The Cascades and Turpins Falls...

Forgive me dear reader for I have sinned. It’s been over a month since my last confession. I’ve been a bit busy this past month and after fulfilling the time quotas I have for being annoying to my better half, taking naps, inhaling popcorn and generally being lazy, there’s often no time for writing.
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But here I am, back to tell you about the time I went to Metcalfe and discovered The Cascades. I say “discovered”, but I don’t mean in the sense that a great explorer might have discovered an uninhabited island. Oh no....it was very clear someone had been here before me.  Picnic tables!

Well, this is mighty purty!

​Metcalfe is a tiny township of about 300 people on the Coliban River in central Victoria. It’s been around since the gold rush days but now its main commercial activity is grazing. The Cascades is a part of the river that is partially blocked by boulders of every size, creating cascading falls of water, rock pools, streams and reed swamps.

I scrambled around the rocks like a demented Teletubbie for an hour, then headed towards some picnic tables to partake of my lunch. I hadn’t heard or seen anything except mozzies and butterflies so I was day dreaming about apocalyptic nonsense where I was the sole survivor on the planet. I was asking myself the hard questions like how could I make the water safe to drink, how soon before I was no longer vegetarian, and how do you grow coffee beans, when I heard a sound to my right.
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I swear I only jumped a little bit and the little shrieking noise might have been my boots protesting at me landing on the ground again post jump, but I was quite delighted to find this little chap searching out some tucker. 

Awwww…..if I wasn’t vegetarian, I could’ve eaten him!

After watching him for a while and scoffing my sandwich, I decided to have another crack at Turpins Falls in Metcalfe East. The last time I went there, the path was impassable due to landslip.  This time I was able to get to the viewing platform without any problems. No time to go on a further scramble though, as the light was starting to fade, so I hightailed it up the hill and headed home.

Turpins Falls....falling