I haven't made much in the way of inroads into my list of unvisited Victorian national parks on this trip (partly because those in the far northeast are still closed due to fire damage), but today's plan was to tick off one, The Lakes, in the form of the only part of it that's accessible by land - the end of the peninsula beyond Loch Sport. Loch Sport is one of those old-school coastal holiday towns whose population is 800 year-round and ten times that in the summer holidays (all holiday houses - I looked at staying here but the only accommodation was the caravan park), but whose services are definitely more consistent with the year-round population - in January the queue for coffee at the one place I found which sells it must stretch halfway to Sale. (I didn't see anyone younger than myself, although the 2016 Census stats tell me that 24% of the population is under 50 - they must have been hiding).
This was a pretty wild and woolly morning - Wilsons Prom had a wind gust of 158 km/h. It was more like half that here, but there was still plenty of surf up on the lakes and anything with an exposure to the west was to be avoided. I thus settled for a run through the middle of the peninsula to a bay on the other side, on sandy-but-not-too-soft tracks through coastal vegetation - a pretty nice place to run. Took a while to get into it but was starting to enjoy myself at times coming back, although hard work in the last bit which was into the wind, uphill or both.
Made my way home round the southern side of Gippsland, after a side excursion to Balook and the lovely Tarra Bulga forest. I haven't done this route in full before - have been down to the Prom quite a few times, while on the other side, went from Port Welshpool to Sale and on to Canberra in 1992 during the short-lived period that Port Welshpool was the Victorian end of the Seacat, generally known as the Spewcat (a name which Murray Scown, then five, embraced with great enthusiasm when I mentioned it) - it was actually a beautiful trip, past the Prom and various Bass Strait islands, if you weren't too nauseous to notice.
The bit in between was unexplored territory, although I know Toora by reputation as a pioneer in both the erection of wind turbines and the creation of dubious arguments against wind turbines - these days the action for both has moved a bit further east. (There's also a sign on the way out of Wonthaggi objecting to the desalination plant, but I'd suggest that ship has sailed). Steep green hills of grazing land close to the coast reminded me of the other side of the Tasman, and I was thinking someone else thought the same way when I saw a sign entering Foster for
New Zealand Hill (although it appears to have got its name from a mine, presumably one run by a New Zealander).