Grampians National Park and Nature Reserve, Victoria State, Australia

We had a very long drive from Adelaide and it took us at least 7 hours to drive to the Grampians National Park due to a few reasons. Darren was quite tired so he had to make a lot of stops and also the road always went down to 40 or 60 km an hour with every town or village that we passed through and there were quite a few of them.  I am way too chicken to drive in Australia on the other side of the road, No Thank you.

Just passed the Pink Salt Lake we stopped at a General Store and they had this outside.

This is a Quince Fruit.  The Lorrkeet Birds were happily eating this fruit like savages.  Some chefs cook with this fruit.  I personally have never tasted it yet.  There was a tree in the back garden of this General Store that we stopped at.  They encouraged us to go back and relax, so we did.

Darren enjoying a hotdog in the back garden.

If you look closely at this grain silo you will see lovely black and white drawings of children on it.  It certainly made it more beautiful to look at.

The drive was very similar looking to Saskatchewan with wheat field after wheat field after wheat field but the wheat had already been harvested because we were almost getting into winter at this time.  I did not even know that Australia produced wheat and they actually were ahead of Canada in Wheat production a couple of years ago but we just moved up ahead of them.  Who knew?  I did not.  All of this type of landscape is very familiar looking to me.  The trees are definitely different looking than ours so you do get the feeling of, 'I'm not in Kansas anymore'. 

There were things we could have stopped to look at along the way but we had to be very selective because we also had a plan once we got to Grampians National Park after we checked in to Grampians View Cottages. 

We did however stop at the Pink Lake and it just coincidentally was a rest stop area where we stopped to go to the washroom and we saw this pink looking lake. 

I started reading the posters on it and then I said to Darren why don't we walk down and check it out.  The lake was completely dry at this time of year and every time you stepped onto it it made this weird crunchy sound because it was basically a pink salt bed.  It gets the pink color from a combination of algae and bacteria.  When the tiny algae secrete red, orange and yellow pigments called carotenoides that then combine with the algae when the water becomes hypersaline.  It was definitely worth stopping and walking on. 

I was not able to wash my hand for quite some time as the bathroom stops do not have running water.  That salt is potent and eventually starts to burn your fingers.

Me with the Pink Lake behind me and I got the Memo on what to wear apparently because I match the color of the Pink Lake.

Darren out on the Lake.

We continued on our way towards Grampians National Park and finally arrived at our Grampians View Cottages and checked in to our one bedroom unit. 

I had an agenda to fulfill and the sun was going to set at 7:20 pm that night but also it was going to be behind the Grampians Mountain Range so sooner than 7:20 pm.  The goal was to drive to the Wonderland Carpark, park our car and do the 2 km walk to the Pinnacle Peak.  The information online was incorrect and it was actually a 5.5 km walk so we actually made it to the halfway point when I had to call it because there's no way we would have made it back in the daylight and that would have been dangerous.

I was already creating shadows as it was getting late.  Lots of nice stone steps on this trail.

What we did see was gorgeous with super cool rock formations and views.  This was the most coiffed trail we've ever hiked on.  Somebody put a whole bunch of effort into making rock steps pretty much throughout the trail.  We are used to lots of times making our own trail or stepping over boulders or climbing up rocks and this actually had beautiful rock steps which were super sturdy and if it was too high to climb they actually put in aluminum stairs and if it was too dangerous of a cliff they actually had railings up in several spots when you were walking up the canyon on a dangerous cliff.

There is Darren going up into the Canyon.

We came to Echo Wall and there was a little sign that said to scream so we did that and it certainly did echo off the gigantic, monolithic sized boulders.  

Echo Wall

Aluminum and steel stairs for about 4 flights.  Pretty posh.

This was a cool little arched rock formation.

More railings and beautiful stairs.  I wish I knew who did this work and I could fly him over to Canada to landscape my backyard.

We were not meant to see the top of Pinnacle Peak and that's okay. 

 We climbed back down the mountain to the car park and got in our car and drove down to Halls Gap which is a small town at the base of the Grampians Mountains.  The Grampians Range was created by tectonic forces uplifting the sandstone or compacted sediment from 400 million years of sedimentation in an inland sea.  The Grampians are very strange looking because it's completely flat for miles and miles and then this range of mountains just pops out of nowhere.  They're quite high and they're not a range of mountains like the Rockies that extend for thousands of miles. It's just a very compact mountain range.

We stopped and saw a large Mob of Kangaroos. I counted 37 this time and we watched them for quite a while.  One lady kangaroo seemed to be the lookout because she was the only one remotely interested in me.  I think she had a Joey in her pouch because she stuck her face in her pouch at one point.  We were hungry so we moved on and found a restaurant to eat at.

