[One more Australia travelogue from my archives. As with the previous post, I took a lot of pictures on this trip, but I unfortunately never got around to sorting and saving them, and now I've lost them. So it's just the written description without any pictures. The Wikipedia article for Grampians National Park is HERE.]
Today we went to the Grampians Mountain Range national park.
Although I had more or less dropped the ball this year on seeing any of Australia outside of Melbourne, signing up for one last day tour was my last sorry attempt to at least see a little bit of the Australian countryside, and my friend Jewel had agreed to come with me.
The tour bus picked us up outside the Rydges Carlton (just a block down the road from Unilodge).
The tour guide, whose name I forgot now (Scott? Maybe?,) was about my age, originally from Tasmania, and had just been to Japan recently to visit his girlfriend (someone he had meant while doing this tour). Jewel and I were the first ones he had picked up, so we made small talk until the others got picked up on the way out.
The bus was only half-full today. (Given that the tour runs 3 times a week, I was surprised they would do that much business, but apparently it’s usually filled up.) There was also Makiko (or something like that) from Japan, Louis (sp?) from France. Kim (was that her name?) from Quebec, an older couple from England whose names I never got, Yuki (originally from Japan, but studying in Canada now) and a Chinese/Malaysian couple.
We drove through the city making pick-up after pick-up until the whole group was assembled. At one of the appointed stops, the people never showed up, and the tour driver was on his cell phone back with the head office trying to figure out what was going on. Near Flinders station, waiting at the light, a police man approached the van and said to the tour guide, “You were talking on your cell phone while driving. We’ll need to see your license and registration. Pull over on the next street.” And so we had a brief detour while the police gave our tour guide a driving ticket. (They must have been doing some sort of sting operation, because we saw them taking down information from lots of people.)
We got on our way on the high way.
The Australian countryside was beautiful as always—Green plains gently sloping up and down, covered with grass. (I’m told that in most drought years the whole area looks brown and ugly, but we were lucky enough to be in Australia the year the drought broke, and so we got to see the countryside in all its green glory.)
Despite all this, we were all short on sleep, and after trying to stay awake for the first half hour or so and take in all the scenery, I spent most of the rest of the ride up sleeping. (As beautiful as the countryside was, countryside scenery can get a bit repetitive after the first half hour or so anyway.)
We stopped for tea, coffee, and cookies in a small town (Beaufort?) on the way, and I chatted briefly to some of the other passengers. Talked briefly to Makiko (an older woman, who was a Japanese nurse doing a week long tour of Australia, although she seemed pretty shy so I did not press the conversation.) Talked to Kim (who was in the process of doing a 3 month tour of Australia. Kim had been all up and down both coasts and explored the middle of Australia as well—In fact many of the people from the tour were in the process of seeing great parts of Australia—Louie and Yuki as well. It was another moment when I felt really bad for not having done more travelling. At this point it’s too late to do more, but when I next end up in a new place I’m really going to have to go all out travelling.)
Back on the tour bus. We drove through a couple other historic gold rush towns—Ararat. There was a look-out view from one of them where we got to see much of the Grampian mountain range.
As we were driving back down from the look-out, a snake darted across the road. The tour guide said it was very poisonous, but rare, and we had been lucky to see it.
Drove through another town which our tour guide identified as the home of Australian Rules Football (where an Australian farmer had invented the game after seeing aboriginals kicking around a possum skin.)
Arrived at the base of the Grampians. Walked briefly through the visitors center, where the tour guide pointed out on a map where we would be going.
Unfortunately, all of the most famous parts of the Grampians were closed off because the recent flooding had caused landslides which had buried the roads. (I guess there are advantages and disadvantages to being in Australia the year the drought broke). So we did not get to see McKenzie falls (which was unfortunate, because images of this amazing waterfall on the tourist brochures had been one of the main reasons I had signed up on the tour). We also didn’t get to see the jaws of death rock formations, which had apparently been the inspiration for some of the Japanese animation Princess Mononoke.
