The Great Ocean Road

ERSKINE FALLS NEAR LORNE. Lovely to be able to visit some rain forest and green rolling country after all the drought stricken areas that we have seen around Victoria. The other day coming to Apollo Bay from Ballarat there was a lot of dust and see on the news tonight that there have been dust storms rolling across to Sydney.

EAGLE ROCK, AIREYS INLET The Great Ocean Road really is spectacular, today we drove through to Torquay with the plan of stopping off at the lookouts on our way back to Apollo Bay, alas the weather turned just before we got to Lorne. Weather and time permitting we will back track to there.

One consolation, we saw a koala in the wild, up a tree at the side of the main road, funnily enough a 100 metres away was another perched on a branch overhanging the road - very exciting, just need to see a wombat now, have certainly seen a lot of their pooh.

Sovereign Hill

SOVEREIGN HILL is a replica town of Ballarat in the 1850's when it was a prosperous gold mining area. It is very well done with the shops etc being open for you to wander through, there are gold mines to go down and the area where the Chinese had camps was very impressive.

PAUL, HEATHER AND NEIL Heather and Neil are friends from the Gold Coast, they are holidaying in Melbourne and came through to Ballarat for the day, so it was great to catch up with them. After visiting Sovereign Hill we had lunch and then had bit of a drive around the city before they headed back.

Ballarat

EMU EGG This has been carved by a lady staying in the park here, it is quite exquisite, not bad for her first effort.
1966 MKI MUSTANG Tomorrow is a huge day here in Ballarat with around 500 Mustangs going on display. The man next to us who is the proud owner of this one is here from WA. The car has only 24,000 miles on it and is original, it sat in a pawn brokers shed in Reno, USA for 16 years under a cover. He has rebuilt the motor and bought it here on a car trailer that he has built.

We have found that there isn't a lot to do here, the main street is lovely with two lanes each way divided by an avenue with statues. The Botanical Gardens are quite nice with a Prime Minister Avenue which has statues of all of the Prime Ministers. There is a huge lake covering 238 hectares just a couple minutes out of the CBD which is empty due to the drought which looks very sad and a stark reminder of that. It is strange seeing a yacht club and other walkways leading to this dried out patch of land.

Last day in the Grampians

MC KENZIE FALLS This waterfall was looking very good with a good water flow, the park walk was great with lot's of steps and handrails, a bit hard on the old knees.
BOROKA OUTLOOK Fabulous views over the ranges, Halls gap is at the base with Lake Bellfield and Frey valley in the distance.

COCKATOO Been lovely here with lot's of birds around such as kookaburras, parrots, currawongs, ducks and pigeons. In Tasmania they do not have many colourful birds and on the West coast hardly any birds due to wet weather and birds nests not being a good combination.

More of The Grampians

THE PINNACLE Just one of the amazing rock formations on the walk to The Pinnacle lookout. A few bods out and about taking in the incredible scenery, you sure do need to be fit.

EMUS BY LAKE BELLFIELD Lake Bellfield is dammed with it's water piped to a lot of local towns and as far up as The Murray. The mountains in the background look similar to the ones surrounding Coles Bay, Tasmania. What an amazing country we live in.

The Grampians

THE GRAMPIANS by Halls Gap, we are staying at the base of the mountains, so a very scenic backdrop. Today we walked for about 5kms from the park here up hill and down dale with the rock formations constantly changing. SPLITTER FALLS in all it's glory - this pretty much sums up the rainfall in Victoria. Coming from Bendigo through St Arnaud to Halls Gap it is still tinder dry everywhere, these areas have missed any of the recent downpours. This part of the Grampians still has signs of the bushfire that came through in 2006.

Botanical Bendigo

ROSALIND PARK is in the centre of town, it is very nice with tree lined avenues, fern garden and the above floral display. The building in the background is the courthouse.

CITY VIEW from the top of the tower in Rosalind Park, the Catholic Cathedral is huge, magnificent inside with marble floors and amazing timber ceiling with angels on the columns.

GOLDEN PHEASANT at the White Hill Botanical gardens, they only had a few birds but this one was exquisite, they come from China.

Today we took a drive to Echuca, haven't been there since 2000, a really bustling town with tourists. The Murray River is very low and today there were a lot of houseboats parked up, hopefully they will be out and about with the school holidays due to commence.