a wealth of knowledge and also pointed out a single Cape Gannet (the one in the centre of this photo with the more pronounced blue eye and black "mascara") among the rest of the Australasian Gannets. Its call was also quite different.

The rest of the colony lives out on the island.

The volunteer also told us that their local elephant seal was on the next beach around at the moment, so we stopped there on our way home. Unfortunately he was sleeping soundly and didn't stir at all while we were there.