Return to the Grampians

All these images are from my phone. This trip took place over three months ago, and due to one thing and another I still haven't even started to go through the camera archives yet, though it was simple enough to go through the phone pics and chronicle the trip. The truth is, for 80% of the trip, the weather was horrible. I took about a quarter as many photos as I'd imagined I would, and in rotten-light conditions, the phone does a job almost as good as the camera. So -- let's run with the phone pictures, yes?

The trip all started with a stack of baggage ... you'd have thought we were off to Antarctica for six months! No ... "just" the Grampians for five days:

Getting out early, you cross the Murray River at Wellington...

...and you aim for breakfast in Keith, on the Duke's Highway, only to discover that it's actually lunch by the time you get there! So --

-- the Henry + Rose Cafe, very nice, with good food. The weather was steadily going downhill as we headed east, though, but the sun still shone in patches, between broad cloud banks:

The state line is right there. Welcome to Victoria ... and slow down. The speed limit is lower, east of the border. So -- onward, through little towns and agricultural communities...

Above: canola fields near Kanvia. The Duke's Highway turns into the Western Highway at the border, but we always think of it as "east," not west! This time around, we left the main E-W highway at Nhill, turning south to take a look at the Little Desert National Park --

-- which, to South Aussie eyes doesn't actually look like a desert at all. Maybe it's seasonal? So much of SA looks like this pretty much all the time, one is reluctant to call it a desert. Then, it's not so far from there to the beautiful Wartook Valley. And whaddaya know --

Above: A rainbow over Wartook Valley. Now, that bodes well. You see the Grampians low down on the horizon from the valley. While Dave stretched the legs I played with the phone, and managed to get a selfie where I didn't look like Marley's Ghost:

There you are -- that proves I was on the trip! Dave did take a few shots of me here and there, and I managed to get several of him. He likes to play around, so pictures of him are often something of a laugh riot. And why not?

You don't have time to tarry long on breaks ... not if you want to get there on the same day! Apparently, you can drive Adelaide to Halls Gap in six hours, but we usually take nine or ten over it. Then again, we always get there safely, without being totally wasted. So.

When you head into the National Park, all at once the road turns UP, and twists and twines constantly for about the next 30k. Glorious views from the roadside as evening settles --

Above: Lake Wartook, the reservoir, seen from Reid's Lookout. It was actually quite dark by now; enhancement on the image brightens it up. It had also been raining recently...

Halls Gap was quite damp as well as quite dark. (And you can see what I mean about the weather. When it didn't actually rain, the sky was deeply overcast. Mostly, I put away the camera and just sat back for the trip!)

Time to check in, unload, get dinner, sleep. We were booked into the Halls Gap Log Cabins:

Wonderful ... all the comforts of home. Each cabin is like a small house, with every amenity imaginable, with the exception of a washer and dryer. And who wants to do laundry on  trip?!

Above: Rainy, misty and COLD in the morning. Luckily, we'd got brilliant pictures back in March, because the images from Cathedral Rock (seen here off the Mount William road) are gray and soft. Rain was threatening, and the wind cut like a knife. The cold abated a little by the time we arrived at Sundial Lookout and took the Lake View Lookout trail:

Still not warm, but not so windy, and the mist was clearing. I crossed my fingers, hoping to get good photos as the say went on. So, leaving Sundial, we headed to Silver Band Falls, which is a good hike down into a gorge to reach this:

Not a heck of a lot of water in it, when you consider that this is the end of the rainy season, and it should be running hard and fast. Hmm. So -- back on the road. Below, top: Mount Zero Road. Center: Canola fields in Wartook Valley, looking toward the Grampians. Bottom:  Sunset from Reid Lookout. It wasn't spectacular at all ... too much heavy weather.

Next morning we spent a couple of hours at the Brambuk Cultural Centre, which is a chastening experience. One is rocked back by the history of this country's indigenous people. I find it astonishing that any of them survived at all, and ... so sad. One could wish for a time machine, go back and change it, find the people responsible, and stop them ever arriving in Australia...

From Brambuk, we headed outward to explore. Lunch found us on the freezing, wind-swept heights of One Tree Hill above the town of Ararat. Yes, we visited Mount Ararat earlier; I photographed that with the cameras, not this phone. It's not what you'd call ... spectacular, but we did it! However, the views from the top of One Tree were amazing:

And from Ararat we headed back around the Grampians in a great circle. The area south of Ararat is big on canola, and the afternoon sun shone, making for some stunning photos at last:

By the time we were south of the Grampians and about to head back up the west side, toward Wartook, we'd run back into gray weather. This is Mt. Sturgeon, near Dunkeld ... the Grampians end (or begin!) right here, on the south tip of the range.

Dunkeld to Cavendish offered some amazing skies. Enhancement on the image here brightens it up, because we're actually almost along to evening now. And --

Yes, Virginia, there is actually a Bunyip Hotel! In Cavendish, in the evening light, before we headed north again up the west side of the mountains...

