Victoria - Very nice, how much?

We entered Victoria from the outback in New South Wales. We stayed and camped several days in the Grampian Mountains National Park. While at the park we did a number of trecks and all with amazing views. It was one of our favorite spots. The surrounding areas of the park are flat and dull, you know instantly when you are in the park because the hills turn into mountains and the road begin to follow gorges and narrow canyons.

This trek above was called the Pinnacals. The entire trek was over and through the segmented rock leading to the tip of the cliff called the Pinnacal. We followed the trail through the "grand canyon" and the "silent street" were almost as impressive as the views from the top. Both sections pass through the narrow sections of stone that was almost close enough to touch on both sides and tall enough to tower a six story building.


This trek was the Hollow Mountain trek that led to amazing views of the forests and mountains surrounding. It was here that we tried our hand at rock climbing... but I (Emma) got stuck. While Tony was debating about how to get me down he took pictures of my vunerable state. (But she made it and she was rewarded with a great view and the patch of courage!) We had no idea that this walk was going to so amazing, partly because the Victorian Park service is crap, we just decided to do it because it had a really cool name. The climb up the rock was completed despite the initial difficulty and we were rewarded with a large wind and water erroded cavern that looked out over the mountain. We took advantage of the shade.

The Grampians had a number of aboriginal rock painting sites. The content mainly consisted of stick figures, emu and kangaroo tracks, tally marks and hand prints. The picture to the right was a cavern that was almost entirely covered with the tally marks with just a few other markings. The meaning of the markings have been lost over time. One carvern had over 90 hand prints. They made the hand prints by mixing the red sand in their mouth and then spraying it over their hand to leave the void.

From the Grampians we drove down to "The Great Ocean Road". The entire coast was made up of these limestone formations. The most famous along the coast road are the Twelve Apostles, which are actually 7 now. The ocean has not been kind to the other four. The water was unfortunely really cold and you can see here that I have a jacket on. The southernly winds are coming accross the ocean from Antartica and making the wind chilly. There was one formation where you see us at here called the London Bridge, you used to be able to cross over there but the bridge fell down. This happend just a couple of years ago, no one was hurt but there were a dozen or so stranded on the new island formation.

Camp cooking is hard to do when you have a kitchen with views like this, distractions were prevelent and often. This particular campground was near an amazig river and a koala meca. And the last night here we found a koala just 20 feet from our tent hanging out in a tree. We had coffee, he had herbal tea and shared some biscuts. It was an amazing evening.

The last stop we made was in the beautiful city of Melbourne. I know we use the word beautiful to describe cities and national parks all the time but this city was beautiful in a different sence. The city had a real multicultural feel mixed into an Australian background. The city had excellent public transportation used by everyone. Our friends Aysen and Tim were kind enough to put us up in their beautiful new home. And having them there made the transtion from tent and national parks to the city life a lot easier and a lot more fun. We met Asyen and Tim in New Zealand and had a great time with them there and had just as equally good time with them here in Australia. The two of them just moved to Australia from Holland and were in the mists of setting up job interviews and getting their stuff out of port at customs. In between that we found time to eat mexican food and drink some wine and beer. We will definitely be going back in the near future. Here we have some pictures along the water front and some pictures taken around the city. Emma and Aysen had a tagging session in one of the allies, its more fun to run from cops when they don't carry guns.

Western Australia here we come!