A Visit to Wurdi Youang / You Yangs

We took off on an adventure to Wurdi Youang / You Yangs. This mountain range isn’t the biggest, but it’s wild, accessible and bursting with historical and cultural importance. It’s an incredible place. We started by doing a loop, hoping to see interesting things to photograph. We weren’t disappointed.

On the outside, abandoned in a paddock was a caravan that looked older than I am. It had lost a few windows and looked a bit wobbly on its remaining wheels. In the distance I could hear gunshots from a nearby shooting range.

I took a few moments to take a selection of snaps on my analogue film camera.

From there we explored the outskirts of Mount Rothwell Conservation Reserve, a private property making great strides in reintroducing native species to the area that have been lost over time. The property is fenced and monitored to keep invasive predators, such as feral cats and foxes from entering.

We also dropped into Serendip Santuary, a wildlife conservation area near Lara in Victoria. It advertised kangaroos, wallabies and pademelons, an animal so elusive in mainland Australia that even autocorrect doesn’t recognise it.

On this particular adventure we only spotted wallabies and birds — but I have no regrets! Clearly we’ll have to come back to track down the species we missed.