Week 4 - Sunday 21 February – 28 February 2010

We headed out from Melbourne to Healesville, calling in at the Queen Victoria Markets on route – great markets, if we lived in Melbourne, we'd do our weekly food shop there, lovely fruit, veg, meat and delicatesans (and fish if you're into that type of thing...) Jen bought a new shirt to try to shield her from the mozzies, and I got some peppers (capsicums to you Aussies), sounds fair right?

We drove on out to Healesville and had a night at another campsite there. Healesville is another nice little town with cute shops and lots of vineyards around it, which have culminated in the very cool/poncey bar/restaurant thing called the Giant Steps, where you can taste all the local produce (at a cost!) and a more down to earth, but still unusually city-like, White Rabbit Brewery, in large hanger buildings next to each other. The key for us was to see the Healesville Sanctuary, a wildlife sanctuary and visitor centre, much recommended by books and friends.

Off to bed by 10pm as has become usual for us (no, of course we're not getting up any earlier...), only to be rudely awakened by a tremendous (not that kind of Tremendous Taylor) clap of thunder on Monday morning at around 7am. We got up quickly, but not quite quickly enough to beat the storm that followed. We just about got the tent down before the real rain started, but then had to fix up the cover etc in the torrential rain. Neither of us won the wet t-shirt competition even though we were the only two competing.

The weather cleared by around 10am, and we made our way to the Healesville Sanctuary. It was the best tourist dollar we've spent so far by some way. It doubles as a tourist centre and a wildlife hospital – they took in a lot of the wildlife injured in the Victorian bush fires in 2009. They seek to rehabilitate the animals that come to them, with a view to reintroducing them to the wild where possible. Where not possible, they keep the animals at the Sanctuary Zoo. This is something in itself, and the animals on show - emus



(my what pretty eyes you have)

koalas, kangaroos, platypus, numerous birds (including one that pooed on Jennie's camera), Tasmanian Devils, frogs, snakes etc), but the most impressive thing is the birds of prey display.

Surrounded by a class of school children (honestly, we did all we could to avoid them, but they follow us – I think they're attracted to Jen's hair), we waited for the “show”. Truly fantastic display. The key highlights were the Barking Owl (really beautiful), Bernice the Buzzard (the handler showed us how these birds can break into an Emu egg using rocks) and finally the Wedge Tail Eagle which nearly took my head off! If you're ever near Melbourne we'd highly recommend this place as a must do.

Barking Owl



Bernice the Buzzard



Wedge Tail Eagle




Jen got some good action shots too:







On Monday afternoon we headed off cross-country to Daylesford, one of the Goldfields towns of Victoria, blessed with mineral springs and a gay festival called Chilled Out in March that we were unfortunately too early for! We camped at a local campsite and polished off some chilli cooked on an earlier night before another early bed.

Tuesday, and we headed up to Hepburn Springs just North of Healeville (the guidebook suggested the water had a slight efervescant and metalic taste – YUK is all I can say!)



before stopping for a game of Mini Golf. It really should have been called Crazy Golf, certainly the Craziest Golf Course I've ever seen. Words can't do it justice, so here's some photos:















Obviously, Jen won, but the less said about that the better....

We had a potter around Daylesford and had lunch at the local pub before heading further into the Goldfields region to Ballarat. Ballarat is a big town, not especially attractive (despite the guidebook assurances of a “wealth of impressive Victorian-era buildings”), but it is the site of the Eureka Stockade, credited as the birthplace of democracy in Australia. In the 1850s when the goldrush was at its peak, diggers were required to pay a licence fee to the government to mine a small claim in the goldfields, but were not entitled to vote. An Irishman, Peter Lalor, lead a small rebellion that saw some 150 diggers burn their licences and set up a stockade. 30 were killed in the short battle of the Eureka Stockade that followed, but the rebellion later proved successful as Victorians became sympathetic to the diggers complaints and the Government abolished the licence fees and granted miners the right to vote and acquire land.

The other key thing to do in Ballarat is Soverign Hill, a living, breathing reincarnation of the goldfield town of Ballarat as it stood in the 1850s. Its a bit like Beamish in the UK, with a working mine, pubs, shops, bowling alley etc which you can walk around, with locals and backpackers dressed up in traditional dress to make it all the more authentic.... We went on Wednesday morning, and it was pretty good to be fair, if a bit expensive for our cheap tastes ($36 each with a 10% discount!) You can even pan for gold in the stream constructed there, and Jennie found a speck of gold! She made the mistake though, of entrusting it to me, and it blew off my finger while she was searching for more. Oops. Randomly now as we travel she likes to sing “Jennie found gold, and Claire lost it!” It was of course but a speck of gold paper from a sweet wrapper, but clearly its a story that's going to live a long time.










