The Lakes, and the Croajingolong National Park

We headed east resolutely and aimed for the Lakes District. These are 3 huge inland fresh water lakes into which 5 rivers flow enroute to the sea. In actual fact they are really big lagoons, but are the biggest fresh water expanses of fresh water in the Australia, and support a huge fishing industry and tourism. As we passed a little town called Bairnsdale we stopped off at the Catholic Church of St Mary’s as we had been told that it was worth a visit. The church was not huge, and was about 150 yrs old and big for a small town with soaring ceilings and alcove over the altar. But what made it special were the frescos decorating the ceilings and walls. An Italian artist had come out to Australia after WW1 and during the depression had to find work. The local priest offered him a job to paint the ceiling of the church and this he did..the whole ceiling is covered with murals of saints, angels, scenes from the Bible etc. The Altar area had depictions of the judgement and heaven..very impressive. It was not the Sistine Chapel, but very inspiring none the less.
We drove by the main town of Lakes Entrance intending to stop further along the road and return the next day. However we decided it was too touristy and that we had seen what we needed to see and so pushed on towards the NSW border. The whole south eastern corner of Victoria is covered by National Park called the Croajingolong and is a wilderness coast. It covers a huge area and most of it has never been cleared or logged so is untouched. Only a few roads penetrate into the temperate rain forests to the coast, and the whole area is thick and wild. We stayed at a little fishing village called Bemm River where the river flows into a huge lagoon, and went for a walk into the forests on the few overgrown tracks to the river banks. We heard and saw lots of bird life, but not much fauna (most of the Australian wildlife is nocturnal) except for FLIES! We also drove to the beach past the lagoon on a rutted track and then had to scramble through thick overgrown bush to get to the beach which was utterly beautiful and completely deserted...it is called the 90 mile beach and you feel like you are the only person to ever have walked on it. We decided to try our hand at fishing for Bream in the river with what they told us was the local fish delicacy..sand worms. These sea creatures are dug out of the sand using a small prawn or cockle as temptation before they peep out and are nabbed by the experienced sand wormer. They look disgusting..small red/orange things with lots of wriggling legs and big mouths...ugh. Anyhow, the Bream were not that interested, but we had lots of fun anyway. As we sat on the banks in this isolated spot, every now and then a huge fish (18 inches plus long) which we were told were some kind of mullet would suddenly LEAP out of the water quite a height and then flop back into it with a huge splash. Not sure why, probably to catch the mossies and flies. This happened randomly every couple of min or so, and we had great fun trying to predict with the camera where the next splash would be. It rained most of the time, but we still managed to see quite a bit.
And so to Canberra.....