That's a good scratch.

We had supper at the Paper Scissors Rock Brew Co. and I had the best Buttermilk Chicken Sandwich with spicy buffalo sauce on it that you could possibly imagine.  It was so tender and juicy and delicious.  We continued walking down the street and went to a grocery store so that I could pick up some breakfast items since we had a kitchen back at our cottage. 

We got back in the car and the Mob of Kangaroos that we had seen in the Australian Football Field or Aussies call it  a Footy Oval had moved into town.  We got to watch that same mob again because it was approximately 37 of them.  One little human boy at the Campground that the Roos had moved to was running around screaming at them like a Whirling Dervish so they all started to hop away and I got it on camera.  

Watch this video:  https://www.youtube.com/shorts/Qq_fQHtlPKk

As we were driving home we saw four more Mobs of Roos and one of the Mobs was probably over 100 in this extremely large Farmer's field. All total this day we probably saw 250 Kangaroos. We just need to see a Koala and some Dingoes.

The next morning was extremely cloudy and we weren't very hopeful, but we drove up to the top of the Grampians Mountain Range to see some of the lookout areas and especially The Balconies.

As we were driving up the mountain the car in front of us was driving really slow and then we spotted why?  A young male kangaroo was more or less trapped by the traffic going up the mountain.  He could not jump down the cliff to his death and the other side of the road was a rock cliff going up.  Poor dude was exhausted and so he kept climbing up the steep road ahead of the vehicle.  He eventually made it to safety.

 Watch the video:  https://www.youtube.com/shorts/M6qYamNG_JM

 We went to Baroco Lookout and it was beautiful, although clouded in and very windy and starting to rain a bit.  It must be stunning when sunny.  

We were literally driving in a cloud.

So pretty.

We continued on to Reed's Lookout and The Balconies. Unfortunately The Balconies trail was closed down due to a past bush fire which made the area unsafe for hiking.  The Balconies is one of the more impressive places to see, so that was quite unfortunate. We looked at Reed's Lookout which was quite pretty and took some pictures and then decided to leave and make our way to Warrnambool, the small city that we would be staying overnight in.

Leaving the Grampians.

We had to take an alternate road due to some road closures from Bush Fires.  Some of these roads were smaller than a single lane and they were still 100 Kms. per hour which is crazy.  Aussies are a bit nuts.

This just looks slightly elevated from a Cow path.

Across the street from the Mexican Restaurant that we ate at.

We continued on to Warrnambool which is a city on the coast and it was a windier cooler day at about 24°.  We checked into a comfort Inn which was actually quite nice in the room and went and found a good restaurant to eat a late lunch.  We had a couple of hours to kill before we had our night experience at the Deep Blue Hot Springs. 

I had a delicious Chimichanga!

We made our way to the coastal walk and had a lovely walk along the ocean cliffs. It was quite windy but still nice and warm.  Darren spotted an Echidna which we had never seen one of these before and it has this little pokey nose that he poked into the sand and ate bugs. He was similar to a porcupine but much more chill than that and smaller.  We were about 2 feet from him.

Technically this is the Bass Straight but still part of the Indian Ocean which is rough but beautiful.  There is nothing South of this except Antarctica.

The Echidna head, see the eye and nose/beak.

The Echidna is an ancient type of marsupial and endemic to Australia.  The Porcupine is a rodent.

 

Cold and unwelcoming looking but still beautiful.

A view of Warrnambool from the Sea Cliffs.  We had to ask an Aussie how to say this crazy city name.

We spent approximately 2 and 1/2 hours at the Deep Blue Hot Springs. It had 12 different Grotto pools to enjoy and relax and soak up the mineralized waters.  The night experience was cool because when it got darker the Grottos had under lighting and some had soft Spa type music playing and some Grottos had soft waterfalls. There was a cold dipping pool which I tried three times to go into  and failed.  Then Darren went in and I couldn't be beaten so I plunged in and OMG was that ridiculously cold.  We stayed about two seconds in that and got out but I did fully immerse.  The minerals at the Deep Blue Hot Springs are legit. The water was an Orangy Rusty color and my body did and does feel better for being immersed in it.  I thought it was kind of cool that there was Hot Springs on the coast. This is a volcanic area of Australia. 

Warrnambool technically is the last or first stop in our case of the Great Ocean Road.  You are actually supposed to start at Torquay, Australia and end in Warrnambool.  This makes sense since you are on the correct side of the road to take in the lookouts of the Ocean without crossing over to the other side of the road.  We only crossed over if it was safe to do so.  It would have been smarter to begin at the other end but we flew into Perth and then flew to Adelaide so we did it the Canadian way apparently which is ass backwards, and from west to east.  Oh well next time I will know better.