We took a couple of breaks along the way, firstly at Sale, once a river port with ocean access. We vaguely took a look around for the historic Sale swing bridge over the Latrobe River, but we couldn't find it. As we were a bit pressed for time and the weather was crook, we did not linger. Here is a link to a time lapse video of the bridge in action. Later when our LE friend told of the location, I realised we passed it when were amused by the sat nav device having us driving in a paddock and the image of the car doing 360 degree spins. We were driving on a newly opened road.
This is the local shire offices. Note the sticking out cafe window with people eating at a table.
Latrobe River at the Port of Sale. I am sure it would look better in the sunshine.
An old pub and I guess with the lower storeys being more austere than the top storey, the top was added later.
This is a very fine court house, still being used for the purpose. S'cuse the raindrop.
Our friend in LE is an artist and when I described the work we viewed a Bairnsdale art gallery to her, she described it as naive art. There were many similarly colourful works, but this one took my fancy.
We travelled through the town of Swan Reach to reach Lakes Entrance. The town name was familiar to me as the town was the home of prolific letter writer to The Age newspaper, Constance E Little. She later moved to Eaglehawk, a suburb of Bendigo and continued writing until nearly the time of her death in 2009. Media organisation Crikey paid tribute to here and author of The Resident Judge of Port Phillip posted about her here.
Once settled in at LE, our friend took us for a tour of the town, beginning with this remarkable house. If it hadn't been pissistantly raining, I would have left the sanctuary of the car and taken more photos.
Will the rain ever stop? It must be a nice view on a fine day. While the tourist and commercial part of Lakes Entrance is quite flat, many houses are built on the steep hills behind the flat shore area, as is our friend's abode. Most are focused towards the lakes for the view and it can seem a little peculiar to drive along the residential streets and see what are like the backs of houses.
This is the man made entrance from the wild seas of Bass Strait to the extensive salt water lakes. Tourism and commercial fishing are the town's livelihood and the entrance gives fishers easy access to the open sea. A quick look at a map indicates that the lakes are not open to the sea anywhere else, so if this entrance was man made, how did the water come and go from the lakes in times past? The entrance has to be constantly dredged to prevent it silting up.
The three us battled gale force winds, rain and eventually salt spray to view the open beach up close via a pedestrian and emergency vehicle causeway. We planned to join a lake cruise tomorrow. The damn weather better improve. Grey photos are not thrilling me.