Thursday, June 30, 2011

David and Cassie's Great Australian Trip Part 1

Since the internet I'm getting is often slow, I might not be able to put as many pics up as I'd like, so if you don't see any up when you read a post, check back later and there might be some. :)

David and I left Sunday June 26th from Ballarat, through Geelong where we checked out the area in which I used to live and saw all of the changes, and then headed South through Torquay on to the Great Ocean Road. We spent our first night in Cape Otway at Blanket Bay campsite outside of Apollo Bay, VIC. Our campsite was very wet, so no fire making, but we had a trail down to the beach and the rocks there were amazing, so were the shells!! That night there were two other people camping near us, but overall it was pretty quite. David and I went for a walk on the beach and at night the stars were amazing, and we just stared at the Milky Way for a while. The next morning there were some wallabys about and an amazing sunrise.






The following day we hiked around Cape Otway a bit and then drove up to Laver's Hill where we got some gas before going to the Otway Fly. It was $22 each, which we decided after doing it was worth it. It's a really neat walk, and it's amazing to be up so high. There are 3 main types of trees in that area: the Mountain Ash, which is the tallest and used to grow up to 100 meters (330 feet) but now only grow to be about half that size in that area, the Blackwood, and the Myrtle Beach. The spiral viewing tower is at about 47 meters, so is only half as tall as the Mountain Ash trees used to get, which is incredible!






After that we went to find our campsite, near Beech Forest. We spent the night alone, and the area was very wet, in the morning we even found leeches on our tent! We have found that because of all of the wetness, the camp stove we bought was one of our best purchases and it has served us very well. We went for a wonderful walk to some more waterfalls near our campsite in the morning, and then headed back towards the Otway Fly to do the Triple Falls walk, which was highly suggested by someone in Lavers Hill. We then went back through Lavers Hill and headed towards the Twelve Apostles.




There were still quite a few tourists at the Twelve Apostles, even in winter (mostly asian), which kind of surprised me. We also briefly visited Loch Ard, but decided that since we planned on camping near Port Campbell anyway we could just come back and see the rest of Loch Ard the next day since it wasn't far away. The bad thing about doing this trip is winter is the limited amount of daylight (the sun rises around 7:30 AM and set around 5:30 PM). We spent the night at a caravan park in Port Campbell, which was nice because we got laundry, and a nice warm kitchen, internet, and showers.


The next morning we got up at 7:30 and then took a nice walk on some of the trails around town and caught the sunrise up over the town, and saw a guy surfing, and though he must be crazy cause it was VERY cold. We know it was at least 3˚C during the night, and that was around 10, so we think it got down to freezing.
We drove back to Loch Ard and saw the rest of that before moving on to Warrnambool where we looked at the Deakin campus there to see what it was like, and did a bit of shopping. Next was Nelson to the info desk to see about camping in Glenelg NP.
We were directed to a specific campsite and were told that no one else would be staying there. It was a lovely drive down a slightly bumpy road, and we saw lots of wallabies!





When we got there, there was a vehicle and a girl siting on one of the picnic tables with her pack and she looked like she was waiting for something. We found out her name was Saki (sp?) and she was originally from the Netherlands, but has been living the past 5 years in Melbourne. She was doing the Great Southwest Walk, which starts from Portland and goes to Nelson and back. She'd done the Portland to Nelson bit (or at least was almost to Nelson) and was thinking she was going to give the second half a miss. She had been sitting waiting to see if the people who owned the car would come back so she could get a ride because she was out of water and Nelson was a good 10 k at least away. They never showed up, but when we arrived she decided to stay there the night since now she could get a good night's rest (she was a bit on edge camping by herself, worried about the people mainly, there had been a creepy guy there earlier offering her a ride). We had found out that there was a fruit and veg quarantine on the S.A. boarder, and we had just gone shopping, so we decided to cook up all of our potatoes and onions, etc. and package them up (cooked is ok, just not raw), so we shared some mashed potatoes with her and some chocolate cake we bought. She was very happy to have something other than her instant meals. :P We also helped her out by taking some of the food she didn't want and that weighed her down as well as her rubbish. It was dry that night and we were able to make a fire! We also had to keep chasing the possums away from our food, and there were wallabies eating casually nearby; wonderful.
Saki left the next morning before we got up.