From Ballarat we headed ALL THE WAY BACK to Melbourne, so Jennie could call into the Rapee office to see the showroom there and meet up with Grace who works there. All very pleasant (though we've not yet checked out how much the Melbourne toll roads have cost us), and a cup of coffee and a Monte Carlo biscuit later (thanks Grace!) we were back on the highway out to the Great Ocean Road. I dread to think what the Melbourne tolls have cost us. That plus the fact we've picked up a speeding ticket for doing 78km in a 70km limit ($148!) is going to nudge the already precarious budget closer to the edge of its destruction. I wouldn't mind if we were speed demons, but most of the time we're about 15km under the speed limit, pulling over to let other vehicles pass by.... Hohum.

Anyway, onto the Great Ocean Road and Torquay, where the surfers go, but we didn't stop. We went on instead to the most expensive campground IN THE WORLD (no really, it is) at Anglesea. It was very nice to be fair. Anglesea is cute, but we departed on Thursday for Apollo Bay. We headed back to Addis Point (halfway between Torquay and Anglesea, great lookout) to view Bells Beach from afar first, and stopped many times on route for photos of the beautiful coastline, including a stop at Split Point Lighthouse.





Found a great campsite at Appollo Bay and here, 3,679km and four weeks into the trip, I finally got the surfboard off the roof and put it in the water! Had a good surf actually, nice small waves for me to fall off – water was cold though, I may regret not bringing the full wetsuit.



Friday, and we set off for the 12 Apostles and Port Campbell. We drove out on route to Cape Otway, hoping to see the lighthouse and perhaps even climb it if it wasn't too expensive. Expensive though it is for a lighthouse ($16.50 each), and Victoria Parks have set the area up so you can't even see the view from near the lighthouse without paying the entrance fee. We of course objected to this and cut off our nose to spite our faces and headed back down the 12 km track to the Great Ocean Road. We did see a lot of Koalas here though, so it wasn't all bad.





The stretch of the Great Ocean Road from the Otways to Port Campbell is the most impressive, with the rock stacks which were once attached to the land slowly collapsing into the Southern Ocean.





Its really beautiful. We couldn't though raise our game enough to make it back there for sunset – a combination of tiredness and the promise of more Chinese tourists was enough to convince us that a glass of wine and early bed was the better option. This was, I think, a mistake, as a glorious sunset ensued. Ah well, I think we'll see a few more on our travels.

On Saturday, with the weather beginning to turn for the worst on the coast, we set off for the Grampians which are directly north of Warrnambool where we'd made it to on the coast. We did a big Coles food shop, and picked up a few more beers, in Warrnambool before driving up some very long, straight and largely empty roads to get to Dunkeld, southern gateway to the Grampians. A nice lady in the Tourist Information gave us directions on where to head, including a free campground just out of town . So we had our first free camp in some time, trying despite a sense of futility to reign that budget back in. The campground was good, and even I slept reasonably well (still some fears of murderers to keep me awake).

On Sunday we set off into the Grampians for some off-roading. First stop on route was for a dead snake on road Jen spotted on the road – we think it may have been an Eastern Tiger Snake. Whatever it was, it hadn't had a good night.



We did a few tracks in the Grampians, which were a little disappointing given the write up in the guidebook we were following, we thought we'd struggle, but Priscilla was quite unmoved by the climbs (such as they were) and we didn't have much by way of views compared to the High Country. We did, however, see two emus race across in front of us on Mairs Track, which was great (even if I did think the first one was a black kangaroo....)

We camped at Halls Gap Caravan Park and were surrounded by kangaroos, cockatoos and ducks for the evening. Bit of a windy night, but was good.

Next day we had more fun with the tracks, in particular Chinaman's Track which was a little bit more testing (still not the High Country!), and we saw more Emus! This time they were waiting for us in a little green hollow as we crawled down a rocky path. We stopped immediately and turned off the engine and watched them for about 20 minutes, really amazing.



We're loving the whole wildlife side of travelling – that afternoon we saw numerous kangaroos bouncing alongside us as we headed out of the park as well. Its much nicer than seeing the roadkill version!

Enough for now, Hamilton, Port Fairy and the crossing of the South Australian Border to follow...

Claire, of Jennie and Claire Fame