| Aug. 5th, 2007 @ 07:14 pm Grampians and stuff! |
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Today is a lazy Sunday. So I went out shopping. Oooohhh. McCain's TV dinners having 50% off!!! *Proceeded to grab 1 pack of almost every different type of TV dinner.
The result? This:
Arghh. Remind me never to over-shop again. As it is, had a difficult time dragging 8 plastic bags of food up the slight slope from the supermarket to my house, even though it just involves walking down 2-3 blocks.
In any case, this blog entry is about the trip I made to the Grampians National Park in the state of Victoria last week. Have overcome wanderlust temporarily, so I can bring myself to blog about it now.
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Day 1
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Our trip began on Wednesday night, when we (as in Trax and I) took a flight into Melbourne on Wednesday night. The journey began with a horrible start. We were booked into Mercure Grand Welcome in Melbourne for the first night, and Trax positively disliked the place, proclaiming it "YMCA All over again." The walls were a little thin so you could hear people flushing their toilet in the next room, or people walking down the hallway, so he didn't sleep too well and got pretty grouchy. As for me... well, honestly I slept like a log, thankfully.
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Day 2
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The next morning was equally bad. We had booked a train-bus-bus ride from Melbourne to Halls Gap, the town right smack in the middle of 2 mountain ranges, and the starting point for many of the bush walking trails in the Grampians National park. Our next 2 nights would be spent staying at Halls Gap. Unfortunately, the morning got off a rocky start, when we almost missed the train at the Melbourne Southern Cross station, as we had difficulty finding Platform 8S. We ended up having to run to the platform, and in the process, I spilt Coke onto the sleeve of my brand-new, white Esprit jacket. Thankfully, we made it in time... 2 minutes before the train departed.
Luckily, things improved, as did the weather, which got really nice and sunny. The train ride concluded in Bhallarat without further incident, and we changed to a bus ride from there to Stawell. One last change of bus (or more precisely, van) was needed for the leg between Stawell to Halls Gap, but we were pleased to be deposited right at the doorstep of the holiday cottage we had rented (Stanford's Getaway).
The cottage turned out to be very nice, and a luxurious change from the horrid Mercure room we had in Melbourne. We had a living room, kitchen, bedroom, and a nice big toilet complete with a spa bath. The king sized bed looked plush and inviting, but we didn't stay for long to test it out. Went out walking straightaway to the Visitor's Center, which was but a stone's throw away from our cottage, to collect some maps, and we were off on our first bushwalking trail - Boronia's Peak.
This, is Boronia's Peak.
Amidst arguments (which I won) with Trax because he wanted to climb out to the backside of the rock (and there is nothing underneath obviously), we partook in the lovely scenary, with Halls Gap at our feet. At the same time, we were able to get a nice, relatively unobstructed view of the valley on the other side of the mountain ranges. Don't know what place that is though.
Halls Gap below
The other side of the mountain range
The funny thing, though, is that we didn't know whether we had reached Boronia's Peak yet or not. There was no sign anywhere, and the walking trail appeared to continue. We suspected we had not, because it had only taken us slightly over an hour to get there, an unnaturally short period of time for scaling any peak. It didn't help, that in the near distance ahead, there was another higher peak. The only problem was, that other peak was at least one mountain range away, and to get there would require walking down and up again some distance away. We didn't have any proper hiking maps which would have documented clearly the trails, because we hadn't bought one from the Visitor's Center, so all we had was the free, complimentary copy, and the complimentary map we had showed that Boronia's Peak laid at the end of the trail, which seemed a little contradictory.
So, we walked on. And we went on and on. There didn't seem any end. The description in the complimentary map said that there was a 'scramble up the rocks' in order to reach Boronia's Peak. And we indeed came upon a mass of rocks, that was halfway between us and the peak we had seen earlier on. The only problem was, this pile of rocks didn't seem to have any trail. And it was getting darker, and we knew we had to be out of the hills before sunset. So we decided to call it a day and turned back. What a waste of leg energy. The only consolation was that we managed to see a wallaby hopping about in the wild on that long extended walk.
(PS: Eventually we found out that the first rock we reached WAS Boronia's Peak by looking at the Grampians pictorial books being sold at the local bookstore. LOL.)
Eventually we made it down back into Hall's Gap just as the sun was almost completely sad. It gets really dark once the sun sets in Halls Gap, and by 6pm, it was completely dark. We went back 'home', had a quick shower, and went to the acclaimed Kookaburra restaurant just opposite where we had dinner.
Dinner included soup of the day (Lamb Shanks), and roasted chicken for Trax and Fillet for me. I was particularly fascinated by their mash potato, which had a really nice zang to it, and was wondering what was the additional ingredient they had put in to give it that extra flavour (We decided it was garlic; I shall try putting garlic into my mashed potato next time).
