Tassie tiger sightings, rusty antediluvian tractors, eagles rocking the paddocks, vineyards, shearing sheds, luthiers, Teutonic headstones, redgums and wild apple trees … funny the places you frequent without ever knowing jack about them.

Running the Teutonic midget hound on her regular beach forays at Torquay has taken on too many traffic lights between Geelong and the water, necessitating a westerly detour through the verdant pasture lands, for the time being at least, of the Anglesea Road.

Aussie landscapes being the flat, acquired taste they often seem, it takes a weather eye to appreciate, even spot, the curiosities and attractions on offer. But they’re there, they are.

And no better a site to dig about than Merrijig Creek, I’ve discovered, with the aid of some cartography, a surveyor errant, some wet weather gear, sturdy boots and GPS.

My curiosity about the area was piqued years back by a cockie concerned that reports about cryptozoological critters were being played down for fear of attracting sporting shooters from out of town and savaging the local serenity.

He was being ridiculed, he griped, in the face of mauled, mutilated livestock and multiple sightings of thylacines, melanistic leopards, black pumas and big cats in general. Livestock were uneasy, farmers likewise, he argued, as his claims were poo-pooed as feral cat, fox and wild dog sightings.

Giant cats and scats are nothing new to the area, or further southwest. Might even find some ancient bunyip and more-recent yowie reports if you look hard. Try some of the pubs and drinkers will relate greyhounds painted with stripes for sport. In the gold days, client-hungry pubs painted horses as zebras.

So it’s worth turning off the road somewhere around where the road dips and tightens amid the redgums, creek reeds and green flats either side of the Merrijig culvert.

If you fancy figuring just where the creek itself runs, good luck. There are at least five tributaries running into its two main branches between all the eucalypts, cypresses, wattles, bracken, vines and grasses that pepper the landscape. But given the area’s multitude swales, saddles and berms, you’ll be imaging dozens arising from each rain before you know it.

In due course, it spills into Thompson Creek making its way through open fields to the Horseshoe Bend, around The Minya and over the Blackgate, debouching to the sea beside a statically indeterminate concrete WW2 gun bunker at Breamlea’s clothing-optional Point Impossible.

Heads up back around the Merrijig’s Freshwater-Paraparap headwaters, you’ll find not just crypto critters but more tangible woodswallows, cuckoos and orioles ringing through the woodlands along with various colourful parrots, honeyeaters and wetland species chirruping, squawking and abusing the serenity.

Also, things like Buddhist temples, an equestrian centre, a Wolseley-driven winery, stud farms, getaway cottages, pet retreats, shearing sheds, ancient tractors standing artistically sentinel  … it’s a quiet little multicultural bucolic bonanza in truth.  Kind of fits in with the meaning of Merrijig: good or well done.

Just check what your nav system or AI say if you’re looking up Merrijig. It’s just as likely they’ll send you to northeast Victoria or Ireland’s County Leitrim – might find yourself up another type of creek altogether.

This article appeared in the Geelong Advertiser 14 October 2025.