We used the rest of our apples in apple pancakes and I made some cinnamon apples and apple cider, which we packaged up, and we were set. When we crossed the boarder all we needed to do was dump some carrots. We first went to Mount Gambier and had lovely weather walking around some crater lakes they have their made lots of years ago by volcanic activity.






We then made it to Robe via beautiful country, and went to the info desk/library where we got some awesome info about the next few legs of our trip. I was able to sign up for internet to use at any public library in S.A. and we did a driving tour of Robe, seeing the old gaol and the obelisk. We drove the 5 or so minutes to our campsite, The Gums, and set up. We went for a twilight/in the dark walk along sand trail to the beach (about an hour return), and sat by the water looking up at the starts; it was amazing. When we got back we made a fire, and had a dry night!






This morning we got up and got back to Robe at 9 AM, just in time to get into the library for some internet time, and here we are!! Next is to the Coorong NP.

Tuesday, June 28, 2011

The Grampians Trip







David and I tried out our camping equipment in Grampians NP for two days before we officially left Ballarat, and we were able to get an idea of any other items we needed, which weren't many. We went on some amazing hikes (pictures above), saw some amazing waterfalls, a great view of the region, and some neat rock formations (i.e. the alligator rock above). And at one point a wallaby was hopping along and didn't see me behind a bush and almost ran into me! He skidded just in time then hopped about two bounces away and stared at me (the one pictured); it was hilarious.

The last hike we got to a little bit late in the day (we got there around 2 and the sun sets at 5:30), and even though we knew it was a 4-5 hour hike we decided we thought we could make it. There was a wallaby outside of the car and when we got out it came up to me and sniffed by hand! I didn't pet it, it's a wild animal, but let him sniff me, then he went over to visit David. So cute!! We decided to not take our water bottle cause it would be cumbersome, which in hindsight was not the best though, although it would have been. We left around 2:15, it's a difficult hike, there were parts where you have to climb over huge boulders and skip over creeks, etc. with only little yellow arrows painted on rocks showing you which way to go. It was one of our favorite hikes we've both ever been on, awesome! About an hour up we met a couple probably in their 50's coming down along with their son, they said that the top was about another hour and a half up, but when they heard we had done the last bit in and hour and they had in 2, they figured we might be ok. We decided we should probably walk quickly because about 15 minutes after we left the car we realized we had forgotten our torch (aka. flashlight ;P)... it was that damned wallaby that distracted us!! ;P






We ended up getting to the top in almost exactly an hour, and it was starting to get a bit dark due to clouds; that was at 4:15. We ate a quick apple for some water, and then headed down... about 20 minutes down we realized we had taken the wrong trail!!! There was another trail that went on to a waterfall and we accidentally took that one! So we turned around and about 40 waisted minutes later we were on the right track again. We pretty much booked it down the mountain, the whole time talking about what we'd do if we needed to spend the night up there. We met a couple who were hike camping to the top (there's a campsite there) that we'd passed on the way up, and they gave us a bit of water, which was nice, and offered their fire to us if we needed to turn around and come back, which was really nice! We continued down at an amazing pace, we really surprised ourselves! When we got past most of the dangerous bits before dark we were feeling much better, but once it got really twilight-ly we had to slow down quite a bit, also because we were going over a lot of watery areas. We ended up on the easy beginning trail just in time, it was dark enough that we could only really see the outline of the trail, which luckily was white sand so easy to see. We made it back to the car, go it and as we were driving out it was pitch black. We made it just in time, we are very lucky!!! We will be a bit smarter from now on. If we hadn't had that backtrack, we would have been back in plenty of time! That was intense and we still can't believe we made it down before dark. It ended up taking us about 3.45 hours.