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Day 3
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After a nice breakfast in bed, we started our trek late morning. Our objective today: The Pinnacles, which is a 11.5km walk round trip from Halls Gap. The weather was bad and it was raining sporadically. Surprisingly though, it wasn't very cold.
Our start of the bushwalking trail began on the way to Venus Bath, and we were lucky enough to see the kangaroos in the wild!
We would have to walk from Halls Gap to the Wonderland Carpark, which incidentally, is where most people drive to to start the trek. However, as we didn't have a car, we had no choice but to walk. The walk was largely uneventful; we were basically in the middle of 2 rock faces, with a small stream flowing in the middle. Eventually, we hit Venus Bath, which looks like this:
Nothing spectacular, IMHO.
The walk from Halls Gap to Venus Bath wasn't too interesting, as it involved mostly dirt trails. However, it was only after Venus Bath that the path started to get a lot harder. It involved more climbing vertically upwards, up till the point where we hit open-face rock - that is, a stretch of rock, with little obstruction below, which means if you fall, you are gone case. We were a little taken aback as we weren't expecting to encounter that kind of climbing at all on this stretch of the route. Furthermore, the rock face was wet from the rain this morning, and therefore it was a tad bit too slippery for our liking. What to do? Climb up slowly and carefully, all the while cursing why didn't we have a car.
The stretch of rock I'm talking about. It doesn't look too steep in the pictures, does it?
We made it over that rock face, but still, there was no sign of the Wonderland carpark. Yet, the trail was starting to go down again. Argh. It would go up and down a few more times, before we finally spied the sign that said: Wonderland Carpark - 0.7km. By then, Trax was going on and on about how we might not have the time to make it up to the Pinnacles and down again, since it was already past noon, and I felt like boxing his mouth shut, thinking that the energy could be better spent climbing.
Eventually, we were in some valley with a stream again, when we finally saw the first sign of humans - a couple, who had just come down from the other sight. Since the woman was wearing a nice trench coat and boots with heels, we concluded that we must not be too far away from the car park. So we took a deep breath and walked all the way up the stairs until we were over that rock face. And we were rewarded with a first glimpse of Wonderland carpark, which is nothing more than a small piece of flat ground with a couple of parked cars. We had made it. Hurray.
First thing we did? Trax went to ask a group of guys at the carpark how far was the drive up from Halls Gap to the Wonderland carpark. We were told it was only a 5 minutes drive and all the way downhill.
Great! We wouldn't have to go down that treacherous path where we had come up by. Instead, we would walk by the road downhill back to Halls Gap the next time. We proceeded to truly start on our climb to the Pinnacle. The signpost pointed in both directions: The Pinnacle via the Grand Canyon, and The Pinnacle. So I asked Trax, which way do you want to go? He said Grand Canyon, so we turned left.
Which turned out to be a mistake. Haha.
Apparrently, the Grand Canyon is basically a valley with rock faces on both sides, with some streams flowing down in the middle at some portions. It's 'grand', because the rock faces are pretty high and quite magnificent if you actually see them in real-life, but generally don't look as good in pictures. The climb itself basically involved going downhill into the 'valley', then uphill all the way. For the most part, it involved walking on rocks sloping upwards, and at particularly steep sections, there were metal handrailings for gripping. At other portions, there were metal stairs to climb. However, it wasn't a particularly easy climb as the climb was mostly uphill.
Which was why it was a mistake to do the Grand Canyon at the beginning, as it involves mostly uphill climbing. It would have been wiser to climb down the Grand Canyon. But we didn't know that, because we hadn't done our research.
The Grand Canyon, with rock faces on both sides.
The metal railings look like the one I'm gripping
Crawling under a big rock...
More metal staircases going uphill...
By the time we were out of the Grand Canyon, we were dead tired, so we sat down on a nearby rock, and started to eat our packed lunch - toasted bread with Nutella. The only problem is, toasted bread turns very hard after a while. So it was like chewing on a rock. Hahaha. Moral of the story? Do not bring toasted bread along if you don't intend to eat it immediately. It's more advisable to bring just bread.
The next section of the climb involved climbing over big expanses of rock. Not too difficult actually. Looks like this:
After having gotten out of the rocky stretch, we found ourselves once more walking on a dirt trail. By then, we were starting to tire, as the climb was unrelenting, and uphill all the way. Trax started to really regret climbing with 5 litres of water on his back.
More rocky stretches were to follow, but they weren't really nice.
By the time we made it up to Silent Street, which was the last stretch of climb just before we hit the Pinnacle, it was raining quite heavily again. Argh. And Silent Street is just like its namesake: Silent save for the sound of rain dripping on the rocks. It basically looks like a street, with rock walls on both sides, and rocks in the middle. The climb here was more challenging, as the rocks were wet from the rain, and it was sloping upwards all the way.
