Manookatoo Adventures: Bunga Arm

We love the Gippsland Lakes - with a range of destinations to visit including towns, lakes, rivers and backwaters, stopping on jetties, picking up swing moorings, driving up onto the sand or dropping an anchor, it is hard to choose where to go. But a perennial favourite of the Captain's and mine is Bunga Arm. Situated between the Boole Poole Peninsula and the 90 mile beach, this waterway stretches along for 9 nautical miles, running parallel to popular towns from one side of Paynesville to the other side of Nungurner. You can hear boats travelling along the Reeve Channel between Metung and Lakes Entrance, but often you see nobody all day. It is the perfect getaway!

Second Blowhole isn't shown on the map - it's right of the first blowhole ⏫

In cooler weather or when it is windy we tie up to a jetty at Ocean Grange or Steamer Landing. When summer holidays are over and the boat traffic diminishes, we make our way up to one of the campsites, like Egret or Cormorant or Pelican camping grounds. But our very favourite is the little visited, faraway Second Blowhole, so called because before the man made opening was cut at Lakes Entrance over 120 years ago, the Lakes were fresh water and cut off from the sea and occasionally when rainfall caused the lake levels to rise a flush of water would break through the dunes at one of the two blowholes. It is so far up the Bunga Arm that it is not even shown on the map above.

Panoramic view - Bunga Arm and Ninety Mile Beach

We love the wildlife of the area - the swans and pelicans, the eagles and fish, the kangaroos and echidnas - we don't see many of the animals very often, but we see their tracks in the sand so we know they are around. We love go cruising further up Bunga Arm in our dinghy, exploring the tracks inland or across to Ninety Mile Beach.