After 2 miserable rainy days, we had a bright sunny day for the walk. 5 of us met up at the Nunnock Swamp campground. There was plenty of water laying around, but the roads and tracks were mainly dry.
The swamp was a large shallow lake with many reed beds. We started out along the western part of the walking track, and on to the southern lookout. Very different from the normal bush that we visit, and large numbers of fungi, ranging from some that looked like weathered foam polystyrene to ones that looked like coral. After the lookout we continued with the rest of the walking track and back to the northern lookout, where a useful information board briefly described the importance of the swamp as a water storage which fed rivers ranging from the Bemboka River to tributaries of the Snowy River. Given that it was a swamp, there were no places we could sit to rest, so we continued with the next part of our walk.
We followed to road (fewer fungi along here) and a maintenance track to get onto the looped walking track to Alexanders Hut. It started with a long section of steel mesh track over water-sodden grassland, through a fairly short section of bush then on to the hut, by which it was time for a break and lunch. For anybody who hasn’t been there, the hut is in a beautiful location and can readily be reached by car, it definitely deserves a visit.
After lunch we continued along the walking track, with many magnificent trees plus stumps of even larger trees which had been felled before the area had been proclaimed a national park. Again, it was different from the bush we usually walk through, but then in many places the bush has a distinct character, even if it is hard to describe it. Walking loop completed, we followed the defined track back to the Nunnock campground. Sticking to the defined tracks is pretty important in this area, as both the swamp and the grasslands are sensitive to disturbance. Unfortunately, there were copious feral pig diggings over most of the grasslands.
Despite copious fungi, it was too late in the season to see ghost mushrooms around the swamp, and in the grasslands we only found one remnant of a sea-star stinkhorn. We didn’t see many animals, either, except for a large mob of kangaroos towards the end – they did not appear to be happy with our intrusion. Had the day been misty, we might have looked out for mysterious creatures emerging from the swamp, but it was a beautiful sunny day. Overall, a fairly easy walk through an area very different from where we normally go, and enjoyed by all of us.