Trax, dead tired from scaling Silent Street.
Another shot of Silent Street, that gives a better picture of the rocky path we had to scale.
It got really bad, as the rain was making the rocks really slippery and hard to climb, plus the sky was overcast and starting to darken due to the heavy cloud cover. So it was with great relief when we finally emerged from Silent Street, and after a few more rocky stretches, were at the Pinnacle. I can't tell you how pleased we were to see this sight:
The Pinnacle! One more last stretch of rock and we would be standing there at the Pinnacle!
It was actually a relative short distance, but it took me quite a while to struggle up to the Pinnacle, reason being the wind was really strong and chilly up there! In fact, I wondered whether I would be blown off the mountain, so I had to grip the rocks carefully to hoist myself up.
This is the path to the outpost. And I was crounched down and crawling up all the way because it was so windy that I was afraid I would get blown away!
Luckily, it was all worth the trek. The view was superb - no panoramic camera can do it justice. I found myself literally standing on top of a piece of rock jutting out into from the mountain range, and Halls Gap appeared really puny in the valley below.
Steep drop below...
The only good thing about the pesky rain was that it produced a rainbow.. haha.
As it was drizzling, and there was a strong wind blowing at the top of the Pinnacle which made it really chilly, we didn't stay for long. It was now time to make our way back. While at the Pinnacle though, we met another Australian guy who had arrived slightly earlier than us. And suddenly, Trax developed a renewed interest to talk to him. Later I learnt that Trax had asked the guy, whom he discovered had driven up to the Wonderland Carpark from Halls Gap, whether we could hitch a ride down back to Halls Gap. And he agreed!
So we all proceeded to make our way downhill, except that the Aussie guy was soon way out of sight; I guess his bushwalking speed must have been 2 times faster than ours. It didn't help that Trax kept on slipping and falling on the walk down Silent Street due to the slippery rocks, and then began developed a phobia of falling. Which led, naturally, to an even slower walking pace downwards. So it was then that I discovered that apparently I can walk on wet rocks with a more stable footing than him. Muahaha.
Last Views of the Grampians on our way down
We eventually arrived at hte Wonderland carpark at around 4 plus in the afternoon, and were astonished to find the Aussie guy still waiting there for us! So we hitchhiked back to Halls Gap. And yupe, the 5 minutes' drive would have been a really long way to walk, as the road twisted and turned all the way downwards, and appeared pretty long. We arrived in Halls Gap just in time to find heavy rain starting to pour, and boy, were we glad that we weren't caught up there in the open anymore.
We retired back to our cottage, where Trax attempted to get a log fire going in the living room, while I was sitting on the sofa eating ice-cream. Unfortunately, the fire kept dying out, and I grew tired of watching him, so much so that I eventually fell asleep on the sofa. Oops.
(At the end of the day though, he gave up on starting new log fires again, because the wood wouldn't burn, but the newspaper that was used to start the fire had all burnt up.)
Dinner was spent eating at the Kookaburra Restaurant again. Soup of the day was Lamb Shanks again (I suspect that's their only soup??) but this time, we had steak for main course. Food was good, and I can recommend coming to Kookaburra for food if you're staying in Halls Gap. But a meal like ours would cost 70AUD+++.
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Day 4
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We didn't have any itinery for the day, as we were scheduled to travel back to Melbourne in the afternoon. After waking up late in the morning, and having a late check-out at 12 noon, we just sat down at the park opposite the Halls Gap Supermarket, eating ice-cream, and eventually playing with the swings at the playground.
Again, it was a Bus-bus-train journey from Halls Gap back to Melbourne. By the time we arrived in Melbourne, it was already late evening, so we checked into our hotel - Medina Grand Melbourne - straightaway. We were vastly relieved to find the place a lot better than Mercure Grand Welcome.
We had dinner at one of the riverside restaurants along the Yarra river. Unfortunately, the dinner tasted awful. Trax had a worse time than me, since he tried to be adventurous and ordered Lamb Curry. Generally, it's a bad idea to eat Asian food in Western countries, and in his case, the food didn't turn out too good.
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Day 5
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Our last day in Melbourne. Really didn't do much; just wandered around to Queen Victoria's Market, to St. Kilda, Church Street, around CBD. Spent some time taking trams. Surprisingly, I had utterly lost the urge to shop, and my shopping at the end of the trip only totaled up to 4 Abercrombie tops. Well. I guess I was in a pretty crabby mood as the trip was ending.
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In a way, I hate writing blog entries about my travels, because once I've done so, it signifies that I'm ready to move on. And I usually take some time to get over my travel high. I guess since Trax has already left for the States, I too should move on. Right now my future is uncertain, I guess, and I don't even have a concrete idea of what I want to do. Regardless. It's 8.35PM as I finish typing this entry now, and I think I really need to get down to cooking dinner. |
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