What the?!

MAGNETIC HILL near Peterborough is a strange phenomenon as you put your car in neutral, turn off the ignition and the next thing you know you are moving up hill, reckon we got up to about 5kms per hour. Last year whilst in the area we missed visiting here so made a point of stopping here in Peterborough so we could check this out.
NEAR PETERBOROUGH in South Australia, as you can see the scenery is arid, wheat growing area and old sandstone homes, they built with this as termites have a great appetite in the area.

NEAR BROKEN HILL in New South Wales, which has the red earth desert. Interestingly the area operates on South Australia time, area code and football playing as they wanted to change to SA as they felt they were just a pin prick on on the NSW map and didn't get funding, but the NSW Government stepped in as they wanted the wealth from the area.

Way out West

BROKEN HILL We have been here for three days, an interesting silver, lead and zinc mining town and for a mining town it appears really clean. The speed limit is 50kms, any more that that and your car would shake to bits as most roads despite being sealed are very bumpy.

There are a lot of art galleries and one hosts "The Big Picture" which is home to an amazing panoramic oil painting of the outback which is 100 metres long and over 12 metres high and took over two years to complete. In the room that it is housed the foreground has 300 tonne of red earth, plants, animals and birds so very life like.

SILVERTON is 25kms out of town from Broken Hill and was a booming mining town between 1881 and 1885, so just a few old buildings and also home to some art galleries. The Silverton Hotel has been featured in many movies, generally with a different name and the black Falcon next to us is the car used in the Mad Max movies with the local area as a back drop.

THE LIVING DESERT RESERVE is just 9kms out of Broken Hill, it has some walks which give you an idea of the area. As you can see we did get to see a kangaroo, he was one of two that we saw as well as a lizard and about a million flies. On our way out to Silverton earlier in the day we spotted some wild donkeys.
MUNDI MUNDI PLAINS with dust just starting to take off from this harsh landscape. Silverton and Broken Hill get a few dust storms each year as you can imagine, luckily we missed the one that Mildura had the other day.
PAUL with the Mundi Mundi Plains in the back ground whilst we were at The Living Desert, check out the flies, if you look closely you can see them buzzing just out from Paul's head, gross! Don't know how people can live in some of these areas.
STURT PEAS At long last we saw some of these flowers whilst at The Living Desert, they are the symbol of most desert areas so have seen them on lot's of souvenirs.
SCULPTURE SYMPOSIUM Next to The Living Desert there is a collection of sandstone carvings up on a hill overlooking the Mundi Mundi Plains and Broken Hill, this one is titled "Horse".

Mildura Skyline

OVERLOOKING VINEYARDS FROM OUR CARAVAN SITE The sky in the area has been so clear that you are always seeing plane's vapour trails and the sunsets are just beautiful. At night when the stars are out there are that many that they look like they go down and touch the ground.

Out Bush ,West New South Wales

THE PERRY SAND HILLS near Wentworth, they date back to an Ice Age approximately 40,000 years ago. The land surrounding here is dry and scrubby and then you have all these red ochre sand hills, the colours reminiscent of driving up through the centre.

THE WALLS OF CHINA Mungo National Park that is part of the Willandra Lakes Region World Heritage Area. The walls are the old foreshore of Lake Mungo one of the lakes in the area that dried out 17,000-18,000 years ago - remember it well!
LAKE MUNGO remnants of the lake floor. Once you turn off the highway there is a 110km drive into the park with 88kms of that being dirt road. We saw a few emus and when out walking around the Walls of China there must of been a million flies buzzing around, I wore my very fashionable fly net, no good worrying about how you look when you don't know anyone else there.

MURRAY AND DARLING RIVERS INTERSECTION.

Back to the Murray River

MURRAY RIVER by Mildura. Today we drove through to this area, last year we visited Echuca further east on the Murray, the river looks the same at this stage but it may be a couple of months before the water from the Queensland floods filters through. STURT HIGHWAY From Swan Hill through to here there were quite a few wineries, citrus farms and olive trees. It is strange in that at times you have arid bush like this and then orchards as below.

ORANGE GROVES along the highway. The ground is just so dry and the area has more days of sunshine than the Gold Coast, on average 300 days. The mornings are crisp and days at the moment around 30 degrees.

Moooving On

HOW NOW Brown Cow Shepparton is a town that services the local rural areas. Driving here yesterday we were astonished at the number of gum trees that were damaged and we learnt that this was caused by a storm a couple of weeks ago with winds up to 154 kms an hour that lasted just ten minutes. The caravan park that we are staying in lost 60 trees and several fences were damaged, fortunately no caravans or cabins were damaged.
GO AUSTRALIA!

JUST GRAZING

TWO COWS

Autumn in the Alps

MT HOTHAM A great drive from where we are staying at Bright. At the top where the skiing chair lifts operate from it is 1868 metres, when we were there mid morning it was 17 degrees and felt like a wind chill of -5 and back down the road it would of been about 27 degrees. Still can't get over how eerie the alpine areas are with the bands of dead trees.
TUNNEL that you drive through as you enter Mt Hotham as this is part of one of the ski runs. It is a lovely drive up there at this time of the year, don't think I would have the nerves to drive up here when the roads are covered with snow after seeing the yellow road markings and the red poles telling you to keep to the right of them.

