After packing up at the Verandah Swamp Wildlife Reserve, Marija and I headed back into Dimboola and went to the Victoria Hotel for a meal.  The hotel is a very impressive building and was built in 1924.

After tea, we had a quick drive around DImboola which has a number of historic buildings.  This includes the old National Bank of Australia building which was built in 1909 in flamboyant Art Nouveau style and the former Victoria Coffee Palace.

The former Victoria Coffee Palace

The old National Bank

We then decided to head out to the Little Desert National Park VKFF-0291.  Marija had never activated this park, so the activation was focussed around Marija getting 10 contacts to qualify the park for VKFF in the World Wide Flora Fauna (WWFF) program.

Above:- Map showing the location of the Little Desert National Park.  Map courtesy of Protected Planet.

We chose the Horseshoe Bend campground as our operating spot.  This is a beautiful spot on the banks of the Wimmera River.

The campground was alive with birdlife including White-plumed honeyeaters, Red-rumped parrots, Eastern Rosellas, Yellow tailed Black Cockatoos.

There were also plenty of Western Grey kangaroos out for an evening graze.

We found 7.130 clear and I placed up a spot for Marija on parksnpeaks.  It didn’t take long and Marija had a mini pile-up going.  First in the log was Ken VK3UH, followed by Scott VK4CZ, and then George VK4GSF.  Contact number ten, qualifying the park for VKFF, came just 6 minutes into the activation, with a QSO with Ross VK7ALH.

A few QSOs later and Marija had her first Park to Park in the log for this activation, a contact with Peter VK3ZPF/p who was activating the Kurth Kiln Regional Park VKFF-0971.

It took Marija just 40 minutes to qualify the park for the global WWFF program.  Contact number 44 was with Danny VK5DW.

Marija also spoke with young Alicia, the daughter of VK2EZT.

With Marija having qualified the park, and it being a beautiful balmy evening, we decided that I would put out some CQ calls.  The 40m band was in brilliant shape, and in just 20 minutes I had 21 contacts in the log.  Some of the biggest signals were from Peter VK2UXO (I was 5/9 to Peter) and Brad VK2BY (I was 30/9 to Brad).

To complete the activation I moved down to the 80m band and logged a total of 12 stations from VK3 and Vk5.

After a very fun time in the park, we packed up and headed back to the motel room.

Marija worked the following stations on 40m SSB:-

1. VK3UH
2. VK4CZ
3. VK4GSF
4. VK5FANA
5. BK4NH
6. VK4DXA
7. ZL4TY/VK4
8. VK3ANL
9. VK7FRJG
10. VK7ALH
11. VK3PF
12. VK5PE
13. VK3MB
14. VK3ZPF/p (Kurth Kiln Regional Park VKFF-0971)
15. VK5CZ
16. VK3ZD
17. VK3CC
18. VK5FAAH
19. VK2IO
20. VK3AWG
21. VK5WG
22. VK5NJ
23. VK2BY
24. VK3MCK
25. VK3AMJ
26. VK3BEB
27. VK2LEE
28. VK5FDJK
29. VK2YW
30. VK3FNDR
31. VK5LA
32. VK2LX
33. VK3JX
34. VK3MCL
35. VK4TJ
36. VK4/AC8WN
37. VK4/VE6XT
38. VK4SSN
39. VK2AB
40. VK4SMA
41. VK3FVMR
42. VK2EZT
43. VK1JH
44. VK5DW
45. ZL1TM

I worked the following stations on 40m SSB:-

1. VK5LA
2. VK4CZ
3. VK5DW
4. VK7ALH
5. VK3BL
6. VK3MCL
7. VK3FSPN
8. VK3MB
9. VK5HS
10. VK3AB
11. VK2YW
12. VK5FAAH
13. VK1JH
14. VK2UXO
15. VK2LEE
16. ZL1TM
17. VK2BY
18. VK7FMAC
19. VK2FF
20. VK5ZRK
21. VK3KSK

I worked the following stations on 80m SSB;-

1. VK5HS
2. VK5LA
3. VK5WG
4. VK5CZ
5. VK5DW
6. VK3ANL
7. VK3GV
8. VK5WF
9. VK5FAAH
10. VK3MKE
11. VK5FLKJ
12. VK3WAR