At The Prom

Wilsons Promontory National Park is one of my favourite places - some people have been insightful enough to suggest that it could be my second home! I think I have spent almost 30 nights there this year alone!

We/I normally spent time there in the winter - it's much less crowded than the summer, and the wildlife seems to be more visible. The truth be told, even in the summer you can escape the crowds by walking more than a few kms away from the honey pot/hub of Tidal River.

So this was a rare spring visit, caused by the need to rebook a winter family trip that never happened. Rather than the whole family, it was just Sal and I this time. We were joined by rather windy weather, more than a few hours of rain, a few brief peaks of sunshine and a good deal of wild life.

One of the more unusual sights was the number of 'Blue-Bottle' jelly fish that had washed up on the beach. This species - also called Portuguese Man o'War - is not actually a true jellyfish, but a complicated colony with each part of the 'jelly fish' being a different type of zooids.

This following explains this better than I can!

'Bluebottles differ from true jellyfishes in several ways. The gas-filled float supports a number of specialised tentacles, which are actually members of a complicated colony. The individual members, or 'zooids', cooperate to form what looks to us like one animal-a jellyfish. Some zooids are specialised for stinging and capturing fishes and other marine animals, some are specialised for eating prey, and some are the reproductive members of the colony. Even the gas float itself is a modified colony member. The floats are of two sorts-ones that face left and others that are angled toward the right. This means that the same wind will push the two variations in different directions, avoiding all the colonies becoming washed up on the beach and dying.'

You can read more about these creatures here.