Back at Mallacoota

The big story at Mallacoota at present is the high water level in the Inlet.  It was measured on the morning of 17 July at 1.42 m.  Still rising a little as the water flows down the Rivers.  At the measured level this event has raised the level by 80cm.  With a rough measure of size of the Inlet as 25 sq km each 4 cm is equivalent to 1,000,000 cubic metres of water.  A million cubic metres is 400 Olympic swimming pools so this even has, for the benefit of readers of News Corpse, resulted in an additional 8,000 Olympic pools getting added to the Inlet! 

The next few images come from our morning walk along Lakeside Drive (or as one resident said now renamed "Lake Drive").  This is the shared path at Stingray Point.

Close to Mullet Creek.

On the way to the Karbeethong ramp

It now takes a bit of knowledge to work out where to launch a boat!

The water level in the fringing vegetation is such that a Lyrebird had taken to the trees!

Later in the day we went for a stroll on Bastion Point.  There was a mighty Surf running.

Looking inland Develings Inlet is rising rapidly.  I suspect the shoreline is about 100 metres from where it used to be.

The low pressure system which has caused this roughness has dumped a lot of seaweed up the beach.  Surprisingly there is very little other marine life with it on this occasion.

The big surprise was seeing a European Goldfinch gleaning on the beach. This is only the 23rd eBird record of the species in the Mallacoota area.

Some unusual barnacles were attached to a length of plastic pipe that had washed up.

This jelly was intriguing as it didn't seem to be structured in the way of normal jellyfish and was an attractive golden colour.  Possibly an egg mass of some description? 

Hopefully this gives an idea of how narrow the barrier is at present, and how little height of sand is left.  A backhoe has apparently been ordered for Monday.

The dunes are getting inundated.

There were masses of these "things" washed up.  I thought the older, browner ones looked like muesli bars.  An alternative thought was condom!  With all the little spikes that would be interesting!

We haven't had a Pelican photo for a while.

I decided to go to Fisherman's Point to check for seabirds.  The swells were roaring in, but any seabirds were well out to sea: the few Gannets and Albatross I could ID were at least 1 km out.

The next image is not exactly crisp.  However the Gabo Lighthouse is 17 km away across a very rough sea so that is to be expected.  It says something about the state of the sea that the breakers are so clearly visible at this distance .

Coming back I thought this image from Betka Beach gave a nice comparison of the immature Pacific Gull and the Silver Gulls.

When back in town I always drive slowly along Betka road as a Peaceful Dove has been seen (and photographed) there.  Not by me it hasn't.  However is was good to see a comparison shot of female (left) and male (right) Common Bronzewings.