DINNER PLAIN An interesting little village about 10kms from Mt Hotham, where all the homes are a similar design to this, must look really pretty when covered in snow. A popular spot in the summer for just relaxing and bush walking. If you have a spare $435,000 something like this could be yours, would hate to think what the occupancy rate would be.
ROCKY VALLEY DAM near Falls Creek which is apparently the swankiest place to be seen on the ski slopes. There were a lot of cyclists on the roads today, where do these people get their stamina? Saw one gentleman sitting on the side of the road with abrasions to his face.

KIEWA VALLEY by Mount Beauty. In and around Bright there are cows, grapes, berries, chestnuts, walnuts and apples.

The "Rock Lover" was back in Heaven

MT BUFFALO NATIONAL PARK This is the view from "The Horn" at 1723 metres and man it was freezing and windy there, I could hardly stand up and felt like I had slit eyes but the views were worth the climb.
CRESTA VALLEY part way up the mountain. There is only tobogganing and no skiing due to the fires in December 2006 destroying the power generators and snow making facilities.

EUROBIN FALLS This was part of the falls, at the top of the gorge you get to walk across where they commence at Crystal Creek. The views from the gorge were fabulous.

LEVIATHAN This is where you pray that the rock stays where it was placed several thousand years ago. Quite a bit of wombat pooh under the rock so obviously a popular shelter for them, alas we didn't spot any.

HANG GLIDING PLATFORM These people must have nerves of steel to take off from here.

THE BIG PEANUT no, the Torpedo rock.

What A Difference A Year Makes

KINGLAKE What an eerie feeling it was driving through the area that was destroyed by fire in February 2009. The devastation just seemed to stretch for kilometres, it is hard to believe that some people got out of the area as the roads in and out are quite narrow and windy and there would of been nil visibility. Today it was really gusty up there compared to where we are staying down the hill at Healesville.

At the crest of the hill there is a village with relocatable homes and screening to give each one some privacy and there are a lot of new homes constructed and more under construction. YARRA VALLEY Rows of grape vines as far as the eyes can see and wineries we have never heard of. Strange to think that a few kilometres up the road there was such devastation. Closer to Healesville there were several strawberry farms.

DE BORTOLI Had to get a photo at the sign of the home of Paul's wine casks.

Philip Island

WOOLAMAI BEACH Philip Island is just over an hours drive south of Frankston, it has 100kms of coastline. The south side has great surf beaches and there was a group of school kids there having lessons, my how school has changed.
PYRAMID ROCK the sea was just so clear and interesting how this rock is different colours to the surrounding ones. Further on are some rocks that are home to a seal colony and a beach where penguins come in each night, last night there were 1172 of them.

FLYNNS BEACH The north side of the island is sheltered beaches and at times we were the only ones there. The island must be a real buzz when there is motor racing on, we did see the track but didn't lash out and take a hot lap. Most of the homes are on the north side and by the looks of things more holiday homes than permanent residences.

Back to Blue Skies

MORNINGTON BEACH I know that I posted a similar picture last year when we were on the Mornington Peninsula but the beach sheds are just so colourful. The beach looked lovely but the venturous were only wading in up to their knees despite the temperature being in the mid 20's.
DANDENONG RANGES We are staying at Frankston and yesterday visited the ranges; different to what we expected as very residential with little townships dotted around. There were great views from the Sky High lookout over the City, Port Philip Bay and to Healesville. At the base were apple orchards and on the way up numerous very athletic cyclists, must have nerves of steel for the glide down the mountain.

OWL in the garden at the Mt Dandenong Sky High Lookout.

Wilsons Promontory National Park

MILLERS LANDING We had a great day today in this National Park on the South East corner of Victoria. This bay had a variety of bird life, swans, seagulls, ibis, crows, black parrots and egrets. There were even quite a few jellyfish washed up here and around at one of the beaches several blue bottles with tentacles up to 2 metres long. SQUEAKY BEACH Yes, the sand does squeak when you walk across it. The granite boulders were just spectacular and a reminder of the ones at Coles Bay in Tasmania. Lovely to visit during the week as felt like we had the place to ourselves.
PICNIC BAY There were several beaches on this side of the National Back and the other side was mountains covered in huge granite rocks. Would be quite spectacular when they have electric storms. Early 2009 a lot of the park was destroyed by bush fires and the areas are recovering very well.
Really chuffed as we finally saw a live wombat, he was waddling back into some bush right by where the parks ranger workshops were.

Just as I zoomed in on these flowers and pressed the button the bee landed.

Feels like a Polar Blast

AGNES FALLS Now at Foster and it feels like the wind is straight off the South Pole, give us heat any day. Been overcast and showery the last couple of days so hoping that the sun will shine through tomorrow. Agnes Falls is set in a valley amongst lovely rolling hills dotted with cattle and is the longest single drop waterfall in Victoria.
MAIL BOX Don't you just love the udder.

Missed the Storm of the Century

LAKES ENTRANCE On Saturday we left Mallacoota and parked up at Bairnsdale, a few storm clouds around, luckily we only had some thunder and lightning and then during the night some heavy rain. Melbourne sure did get a pounding with damaging hail stones. Yesterday was a damp one so had a quiet day reading.

Today we went back up the coast to Lakes Entrance which was the host over the weekend of the junior surf titles, not good weather for it unfortunately and today is a public holiday in Victoria. Lakes Entrance is the home of Australias largest fishing fleet.
NINETY MILE BEACH, Lakes Entrance

LINDENOW West of Bairnsdale is a lot of farming land with cows, sheep, corn and what looked to be cabbages. In the background is the Great Dividing Range.