Hidden valley (2)

We had enjoyed a busy Fathers' Day. It was getting late in the afternoon, the light was fading, but we decided to look for another view (see previous blog entry) of the roadworks for the new freeway over the Moorabool River at Fyansford. After parking the car at a likely spot and walking about a kilometre we came to the west bank of the river and saw this below us. Success at last! A newly-arrived Clamorous Reedwarbler was singing loudly in the vegetation below us, ducks were swimming on the river and all around us birds were calling. A pair of Black-fronted Dotterels were on the edge of a water-storage dam for the roadworks. All this proves something. Maybe it is evidence that wildlife will fill niches whatever is going on around them?

Hidden valley

It's actually quite difficult to get a view of Geelong's second river, the Moorabool.
This river has had a hard life – in the past it has been diverted because of the huge limestone quarry for the cement works at Fyansford (since closed but the council has just approved a big housing development on the site), dammed at Lal Lal for Ballarat's water supply, weed-infested and polluted with salt, agricultural sprays and fertilisers. Upstream a lot of restoration work is being done by landholders guided by Landcare and the Corangamite Catchment Management Authority, but very little water actually runs down the river at present because of the dam and the drought. The very wide and deep valley tells a story of past floods. Since European occupation there have been a number of devastating floods resulting in loss of property and stock.
Now there are major roadworks at Fyansford where the Moorabool meets the Barwon River. Geelong is finally getting a ring road – a bypass to take the beach-goers and transports around the city instead of through it. To build it the engineers have had to design bridges to cross the two rivers.
I set out to get a photo and found myself in courts, no-through roads and suburbia, finally finding a promising spot near Dunwinnie Crt in Hamlyn Heights and climbing though a fence to get to the edge of the road excavations. The photo below shows the start of the bridging of the Moorabool River.
Travellers in a year or so will get a completely different view of Geelong, or rather, the western edge of Geelong, and the bonus will be views of a previously hidden valley.