Dazz & Leanne's travelling adventures

Our first stop in the Mitta Valley was the Katie Peters Reserve on the Mitta Mitta River. We chose a spot away from the river to get the best solar, but took our chairs down to the water each afternoon.

Laughing Kookaburras

White-browed Scrubwren

Austalian Magpies (Black-backed) (female & juvenile)

Red-browed Finch

Superb Fairy-wrens (male & female)

Sacred Kingfisher

Noisy Friarbird

We went for a drive up to Lake Dartmouth, and when we read the sign boards we discovered it was far bigger than what we thought. It has a capacity of almost 4000 gigalitres, whereas Lake Hume is about 3000 and the Menindee Lakes are about 1800 gigalitres.

There are nine 15m "cascades" below the spillway.

The wall is 180m, making it the highest dam in Australia. This is the view down the valley from the middle of the wall.

As we were leaving Katie Peters Reserve we noticed a kite. We pulled over and jumped out of the car and watched as it hunted. There were at least three kites, including a juvenile hoping for a meal, but we didn't see them catch anything. Unfortunately they were a little far away for the photos to be crisp.

Black-shouldered Kite

Our second camp in the Mitta Valley was Lightning Creek, which is actually on Snowy Creek.

There were some old mining relics around.

The weather was perfect for a campfire, and since it's not a national park we could collect firewood, so I decided I would pull some sausages out of the freezer to cook on the fire the following night. We drove up a side track along the creek to collect wood.

While we were sitting around the fire a 4WD pulled up and a guy asked us if we'd like some deer meat... turns out someone he knew had shot a deer and didn't want it all, so told this bloke to come and get some. It was far more than what he wanted too, so he was giving it away to other people who were camped along the creek. I said "why not?!" and he pulled out this rear leg! I put the sausages back in the freezer and decided I'd make a venison red wine stew the following night instead of sausages.

It was very tasty, but in spite of three hours of slow cooking, it was still a bit tough. We decided it was probably a bit too fresh and hadn't hung for long enough.

There were not a lot of smaller birds at this camp, probably because there were quite a few currawongs.

Pied Currawong Race nebulosa (immature)

Common Blackbird

Yellow Admiral Butterfly

Bogong Moth

I have looked for wildlife at night a few times since I bought my new torch but had not found anything. I don't use it when there are other people around as it's quite bright and I don't want to annoy anyone. I'm also often in bed before it's dark enough to use! On our first night at Lightning Creek, however, there was no one else in our area and we were sitting by the fire, so it was a perfect opportunity to have another go. At first I didn't see anything, but then I spotted something shiny in a tree. I had it on the red light, so it wasn't disturbing the animal, but this also meant I couldn't really tell what it was. Dazz went and got his camera and set it up and then I flipped it over to white for a photo. This was his first attempt, and the iso was a bit high, so it was quite grainy. Once he realised he changed some settings and tried again, but it was looking the other way so this was the best photo we got.

Southern Greater Glider

We were curious about the road from Mitta Mitta to Omeo as an alternative way to eastern Victoria with the caravan, so decided to do a day trip to investigate. It was a pretty drive, and not a bad road, but there were some narrow bits with steep drop offs where it would not be pleasant to meet anything coming the other way if we had the caravan.

We had lunch in Omeo, but didn't take any photos as we'd already seen the sights last year. There weren't really any lookouts along the road, but we pulled over in a few places for photos on the way back, and took some from the car when there wasn't anywhere to stop.

At one of the pull-off areas where we stopped to take a photo of the view across the mountains we discovered this little waterfall that went under the road.

There were a lot of motorcycles on the road, on their way to Phillip Island for the MotoGP, which made the drive quite stressful at times as some of them hung their heads over the centre line as they cornered. These ones went past while I was looking at the waterfall.

Big River at the Big River Bridge Campground

The old St Mary’s Catholic Church is all that remains at Granite Flat, a gold mining settlement from the 1860s.

Our last camp in the Mitta Valley was The Mill, just outside Mitta Mitta. We stopped there briefly on the way up to Lightning Creek and there were lots of birds, so Dazz was hoping for some good photos. There was also a really pretty forest behind the campground on the way down to the river.