The Grampians pt2
Thursday, March 5th, 2009After the fantastic weather upon arrival here, day 2 deteriorated quite a bit. First off it was just very windy and overcast which was ok, I joined a morning bus tour to see the main sights in the park, basically the only way I could get to them not having a car. It was part of a 3 day great ocean road/grampian tour that people staying here can join just for the grampians morning tour if it’s not booked out. It only cost me $15 for the 3 hours, unbelievable value!
I took one of the free bikes from the hostel to explore a bit in the afternoon, got caught in a downpour of rain, returned to the hostel and gave up on doing anything outdoors the rest of the day as it rained and rained. Hard to really get annoyed though since there is a severe drought and extreme fire danger here and the rain is desperately needed. I just spent the rest of the day trip planning. The skies cleared off after dark to reveal a stunning nightscape of the milky way and a lot more stars than I’m used to seeing.
Day 3 I had a hike planned, and despite the weather looking not so great I still set off. Very windy, but ok other than that to start off with. I hiked up to one of the lookouts nearby, the pinnacle. Through the “grand canyon” on the way.
Very cool hike, the rock formations here are very unique and the way they were formed by the plates colliding has caused all sorts of strange angles in almost all the rocks.
When I was nearly at the top, going through the last narrow passageway in the rocks…
It started raining, I quickly found a nice overhanging rock and took shelter, ate lunch and waited for the deluge to pass, which thankfully only took about 20 minutes. The skies cleared briefly afterwords, but long enough for me to get to the lookout see everything in the clear.
On the way back down I had to shelter 3 more times to avoid getting soaked, fortunately none of these showers lasted very long. I saw a few kangaroos along the trail, then when I got back down I saw a group of 20+ including several mothers with joeys, which I hadn’t seen before. Stayed there and watched them/took pictures for a while, then had to run back to the hostel to barely avoid the latest downpour. In total I hiked around 10km, a good day out and with the high winds, rain and cooler temperatures it should be a good warm up for Tasmania.
Right now I’m waiting for my bus back to Melbourne, it’s not for a couple hours, it’s raining outside again and I don’t think I’ve posted my plans for the rest of Australia on here yet, so I will do that now. I’m going to Tasmania on Monday for 2 1/2 weeks. Then back to Melbourne for Grand Prix weekend. After that I’m flying to Perth, going to be out West for 3 weeks before flying to the gold coast, via a stop in Adelaide, and spending my last few weeks traveling from Byron bay up to Cairns. I’ll be departing Australia for South Africa in mid May. I’m really looking forward to all of it, and very glad tiger airways fare sales enabled me to be able to fly around so much. Some of their prices are unbelievable! The only thing I’m not looking forward to is having to get everything into my backpack on Monday for my flight to Hobart…
Adam