Glorious Grampians

I wasn't sure what to expect at the Grampians, but they are magnificent. We arrived in light rain, but by the time we had set up it was brilliant sunshine and hot. So we went to the pool for a lovely swim, admiring the stunning rock formations all around the caravan park.

The following day was rainy, and we enjoyed a lazy reading day in the van, followed by my birthday dinner at the Kookaburra bistro.

Luckily it cleared up a bit after that, so we got out and about to see some of the amazing views and easier walks. We decided to stay an extra day to explore further. 

There are so many beautiful spots and lovely walks.

This rock formation is the Balconies, or Jaws of Death. Many publicity photos have people standing on them, but the main track had been very solidly fenced off. A second track was fairly adamant that we should NOT try to go there.

We very much enjoyed a walk at Sundial peak,  just a short one through great rocks to a lookout, but it must be more off the beaten track as it was much more of a bush walk than the paths to the Balconies. Many fewer people too. It would be nice to do a longer walk.

There is an amazing lookout that overlooks Halls Gap, and our caravan park. We could just make out our little Avan far below by eye but the photo doesn't show it.

MacKenzie falls are also amazing. You can go down to the bottom, but we just admired the various views from the top :-)

We could have easily stayed longer in the glorious Grampians, but sadly, it was time to move on.

Lighthouses

We limped into Warrnambool, with a still misfiring car on the Monday of a long weekend. Needless to say, we didn't feel like driving it very far, so we walked, all along the foreshore, and saw Middle Island where the maremmas protect the penguins (watch Oddball!). Apparently the maremmas hang out at Flagstaff Hill, which is like Sovereign Hill, but much smaller.  It looked like a great day out but we were not in the mood. However, we could see it, and the maremmas from our van. And a lighthouse.

After a carless (but not careless) day without the car while Subaru looked at it and replaced various expensive spark plug related bits, we had our wheels back. We wanted to test them out before towing again, so drove to Port Fairy. What a pretty town. We went to Griffith Island where we saw a lighthouse.

 It was extremely hot, so we went to a calm rock pool beach called Pea Soup, and had a lovely swim (once we lost all feeling in our toes). It was lovely, and the car does seem to be fixed this time. Needless to say, it is getting looked over again by our own Subaru dealer when we get home!

We moved on to Narrawong outside Portland. Another gorgeous park, inside a meander of a river, with a floating bridge over to the beach. Very peaceful and lovely, with fire drums for hire. We really want to come back here, maybe for Portland's Upwelling Festival.

Our first excitement here was finding fossilised shark teeth. Apparently there is a limestone reef offshore that is dissolving and the teeth wash up. After a lot of hunting on four visits we did find two fossils. Ben found the first, which is apparently a great white tooth. I found the second, smaller and unidentified tooth. Thanks to Ben for the photo.

We visited Cape Nelson to see, you guessed it, a lighthouse.

We visited Cape Bridgewater, and went on a fabulous boat tour to see seals. There was what the brochure described as a 15 min gentle stroll to the jetty. Hmmm. A big hill to walk up and down, but great views.

Ben loved bouncing over the swell in the small rubber ducky boat. The seals were wonderful :-) and very photogenic.

We visited the lighthouse in Portland for a complete set :-)

We also visited the gannet colony, which fortuitously had a volunteer there to let us in just when we drove up.  There was an electric fence between us and the birds so the photo is a bit distant.

We highly recommend Portland as a place to visit and explore, and hope to come back.

Great Ocean Road - Apostles, arches and gorges

We spent two days visiting all the sandstone outcrop bits of the Great Ocean Road, visiting the awesome Loch Ard gorge on the way passed with our van as we could find a nice long park. It was a lovely day, and perfect for photos, and it is hard to choose just a few to share.

I particularly loved going down into the gorge and paddling in the water. An idyllic spot to be shipwrecked but I guess the two lone survivors of the Loch Ard didn't see it that way.

On our second day exploring, unencumbered by the van, we drove back to the Gibson steps and walked on the beach near a couple of the Apostles, where you could feel the majestic cliffs towering over you.

We then braved the unbelievable numbers of tourists at the Apostles. It was like the United Nations, with all the languages being spoken along the busy paths. Not such lovely weather for photos unfortunately.

And I have finally seen a squatting toilet, as the toilet block there had two for the tourists. I had been wondering what they looked like, after all the signs in toilet blocks telling people to sit on the toilet, not stand/squat on it. Another mystery solved :-)

We continued back to our van site in Peterborough, stopping for lunch in Port Campbell, before viewing the last three rocky viewing spots, the Arch, the famous London Bridge and the Grotto.  Ben said he was sure the grotto must have been a sacred place.

