Wednesday 12 December 2018
Well our little detour to the Grampians National Park for our last adventure this holiday was a great option. Well done to my amazing husband and tour guide. Love you to bits.
We got up early and snuck out of the caravan park before breakfast to start our walk early as the forecast was for rain starting from about 11am. We had breakfast at the carpark of the hike start so as not to disturb our neighbours. DB always as trouble opening the tent and making a noise first. he always waits till he hears someone up and about before he gets up. He is a funny fellow. So after a quick break we were on our way on our hike by 7.30am. Amazing early start for us especially after our late arrival to Halls Gap last night.
The walk was a constant up from the Wonderland Carpark. Unfortunately I was feeling a little off with a nasty headache so I found it a bit of a struggle the whole way. The track was amazing, the work that had gone in to making it look natural with rock steps was incredible. We think they must have had some heavy duty manpower or use a helicopter. The walk up the steps through the Grand Canyon was fantastic, then the Pinnacle was spectacular. The 360° views across the valley was amazing. The whole area was a very much like the Blue Mountains. We then hiked back down. (Total 6km) We only passed 1 guy on the way up, met 2 guys at the Pinnacles lookout who were leaving as we arrived and a couple who arrived at the top as we were leaving. It was well worth getting up early to have this opportunity on our own. On the way down, the further we went, the more people we passed. In the end we would have seen maybe 30 people on the way down, maybe more. We were quite amazed how many people were in the Grampians.
After this we went to Reed Lookout and The Balconies (2.2km) followed by MacKenzie Falls, Broken Falls and Carange Lookout (2.7km). All of these were quite good but The Pinnacles and Grand Canyon were by far the best view all day.
We then headed down to Halls Gap where we had a lovely cafe lunch to prepare us for our big drive and to decide which way we were going. As always DB would like to go a different way. Should we drive south through the National Par then back through Ballarat, Daylesford, Albury and the Hume Hwy home (about 1300km) or go through Forbes, Parkes, Dubbo, Newcastle home (about 1500km) or take into consideration the forecast for horrendous weather and just go directly home the shortest route possible (about 1100km). As DB will do the most of the driving I let him choose after I decided we should forget going south. We enjoyed a nice lunch then headed off about 3pm, still not definite which way we were headed.
It wasn’t for a couple of hours that we had to decide and we went with the shortest option based on the fact the weather is forecast to be really bad and the car is being nursed all the way, needing a water fillip eery 200km. Lucky I have a mechanic with me who knows what to do. Hopefully he can fix it when we get home.
Anyway we are driving hard today and won’t get to Gundagai until 11pm but figured we would get as far as possible before the rain.