We'd been hoping to get some great shots of the Grampians in the evening light, but the skies were too heavy, and sunset "didn't happen." Well, it did, for eight seconds, with a few shades of pink. But the drive was lovely, the scenery starkly beautiful.

At last! Like magic, the sky cleared for our last day in Halls Gap. We were at Boroka Lookout in the very early morning. Glorious! Then it was off to Mackenzie Falls, where we spent half the time photographing wildflowers, which are at their best at this time of year. Here's a wild orchid --

-- and below, the actual falls, seen from one of the high lookouts. Again, not much water in evidence, which doesn't bode well for summer, I think. We knew of one more waterfall, Beehive Falls, off thr Roses Gap road, so while the sun shone we thought we'd give it a go...

Perfect weather, a wonderful hike, stunning rock formations, wildflowers in profusion ... but the falls was a mere trickle. Nothing there. But the hike itself was a huge pleasure. Good thing, because this was a wrap on our last day in the region! Time to pack and clean out the fridge in the morning.

We'd decided to come home on the Princes Highway, via Naracoorte, and by the time we reached Mount Arapiles the weather was awful. You can drive to the top of Arapile, and the view --

-- is fantastic. But I barely managed to get a shot of the mountain itself, because the light levels were so low. From Arapiles, we headed for the Princes Highway and turned west...

Stretch the legs at Sundial Park in Kingston SE. The road sign, leaving town, tells all. Adelaide is still almost 300k away, via Salt Creek, Meningie, Tailem Bend, Wellington (the ferry), Strathalbyn, and so forth. Below: top: leaving Kingston SE. Center: You're looking at Salt Creek. All of it. Bottom: Meningie. Not stopping -- it's getting late, and there's still a looong way to go:

Over the river, head through Langhorne and turn northwards for Strathalbyn. Mother Nature had one last treat for us:

Sunset, somewhere on the road home, I actually forget where! Somewhere between Langhorne and Strathalbyn?? From here, you'll be home in about seventy-five minutes. Phew! That's another one to cross off the bucket-list! This time, I actually drove for a while, too. Now, where to next ...?!

Destination: Grampians!

Mountains. For years, I've been wanting to see mountains (yes, "mountains, Gandalf!") again, because we just don't have them in South Australia. The last time I saw a mountain with my own eyeballs was almost twenty years ago (Alaska, where else?) so ...

The Grampians lie in the far, far west of Victoria, which to us is a five hour drive east. To give you some context here --

Climb into a decent car. Start where it says ADELAIDE and end where you see that orange balloon, which is pointing at a gorgeous little town called Halls Gap. That's where you're going, with a booking at the fantastic Halls Gap Log Cabins.

The scale of the above map doesn't matter much, because how fast you can do the journey depends on so many factors (differing state speed limits, road construction, how fast you feel comfortable driving, what your car will do without protest ... the number of humongous trucks on the road, how often you need to stop and rest, if you're going cafe to cafe ... whatever). 'Nuff said if I tell you, it's five and a half hours if you don't stop at all, and closer to seven and a half in reality, because if you don't stop, you'll probably drive right in front of one of the aforementioned gigantic trucks.

But the drive can be fun in its own way, and I'll tell the story of that in another post. For now, this is a look at the Grampians themselves ...

Lake Wartook

One of numerous waterfalls at Mackenzie Falls

And again, let me give you a bit of context here:

The whole Grampians area was created a national part only as recently as 1984, and it's a mercy that this was done because agriculture, logging, residential building ... it's all impacted enormously. It was only a matter of time before someone found something to mine there, and ...! Thank heavens, the national park status protects this, ostensibly forever.

The region itself is ancient. I'll save you zipping all over the Internet and paste in this segment direct from the Victorian Tourism site:

Aboriginal people have had an association with the Grampians for more than 30,000 years. Traditionally known as Gariwerd, the land is at the center of creation stories for many of the Aboriginal communities in south-western Victoria. Discoveries of Indigenous Australian artifacts in the region include ancient oven mounds, scatterings of stone left over from tool making, and ancient rock art sites.

Six seasons

The traditional owners of Gariwerd recognize six distinct weather periods in the seasonal cycle, which relate to climactic as well as environmental events such as plant flowering, fruiting and the behavioural patterns of local wildlife. For millennia, the Jardwadjali and Djab Wurrung people have been linked to this seasonal cycle, which includes Gwangal Moronn (the season of the honey bee), Chinnup (the season of cockatoos) and Petyan (the season of butterflies). 

