Australia Part 2

Once our two-week stay in Blackheath came to an end, we packed up our rental car and hit the road at 6:00 am for the 11.5-hour drive to the Grampians, a national park in the southern part of the state of Victoria. The drive was entirely on country roads and the biggest hazard we faced were the countless birds hopping about on the pavement, an odd feature we’d never experienced in such magnitude. We arrived without incident and moved into our creaky-floored cabin on the edge of the park. It was a fairly major downgrade from our luxurious “cottage” in Blackheath, but it sat on a large, forested tract of land with countless kangaroos, a highlight we never tired of. Our location was about 30 minutes outside of the rural city of Horsham, so we had to plan accordingly to ensure we always had enough gas and food.

Taipan Wall, Grampians National Park

Bracken Lodge

Reservoir near Halls Gap

Wallaby

Mackenzie Falls

Koala at Tower Hill

We spent the next three weeks exploring the park and outlying areas. The Grampians are a modest mountain range surrounded by endless tracts of flat agricultural land. Since it was early fall, the terrain was incredibly dry giving the landscape a rather bleak, burnt appearance. All of the water sources were at their lowest points of the year, but we did manage to find a good swimming hole at “Fish Falls” on the Mackenzie River, a two-kilometre hike not far from our cabin. The weather was variable, and we had hot days, warm days and a number of rather cold days, but little rain. The Grampians has a rich aboriginal heritage, and we visited the cultural centre in Halls Gap before hiking to some of the “shelters”, the term used to describe a site of historical significance, usually with cave paintings. We were surprised to learn that this continent had been inhabited by the aboriginals for over 65,000 years before the British arrived.

Gulgurn Manja Shelter near Hollow Mountain

Swimming at Fish Falls

Twelve Apostles, Great Ocean Road

Hollow Mountain

Swimming near Port Fairy

Although the Grampians is famous for hiking and sightseeing, it’s also one of Australia’s most popular climbing areas. The rock is sandstone, and some say it’s the best on earth. We explored the various regions and found this claim to be quite possibly true. The rock was incredibly compact, eroded into the most amazing shapes imaginable and coloured with vivid black and orange streaks that really lit up in the evening sun. Many of the areas were remote and we saw plenty of wildlife both on our drives and various hikes. The predominant animals in the park are grey kangaroos, swamp wallabies and emus, and all were shockingly abundant, which made driving in the mornings and evenings quite hazardous. We also spotted fox, deer and echidnas, one of which died beneath our cottage, unfortunately. Bird life was plentiful as well, and one of Elise’s favourite moments on the trip occurred when a cockatoo landed on our picnic table, picked up my piece of spanakopita and flew off to a distant tree to enjoy the prize. Henceforth, all cockatoos became known as “lunch stealers”.

Seconds before the "incident"...

Port Fairy

Dead echidna at our cabin

Swamp wallaby

Beach along Great Ocean Road

Lighthouse at Port Fairy

Juvenile grey kangaroo

Although over two hours distant, we made two trips to the southern coast and enjoyed exploring the town of Port Fairy and its surrounding beaches. It was here we visited Tower Hill and saw koalas in the wild, which was also one of the highlights of the trip. We were skeptical about our chances, but followed the directions provided at the visitors centre and, voila, there they were, munching eucalyptus leaves in a large tree! One of our beach visits to Port Fairy coincided with a very warm day so we all enjoyed swimming in the Tasman sea. The shell collecting was excellent and we found a dead puffer fish and penguin while walking through the fine sand.

Grampians National Park

View from Mt Arapiles

Emu at Tower Hill

Now home, the experience already feels somewhat distant, an unfortunate reality of life I guess. However, the sweet smell of eucalyptus in the mornings, the nightly screeching of the cockatoos and the ever-present stares of curious kangaroos around our cabin are fond memories that will endure. Australia was most definitely a stark contrast to both our experiences in Europe and our daily life back home in the snow-capped mountains of coastal British Columbia. Although not always easy, our time spent in the country provided an experience very different than any other.

Australia Part 1

Although daunting, the 15-hour flight to Sydney went by fairly quickly, since we left at midnight and managed to sleep on the plane. Unfortunately, Sydney was experiencing a "rain event" when we arrived so our first impression of Australia was bleak - fog and mist everywhere with no views whatsoever. It was raining so hard the airport's underground parking garage was flooded, which made packing our rental car rather tricky. Once we escaped the airport vortex, the two-hour drive to our accommodation flew by. With the help of Google Maps, we rolled right up to the door of our "cottage" and got settled in for our two-week exploration of the Blue Mountains. Our home base, Blackheath, was a cute village just off the Western Highway, which bisects the national park. The small downtown core had all the amenities we needed, including a couple of great bakeries and a tasty Thai restaurant all within walking distance of our house. We were impressed with how lush the various neighbourhoods were. Houses were set well back from the streets on large, vegetated lots that provide a real sense of privacy. We enjoyed evening walks while being serenaded by a cacophony of very loud bird calls. The cockatoos were so loud we started referring to them as the "pterodactyls".

Our cottage

Elise's nest, where she spends a lot of time...

Australian magpie

Laughing kookaburra

Eucalyptus (gum) tree

The Blue Mountains is a UNESCO World Heritage Area located in New South Wales, about 50 km west of Sydney. The area is essentially a sandstone plateau covered in eucalyptus trees that's been dissected by a number of creeks and rivers. The so-called mountains are really just large hills, very different from the rugged peaks of western BC. The escarpment around Blackheath sits at an elevation of about 1,000 m and stays a bit cooler than the area closer to the coast, but during our first week it rained almost every day. The temperatures were generally quite warm (22-29 degrees) and the air was often thick with humidity. This made for challenging climbing conditions, but kept the forests lush for our hiking explorations. The national park has an extensive system of hiking trails, but since most start on the plateau you typically spend the first half of your trip descending and the second half climbing back to the rim, which is very different from the valley-to-mountain ascents we typically hike back home. Two of our favourite hikes were the Grand Canyon and Rodriguez Pass, both very close to Blackheath and with extensive changes in flora and fauna.

Crimson rosella

Eastern river dragon

Mountain devil

Sulphur-crested cockatoo

Australian snake-necked turtle

Grey kangaroo

Our first kangaroo sighting was in the evening while hiking back from a somewhat remote climbing area. It had rained heavily beforehand and the dirt track we were ascending was quite damp. I spotted a movement in the brush beside the road and caught a brief glimpse of a kangaroo jumping into the trees. Elise was very disappointed that she didn't see it, and we plodded along in silence for some time. However, about fifteen minutes later and just a short distance from the parking area, we scared up two more, which hopped through the brush alongside the trail. This time we all got a great view as they nested into the trees and watched us from a safe distance. Since that time, we've spotted a number of "mobs" in fields nearby, usually in the evening. The Megalong Valley just below Blackheath was the perfect spot for evening drives due to the abundance of grassy fields and we explored it on more than one occasion.

Crimson rosella

Can you spot the trail?

Australian brushturkey

Where's Elise?

Our time in the Blue Mountains flew by rather quickly and we are now ready for the next stage of our trip. A long, 12-hour drive will take us to the Grampians National Park northwest of Melbourne where we'll spend the remainder of our time. We hope to see emus and koalas, but will try to keep our expectations at bay. Our accommodation is called "Bracken Lodge", a rustic (!) cabin in the forest near the boundary of the park. Options in the area were few and this seemed to be the best we could do given our budget and location requirements. We certainly won't be walking to any bakeries or Thai restaurants, that's for sure, but if we're lucky we may spot kangaroos out our back door. I'll post a second instalment at some point near the end of the trip. Stay tuned...