Grampians

[tastrekker]

Here's the text from my latest blog entry at http://www.blognow.com.au/tastrekker. This was an unexpected bushwalking opportunity on what was meant to be a few days in Melbourne!

Recently our intrepid family planned a 5-day visit to Melbourne. As we compiled the list of things-to-do we checked when our respective footy teams would be playing. Lo and behold, my team (Hawthorn) was playing my son's team (Adelaide) that Saturday night. The only hitch was that the game was in Adelaide, not Melbourne.
That did not deter us. After spending Wednesday night aboard Spirit of Tasmania, we spent Thursday and Friday 'playground hopping' from Melbourne to Adelaide. Along the way we detoured from Ararat via Halls Gap and took the road over the northern Grampians to our accommodation in Horsham.
At Halls Gap we were struck by how similar to home it felt. With the scrubby gums cladding the granite cliffs and bouders, we could have been somewhere like Coles Bay on Tassie's east coast. However, instead of the blue waters of the Tasman Sea lapping at these peaks, the Grampians appeared to be surrounded by a sea of flat farmland. Very few of Tasmania's national parks are bounded by farmland so this felt quite foreign.
After a picnic lunch sheltering from the rain, we checked out a lookout above Halls Gap. The inside of Victorian clouds look just like the inside of Tasmanian ones!
Next, we just had time to check out Mt Victoria before sunset. I wasn't expecting any bushwalking opportunities on this trip but when the children saw a sign pointing to the Balconies only 1.5km away, they wanted to take a look.
Off we wandered, checking out the fungi, flowers, grass trees and a kookaburra along the way. At the Blaconies, we were pleased to have visited something we had seen on the post cards.
Back at Mt Victoria, the cloud lifted enough for us to see the sun setting on the ranges to the south. We also snapped a shot of an interesting 'table rock' formation with Mt Zero as the backdrop.
P.S. Madly waving my Hawks scarf in a stadium filled with 45,000 Crows fans was quite an experience. After trailing narrowly throughout the highly stressful game, the Hawks clinched full points in a thriller.

[tcornall]

The link in the second line to your blog seems to take me to a construction company.... Guess it's been hijacked.

[grunter]

Initial post was from 2008 so not unexpected to redirect to another site.

I purchased the new Grampians Peak Trail book. I hope to complete a section or 3 next year.