-Cassie

P.S. Notice the lack of pictures on the way down... we thought afterwards that we should have taken a picture when we got down, but we could just take a picture of pure darkness and that would suffice. ;P

The Grampians Trip

David and I tried out our camping equipment in Grampians NP for two days before we officially left Ballarat, and we were able to get an idea of any other items we needed, which weren't many. We went on some amazing hikes, one of which we got to a bit late in the day (we got there around 2 and the sun sets at 5:30), and even though we knew it was a 4-5 hour hike we decided we thought we could make it. There was a wallaby outside of the car and when we got out it came up to me and sniffed by hand! I didn't pet it, it's a wild animal, but let him sniff me, then he went over to visit David. So cute!! We decided to not take our water bottle cause it would be cumbersome, which in hindsight was not the best though, although it would have been. We left around 2:15, it's a difficult hike, there were parts where you have to climb over huge boulders and skip over creeks, etc. with only little yellow arrows painted on rocks showing you which way to go. It was one of our favorite hikes we've both ever been on, awesome! About an hour up we met a couple probably in their 50's coming down along with their son, they said that the top was about another hour and a half up, but when they heard we had done the last bit in and hour and they had in 2, they figured we might be ok. We decided we should probably walk quickly because about 15 minutes after we left the car we realized we had forgotten our torch (aka. flashlight ;P)... it was that damned wallaby that distracted us!! ;P

We ended up getting to the top in almost exactly an hour, and it was starting to get a bit dark due to clouds; that was at 4:15. We ate a quick apple for some water, and then headed down... about 20 minutes down we realized we had taken the wrong trail!!! There was another trail that went on to a waterfall and we accidentally took that one! So we turned around and about 40 waisted minutes later we were on the right track again. We pretty much booked it down the mountain, the whole time talking about what we'd do if we needed to spend the night up there. We met a couple who were hike camping to the top (there's a campsite there) that we'd passed on the way up, and they gave us a bit of water, which was nice, and offered their fire to us if we needed to turn around and come back, which was really nice! We continued down at an amazing pace, we really surprised ourselves! When we got past most of the dangerous bits before dark we were feeling much better, but once it got really twilight-ly we had to slow down quite a bit, also because we were going over a lot of watery areas. We ended up on the easy beginning trail just in time, it was dark enough that we could only really see the outline of the trail, which luckily was white sand so easy to see. We made it back to the car, go it and as we were driving out it was pitch black. We made it just in time, we are very lucky!!! We will be a bit smarter from now on. If we hadn't had that backtrack, we would have been back in plenty of time! That was intense and we still can't believe we made it down before dark. It ended up taking us about 3.45 hours.

Sunday, June 19, 2011

David & Cassie Together Again!

David got into the Melbourne airport at about noon on Sunday the 12th, and I was supposed to get in at 3:15, but my flight was delayed by about 3 hours due to the ash from the Chilean volcanic eruption. I was a bit frustrated because I had no way of telling David that I was going to be late, but I let our friends who were going to pick us up, Christine and Ash know. When I finally got to Melbourne is was about 6:30 PM and it was magnificent to see David again, and it almost seemed like we had never been apart! We messaged our friends and they came and picked us up. I felt very grateful when Christine told me that they saw online that all but about 3 of the Tiger Airways flights (what I flew) were cancelled coming into Melbourne, so I was extremely lucky that mine was only delayed.

We've been staying at Christine and Ash's house in Ballarat, which is about an hour out of Melbourne. We have our car, and we have been running errands to get ready for our big trip (buying camping gear etc.) as well as doing some fun things and relaxing. David, Christine, and I all took the train into Melbourne one day and went to the Queen Victoria Markets, into the Australian Centre for the Moving Image, the Aquarium, and went atop the Eureka Skydeck 88 (tallest building in Melbourne).













David and I drove down to the Bellarine coast on Saturday and ate a yummy lunch of bread and cheese on the beach in Portarlington, and saw the sunset over by Queenscliff. We then went to Geelong to meet with friends.
My indian housemates and us ate at an indian restaurant then went clubbing. The next day we had coffee with my friend Ane, and had dinner with some of my old Muffin Break coworkers! It was so nice to be able to see friends from Geelong again!








We were going to go to the Melbourne Zoo today, but Christine isn't feeling well and we kind of decided that we didn't feel like doing much today. We plan on going camping to two days this week over in Grampians National Park, and then plan on having dinner with Christine's parents. It's been a wonderful trip so far! :D

-Cassie