We pretty much had rock fatigue by then but were glad we visited the grotto because we had a chance encounter with an Echidna, which was wandering about beside the path and getting a lot of attention. It was still there when we came back from seeing the grotto, and it must have been determined to meet Ben as it came right up to him and walked over his foot. I'm glad to say he didn't try to pat it :-)

Cape Otway

We had a lovely ensuite site at Apollo Bay, with a view of the ocean. A gorgeous park, with fantastic facilities. And the heated pool actually felt heated and not just 'not quite as cold as it could have been'. We all enjoyed it.

From Apollo Bay we explored Cape Otway, visiting the Maits Rest rainforest walk and Cape Otway. These were both beautiful in different ways.  I think I'll let the photos do the talking.

Apollo Bay was also notable for a delicious meal at the Brewhouse hotel - smoked salmon linguini with big thick succulent chunks of smoked salmon, fresh tomatos and capers. Certainly a meal to remember.

The Great Ocean Road

We left Ballarat quite keen to get back to the coast, and headed down to Anglesea. We had wanted to just amble down the road with no bookings, but the long weekend coming up meant bookings were essential!  So our stops are all planned out.  We had a lovely stop for morning tea at Torquay in an Italian patisserie, delicious cannoli :-).

We stayed for 2 nights in Anglesea, and had some terribly oily fish and chips. I think I've gone off fish and chips as a result! The park was massive and very nice. Full of families having a weekend away. The second day we did a bit of a playground crawl and Ben played with a new friend for a couple of hours (friend come, friend go).

Then on to Kennett River, stopping at Lorne to explore and have lunch. Lorne was charming and we enjoyed our walk across the suspension bridge and along the foreshore to the jetty.

Now, Kennett River is a jewel! An older style park with a cafe across the road. Lots of birds everywhere.  Ben came running back from the playground, very excited, because a koala ran from a tree nearby, and leapt up into another tree and started eating. We soon spotted three more koalas. How exciting! They aren't easy to photograph with a phone though.

The koalas seem to always be in the area although not always in the park. This does mean that there are a constant stream of tour buses stopping with groups of tourists standing about on the nearby roads with seeds in their hands and parrots on their heads (mostly king parrots). A bit annoying if you are venturing out in your car!

We returned to Lorne on our second day to see Erskin falls and the amazing Teddy's lookout.

That night we ventured out in search of the Kennett River glow worms. We crept down a river path into a lovely rainforest gully and waited for dark, sitting on a log.  Dark takes a long time to come when you are sitting on a log.  Eventually we spotted a few glowing spots and Ben said, 'great, I've seen them, can we go now?' So we traipsed back to the road, and there were hundreds of gorgeous blue glowing dots all over the embankment! So pretty!

Ballarat

Our focus in Ballarat was really Eureka and Sovereign Hill. We went to the sound and light show,  Blood on the Southern Cross, which was really quite good as an explanation of why the Eureka Stockade was built. It was great for Ben, as it is part of year 5 curriculum.

Sovereign Hill is just fantastic. We spent two 7 hour days there, and really enjoyed it. We panned for gold (and were taught how this time so we actually found some), watched lots of demonstrations of how things were made and enjoyed the small acts by people in costume. Ben loved these so much he had us treking from one side of the hill to the other to make sure we were in the right place at the right time to catch them all.

We also enjoyed learning about the colourings that were used in the lollies of the time - soot for black, rust for orange, chloroform for green, and our favourite, arsenic for yellow. Given the moulds were made of lead, those lollies were pretty toxic!  Luckily children rarely got to eat them, and adults probably died of other causes first!

Our Ballarat visit was plagued with school groups.  The caravan park was hosting various groups, some of which were badly enough behaved to be annoying. There was also one school group interacting with one of the acts at Sovereign Hill so energetically that we couldn't hear the actors and the actors had to push them out of the way. Eventually an adult (parent maybe?) shushed them, but far too late. Ben was appalled and noted that Torrens kids would have been silenced way way earlier, and wouldn't have been so disrespectful in the first place. There were some other school groups that were well behaved though :-).

I enjoyed chatting with a mum at Sovereign Hill who home-schools her five children and they all volunteer at Sovereign Hill once a week in costume. What a great experience for them!

The Museum of Australian Democracy at Eureka was fantastic too. We saw THE Flag. There were very good interactive touch screen displays about Eureka, and also about democracy, suffrage and struggle. A great place to visit and learn. They were also having an exhibition about the Chinese in the gold rush, which was very interesting.

We ended up spending an extra day in Ballarat as our car was miss firing, so we had to have the spark plugs replaced. While annoying, it meant we spent a day walking around the main street admiring the wonderful buildings.