The Curvy Yarra and Flying Foxes

I was beating my head a bit with some of my work and the afternoon looked sunny so I headed out for a solid walk to clear the coffers and get to new thoughts and get some exercise.  I had been wanting to explore the trails along the Yarra River near my house, and when I did some quick research, I realized the park with the colony of flying foxes I had visited on my last trip was really not that far.  This walk was AWESOME and exactly what I needed at the time!

Here is the route I took, nearly all along paths and trails, and like instant-wilderness in this pretty big city.

The walk led out of my neighborhood, across the Eastern Highway out of town, and immediately joined up with the Main Yarra Trail, a pedestrian/bike corridor running along the river.  It wound through some parks, right next to the Kew Billabong (an old river oxbow, essentially a floodplain wetland where the river has redirected and left it's old channel), then along the slow flat muddy river that is the Yarra!

The Yarra nearby my house, across which is a golf course. Lots of little birds hunting fish here, spotting divers was pretty common!

Along the main trail, heavily used by commuting cyclists, folks with knobbier tires had created fun offshoot mountain bike paths into the surrounding hills.  The trail ran through several open areas for dogs and peoples, near other housing areas, and finally to the Yarra Bend park where I left pavement for more of a hike.

A sign at the entrance to Yarra Bend park, formerly occupied by aboriginals. Wominjeka wurundjeri beek, indeed!

Yarra Bend park is a SWEET piece of nature within the city.  It is essentially a peninsular area bounded by the highway and a near 180-degree bend in the river.  Trails run around the perimater and up onto the highpoint, and I stuck to the perimeter to catch the river views.  The trail ran up and down from the river along a fairly steep ridge.  There were some great houses on the other side of the river, really cool architecture that is making me realize how similar this city really is to Portland, Oregon, with so much abundant nature mixed in with older Victorian architecture and newer modern and funky.

I believe this was a kingfisher, but I can be pretty terrible at bird-spotting and ID. 

Pretty scene at the bend with a park on the other side, a hillside barbecue restaurant, and rowboat rental.

Cool geology on the ridge trail, lots of upheaved sedimentary rock with crazy weathering and flaking.

It's hard to convey from pictures, but the trees here are really nice. Eucalypts often have smooth or peeling (stringy!) bark and when you can smell the leaves from time to time (maybe akin to cottonwood or kind of desert sage-y) it is AMAZING!

So the trail wound for a while along the river, under highway passes with cool graffiti (future blog post forthcoming!), and then along a really awesome section with a high wall up to my left and natural woods on the opposite side of the river.  REALLY nice walk on a sunny day.  I started rounding another bend and I knew I was getting close to the main attraction, the Flying Foxes!

Tree just FULL of roosting bats!

Nearly every tree in a quarter mile stretch of the river in the park here was full of bats.  It was AWESOME!

So there are signs to let you know you are approaching bat country and to let you know they are totally safe and non-confrontational (unless you find one on the ground which is a sign of disease and to be avoided).  Then you round a bend and see your first treeful and it is kind of AWESOME!  And then you keep walking and you realize every tree in the vicinity is FULL of them and you are about to walk directly underneath some of them!  WHOA!

HELLO!  From Un Downder!

Why you lookin' at me?  I'm NEKKID here!

There are SO MANY bats that it gets to be a bit unnerving even for me as they are hanging relatively low in the trees.  They are so funny to watch and listen to as there are many squabbles and chirping and chatting and a bit of screeching too.  They are mostly resting, but watching them move through the trees with their grip-hooks is super cool, and when one is occasionally inspired to flight, it is truly awesome to witness as they are pretty large flying mammals!  I thought it might smell pretty bad with so many concentrated animals, but it had a really pleasant eucalypty sweetness.  If that is gross, I am sorry, I am just a creepy bat-sniffer.

Bat flight is tricky to capture for an unskilled photog with a point-and-shoot on high zoomage.

Spotted some canoes once I came to the main park again and now I REALLY want to rent one while I am here and see the bats from the water!

Signage.  I love signage.

My walk continued back towards the house, linking pathways between parks, parkways, and neighborhoods.  It was a KILLER 6 mile loop from my door and back and I will definitely be taking Kara on the loop when she is here!

Park along the trails where Charlie would be happy to know he could run FREE!!!

View of Melbourne CBD from park.