The first thing someone like myself says, upon getting into the mountains is, "OMG, it's like Scotland!" (Okay, that's the second thing. The first thing is, "My God, they're big, they're huge, I had no idea they were this enormous, they don't look so vast from a distance..."). In fact, Gariwerd was promptly renamed as the Grampians by oncoming Scotsman Sir Thomas Mitchell, for the most obvious of reasons! This, from Wikipedia:

Named Gariwerd by one of the local Australian Aboriginal languages, either the Jardwadjali or Djab Wurrung language, the ranges were given their European name in 1836 by Surveyor General of New South Wales Sir Thomas Mitchell after the Grampian Mountains in his native Scotland. After a two-year consultation process, the park was renamed Grampians (Gariwerd) National Park in 1991, however this controversial formality was reversed after a change of state government in 1992. The Geographic Place Names Act, 1998 (Vic) reinstated dual naming for geographical features, and this has been subsequently adopted in the park based on Jardwadjali and Djab Wurrung names for rock art sites and landscape features with the National Heritage List referring to "Grampians National Park (Gariwerd)".

In fact, tourist is the area's One Big Thing at this moment. The town of Halls Gap is quite literally one enormous hotel sprawling out through the "gap" itself ... which is a pass through the flat bottom of a narrow valley through the mountains, frequently lost under morning mist. From Boroka Lookout, at an altitude of 616m right above, you can look down on the town, see it appear out of the mist rather like Brigadoon, as the run rises...

Boroka Lookout, looking toward Lake Bellfield ... Halls Gap is down below, right in the mountain pass...

Boroka Lookout on a misty morning. Halls Gap appears out of the mist like Brigadoon...

The river of mist has completely covered Halls Gap. Down below, it's silvery with fog in the town...

Dave captured this shot of me photographing the dawn at Boroka Lookout. Neat!

I can say without hesitation, the Grampians is one of the most glorious places on this planet, on a par with the Alaska Range, the wilds of Canada, you name it. And the wonderful thing about it is, we don't have to fly across the world. A long drive, and we arrive on the same day we set out, without even seeing an airport from a distance (nudge, wink ... anyone else out there detest airports, though they love flying??) or even boarding a train.

The Grampians offer absolutely everything. Want a top-notch hotel or a cozy log cabin? Done. Fancy restaurant? No problem. Rock climbing? Birding? Blue lakes? Wildlife? Hiking? Photography, art? Here we go --

Lake Wartook, seen from the other side of the carpark at Reed Lookout

The Grampians, from a Wartook Valley roadside

Dave sits on that famous rocky ledge at Boroka Lookout, in the dawn light. 616 empty meters under your feet there...

A wedge tailed eagle has discovered dinner in a paddock in Victoria Valley

Wallabies, kangaroos, emus, echidnas and bilbies abound right in the heart of Halls Gap itself

Or if culture is your thing, try the Brambuck Cultural Centre --

-- but be sure to set aside a whole day for this. If you try to stroll through in an hour, you'll miss so much. We just didn't have the time to do this properly, so ... next time.

Or, if the more recent history of the area is on your mind, a lot of info is given in situ, on the info boards at the various lookouts. Such as this, at Mount William:

Admittedly, we ran through the Grampians. We had three days, all up, including the drive out and back. So we did ... one fancy restaurant, one cafe, one waterfall, two lakes, four or five lookouts, one camp ground, two dawns, and an enormous amount of driving.

We covered 1,500kms in all, and I can honestly say, we saw Gariwerd from the road...

Stand in the street in Halls Gap and look up. This is how you'll see the Grampians!

A roadside shot, in Victoria Valley

Amazing landscapes, every time you turn around another bend in the road

Full marks to the Victorian government for the road system that threads through and around the Grampians. The roads are in fantastic repair, and they're very well signed. The only thing South Aussies may find somewhat perplexing is that many of the roads are marked up as "driving hazards," or "dangerous conditions," and so forth. In fact, by comparison with our Adelaide Hills (Norton Summit, anyone?!) the Grampians are an easy, easy drive. They're not dangerous at all at this time of year. I do wonder what it'd be like to drive them in winter. It does snow there. Mount William is tall enough ... this, from the Halls Gap Lakeside webpage:

Having spent my childhood in Holland I never realized how many Australians have never experienced snow! This might be your chance, without spending an absolute fortune visiting the snow fields! Although snowfall in the valley itself is rare, Mt William (the highest point in the Grampians at 1167 meters) gets covered in snow nearly every winter, it’s great for making a snowman. The Grampians turns into a winter wonderland, beyond beauty!

Oh, yes, I'm tempted. Very tempted. We went there (for the first time!) and the end of the first month of autumn, or fall, if you prefer, and it was already very chilly in the mornings, though you were glad to get out of the sweaters and scarves by ten o'clock...

Lake Bellfield, on the outskirts of Halls Gap

A misty dawn, from Boroka Lookout

Halls Gap is lost in the mist, 616m below...

In other posts, I'll share the drive to get there and back, which is an adventure in itself! Mother Nature had one special gift in store: the most incredible sunset on the river at Tailem Bend. Soon!