Melbourne Wildlife (The fauna kind!)

Recently my niece and nephew came back to live in Australia after living in Germany and the UK for about 18 years. My brother was also visiting from Germany with his lovely German girlfriend. We wanted to give them a day out with an Australiana feel so decided to go to Studley Park in Kew, Melbourne. Studley Park is part of a huge open area conglomeration made up of various parks, golf courses and other sporting venues. It's hard to believe that in a city as busy as Melbourne, there are still places you can go where you would swear you were out in the country.

The Wikipedia reference for the area states:
'Yarra Bend Park is a 260 hectare (642 acre) park in the Melbourne suburb of Kew. Located 4km north-east of the CBD, it is the largest area of natural bushland left in inner Melbourne. The most notable feature of the park is the Yarra River which flows for 12km through it. The park has two golf courses, a boathouse and a number of cycle and walking trails. It receives approximately 1.5 million visitors per year. '

We started our day at the Studley Park Boathouse. Boat house, swing bridge and bush setting in a lovely valley. What more could you want?! We decided to go for a walk along the river bank and there in one of the trees looking down at us were a family of Tawny Frogmouths. If you've ever been to mainland Europe you will notice that there isn't a lot of fauna, so our guests were suitably impressed.

A little further along the path we were joined by some colourful parrots. We see lots of Rosellas and Galahs etc. but I hadn't seen this variety and wasn't really sure what type it was. Maybe you know?

After our nature walk we went back to the boat shed for some lunch. The park was well patronised with all sorts of people but there was still plenty of room to move. After lunch my brother, his girlfriend, my niece, nephew and son decided that they had had enough of this passive activity and hired a boat and a canoe. My husband and I walked up to the swing bridge and took photos of their endeavours. Swapping from boat to canoe and back again unfortunately resulted in no one falling in. It would have made a great photo.... oh well.

Back in the car we drove further along into the Yarra Bend Park and stopped beside the river to see the most amazing sight. Thousand upon thousand of fruit bats roosting in the gumtrees on the opposite bank. Our overseas visitors were 'gobsmacked' as were we. We just stood there saying things like .."there are sooo many".. and ..."wow".. What else can you say? I had known that there were fruit bats at the Melbourne Royal Botanical Gardens, but because of the devastation they cause to plant life, the bats had been 'moved on'. Now I know where they went!

The day was very successful. Apart from petrol, lunch and boat hire it didn't cost us anything and we were able to give our guests a real slice of Australian wildlife - all within the bounds of a major city.