We see Hamilton

 No, not the musical: the town in Western Victoria.

I will begin with the excellent view from our accommodation as the morning sun hits Mount Wargurri.

When we arrived in Dunkeld a nice volunteer lady at the Information Centre had shown Frances a few walks around the town.  One of these went on a series of dirt streets around a walled off garden.  There are a number (I think 12) of gates in the wall through which the curious can peer in.  Here is a gate and a section of the sandstone wall. 

This is a view through the gate.

From a conversation on one of our walks it emerged that this is the holiday house of a Melbourne QC (now of course a KC).  Joining this information with various other things we came across said KC owns a lot of property around town including the posh hotel and restaurant in the main drag.  The Kitchen Garden (across the road from the walled garden) provides the fruit and veg for the restaurant.  One could draw an allusion to the Pom concept of Lord of the Manor.

Birding was not too bad.  Looking into one of the trees in the walled garden I spotted a Purple-crowned Lorikeet (my second ever sighting of the species)which was the unphotographed Bird of the Day.  Then we came across a few Emus.

And some Long-billed Corellas (there seems to be a flock of about 100 of these around the area).

We walked this route (or a variant of it) each morning and every time we were impressed by this old River Red Gum (to my surprise still known as Eucalyptus camadulensis - perhaps the taxonomists have their daftness gene satisfied by saying it comes from a town near Rome, Italy and haven't need to change the genus to Corymbia).  Many of the trees were burnt in a fire that smashed the town in 1944, but some big old ones are left.

Acacia paradoxa

We then set off in the direction of Hamilton with the aim of checking several sites listed by the Hamilton Field Naturalists Society.   Here is the approximate route we followed with some of the sites we visited marked.

Our main references for plants in the field were "Wildflowers of the Grampians" by Ken Woodcock (published by the Community Association of Halls Gap and "Hamilton Region Nature Guide Second Edition 2020" by the Hamilton Field Naturalists.  Both are helpful, but the Wildflowers book only has a selection of the flowers we found (fair enough, a full field guide and key would need a truck) and the Index to flowers in the Nature Guide is only sorted by common name.

Back at home I used "Bush Beauties  The Wild Orchids of Victoria, Australia" by Gary Backhouse to sort out the orchids in various sites.

The first site we stopped at (1 above) was adjacent to the Back Creek Reserve.  Parking was somewhat of an issue as it was obvious the drain about 2.5m off the blacktop was replete with water.  When we got out of the car, so was everything else in the area!  We were delighted to find some Bulbine bulbosa (Bulbine lillies) flowering in the area between the road and Reserve itself.

The big attraction here was Rabbit Ears which to our surprise turned out to be a Sun Orchid.  There were quite a few evident.  The colour was not as vivid as I expected.

There was a good flow in Back Creek!

Attractive reflections in a dam beside the Creek: I suspect this has a role in fire fighting!

We stopped at Krauses Swamp (2) and scored a few good birds including a Blue-billed Duck, several Australian Shelduck, a nesting Black Swan and this White-necked Heron.  The Heron was weird as it kept waving its neck back and forth - sort of like Heron meets Bollywood.  Presumably it was stirring the mud with its feet to reveal frogs and other munchies.

We also stopped at Lake Linlithgow (3) which was quite large and most of the birds were a long way off.  No obvious waders or strange ducks so we moved on.

Getting in to Hamilton we had a drive round and found the Visitor Centre.  They knew nothing about a brewery but did direct us to a pie shop.  The pie was rather ordinary, rating 4.5 on my scale, primarily because used mainly ground beef and not very tasty.

Although not listed in the Field Nats book we went for a walk in the Botanic Gardens to eat our lunch.  It was quite obvious why it was listed: the designer - William Guilfoyle - was of the plant collecting breed and everywhere was set up to display exotic plants.  In the following image are a Sequoia, some palms and a wisteria: OK of its type but of limited interest to us.  

We walked around a wetland to the West of the town but there was little visible except Reed Warblers  so we went North to Kanawalla Flora Reserve (4) where the Field Nats were rehabilitating a disused railway line.  Not a great deal of flowering stuff nor many birds.  A Bluetongue played possum.

I went back to the walled garden to try to get a snap of the Lorikeet but it was not available.  The local psycho Magpie swooped me 5 times while its relatives fought each other!