Next we went through the Aboriginal Cultural Center, where the guide showed us some aboriginal artifacts (boomerang, didgeree doo) and explained what they were original used for and how they were made.
We then went outside to walk around and look at the kangaroos.
There were tons of kangaroos just lounging about outside of the cultural center, and they were so used to people being around them all the time that they totally didn’t even seem to notice.
Jewel was pretty excited because it was the first time she had seen a kangaroo. (I had been teasing her about it, because I had seen Kangaroos in Australia several times by now, and I was saying it was so old hat to me now I was completely over it.) I had told Jewel before how on the Great Ocean Road tour I had gotten surprisingly close to the Kangaroos before they had started hopping off, and she wanted to try the same thing, so she walked slowly up to them to see how close they would let her get. She was only a few feet away from them when the tour guide called out, “That’s about as close as I would get Jewel. They are wild animals, and they might start boxing you if you get too close.”
(At the time I thought the guide was being overly cautious, but I've since seen videos on the Internet of kangaroos attacking people, so I guess he was probably right.)
The guide pointed out to us the various kangaroos that had joeys in their pouches, and we could see little heads poking out of some of them.
There was also a house nearby which had a fence around it’s yard, and we saw some of the kangaroos bound through the park and just leap over the fence, which was pretty cool.
Walked around for a while more, saw lots more kangaroos lazing about.
Then we went back into town (and by town I mean this little tourist stretch at the base of the Grampians) for food. “If any of you can bear to eat kangaroos after we just got done looking at them, this shop over here serves kangaroos soulvaki,” the tour guide said. So I and a few other people went over there to try it out.
Jewel wanted to get ice cream instead, so we ended up eating separately. I ended up eating with Louis from France, who told me he was touring Australia because he had failed his first semester at college, and he had to wait until the start of the next year to re-apply, so he had some time to kill in between.
After lunch, we got back on the bus and drove up to the mountain range to do a hike. Saw many more kangaroos from the bus, and two Emos walked out onto the dirt road and briefly blocked our way as well.
There were two different paths we could take—and easy one, and a hard one. Aside from the older English woman, we all opted for the harder one.
Although, I think a few people regretted it once they realized how hard it was. (It started out as a fairly simple path, but there was some scrambling over rocks and a bit of rock climbing near the top.) The Malaysian couple ended up not making it up all the way, and the older British guy had a bit of trouble as well.
Jewel and I had talked to Yuki, who was in Australia doing research for 3 months, but was squeezing in various tours when he could. He was actually going to be staying up in the Grampians for the next 3 days and doing some more hiking around.
(You know, had I been a lot more organized with my schoolwork myself, I could have done a lot more tours like that as well. I mean, if I had actually woken up early, worked hard on my schoolwork in a scheduled time block everyday, instead of just procrastinating about it the whole day like I did, I would totally have had time to do a lot more tours on the weekends and stuff. Well, water under the bridge now. I’ll just have to try and be more organized in the future.)
Jewel complained about how hard the hike was, and how hot and sweaty it was, and I remarked, “Ah, there’s always one complainer in every group,” which made Jewel and Yuki laugh—and throughout the rest of the hike Yuki or I would remark to each other whenever Jewel complained again.
Eventually we all got to the top of the mountain, which had a really nice view. The tour guide talked a bit about the rock formations—how they had been formed during millions of years by tectonic plates pushing up against each other, and how the area had once been an inland sea, and so there were lots of marine fossils found in the mountains.
We relaxed at the top and admired the view for a while, and then headed back.
I brought up the rear, behind the older English man. (He had some trouble getting over the rocks, and I thought it would be good to have someone behind him just in case he got stuck, even though I didn’t actually help him on anything—but he thanked me for being patient with him just the same.)
He and his wife were in Australia because their daughter lives in Melbourne, and they come out every year to do a stay for a few months with her and avoid the English winters.
