Apres le deluge, c'est moi

 Let us begin by quoting Louis XV of Frog.  And I got the sex correct, unlike a writer for Punch in the 1960s who was delighted to find "La deluge" was anagram of De Gaulle, before discovering his error.

Rather than the cheese-eaters I am referring to a couple of walks in the Mallacoota area after a rather soggy couple of days.

The first of these was the Betka River loop, including a small extension to Point Difficult.  There was little to record on the River loop as all that could be seen most of the time was 3 m high Acacia and Kennedia.  Why am I not reassured that there is nothing to burn?  I suspect that will change after a couple of 35C days in February.

The scenery became more interesting when we got to the clifftops.  Here is the view East from Point Difficult.

With a reasonable wind blowing the foam was getting plastered well up the cliffs.  We had come across a little being blown over the track.

We could see this bloke at Betka.  I spoke with him afterwards and he was just filming- mainly his Dobermann running in the froth.  He said he'd had to remember where rocks were submerged in the foam!

At beach level.

The Betka estuary. with the quite high River running out on the West side (closer to the camera) and waves bringing in more foam on the East.

This was the situation on Lakeside Drive near Mullet Creek on 10 December.  The heavy rain and high tide  were getting Bottom Lake up a bit.

We passed by around noon on 11 December and the water was now up to the level indicated by the green line.  Note that this rise is happening with the mouth of the Inlet wide open!

We were on our way to the Narrows for a walk in the rain (now just steady drizzle).  The high water level caused a bit of a scramble near the start.

The first new bridge is showing that it could have been made a bit longer and higher (the gauge at the wharf is at 0.56m, so about a metre below where it can end up with the mouth closed!)

The first fallen tree (after about 1km) was negotiated.

This one, mainly a large Exocarpos cupressiformis that had got in the way of a falling gum tree branch, after 2 km caused abandonment.

There wasn't as much blossom around as we had seen on other recent walks.  According to iNaturalist this is Ozothamnus obcordatus.

The grass seedheads were attractive.

So was this Azure Kingfisher which flew in front of us for a while.

2 White-faced Herons were being friendly, but not quite friendly enough to come as a breeding record.

Here is a nice in-focus image of a blade of grass.  It would of course have been a more interesting shot if my camera had focused on the raindrop covered snake in the background.  Or if I had realised that some adjustment was needed, but it was raining and the small camera is not waterproof so I didn't want to 💬 about.