I asked him what he thought of Australian culture versus English culture. He said that it depended on the city. Sydney or Perth were different, but Melbourne city represents British culture at its best. “In the towns of Britain, everyone knows each other and helps out each other in a good way,” he said. “And you see that in the structure of the Melbourne neighborhoods as well.”
Eventually we all got back to the bottom of the hike. And the tour guide announced that it was time to start heading back.
Some of the gang were a little disappointed, because we didn’t get to see Beehive waterfall. (Since McKenzie Waterfall had been inaccessible due to the landslides, the tour was supposed to take us to the back-up waterfall, Beehive falls.) But the tour guide said the hike had taken longer than he anticipated, so there was unfortunately no time to see the waterfall.
Kim, and the British couple were a bit upset about this, and talked about it in angry voices when the tour guide was out of the bus. They clearly thought they weren’t getting all the tour they had rightfully paid for. Nothing ever came of this though other than them venting to each other.
I could see their point a bit, and indeed, after having paid $90, and having driven 3 hours, it was a bit disappointing to only get in one hike before we turned around and headed back. But, as Jewel and I later agreed, the tour guide was clearly trying his best and seemed like a good guy so we didn’t want to make trouble for him.
Having dropped off the people who were staying in the Grampians for another couple days (Yuki, and Louis) the rest of us drove back.
As on the way down, most of us slept most of the way back, including me. We stopped in another small town for dinner, and then ended up back.
Although I had more or less dropped the ball this year on seeing any of Australia outside of Melbourne, signing up for one last day tour was my last sorry attempt to at least see a little bit of the Australian countryside, and my friend Jewel had agreed to come with me.
The tour bus picked us up outside the Rydges Carlton (just a block down the road from Unilodge).
The tour guide, whose name I forgot now (Scott? Maybe?,) was about my age, originally from Tasmania, and had just been to Japan recently to visit his girlfriend (someone he had meant while doing this tour). Jewel and I were the first ones he had picked up, so we made small talk until the others got picked up on the way out.
The bus was only half-full today. (Given that the tour runs 3 times a week, I was surprised they would do that much business, but apparently it’s usually filled up.) There was also Makiko (or something like that) from Japan, Louis (sp?) from France. Kim (was that her name?) from Quebec, an older couple from England whose names I never got, Yuki (originally from Japan, but studying in Canada now) and a Chinese/Malaysian couple.
We drove through the city making pick-up after pick-up until the whole group was assembled. At one of the appointed stops, the people never showed up, and the tour driver was on his cell phone back with the head office trying to figure out what was going on. Near Flinders station, waiting at the light, a police man approached the van and said to the tour guide, “You were talking on your cell phone while driving. We’ll need to see your license and registration. Pull over on the next street.” And so we had a brief detour while the police gave our tour guide a driving ticket. (They must have been doing some sort of sting operation, because we saw them taking down information from lots of people.)
We got on our way on the high way.
The Australian countryside was beautiful as always—Green plains gently sloping up and down, covered with grass. (I’m told that in most drought years the whole area looks brown and ugly, but we were lucky enough to be in Australia the year the drought broke, and so we got to see the countryside in all its green glory.)
Despite all this, we were all short on sleep, and after trying to stay awake for the first half hour or so and take in all the scenery, I spent most of the rest of the ride up sleeping. (As beautiful as the countryside was, countryside scenery can get a bit repetitive after the first half hour or so anyway.)
We stopped for tea, coffee, and cookies in a small town (Beaufort?) on the way, and I chatted briefly to some of the other passengers. Talked briefly to Makiko (an older woman, who was a Japanese nurse doing a week long tour of Australia, although she seemed pretty shy so I did not press the conversation.) Talked to Kim (who was in the process of doing a 3 month tour of Australia. Kim had been all up and down both coasts and explored the middle of Australia as well—In fact many of the people from the tour were in the process of seeing great parts of Australia—Louie and Yuki as well. It was another moment when I felt really bad for not having done more travelling. At this point it’s too late to do more, but when I next end up in a new place I’m really going to have to go all out travelling.)
Back on the tour bus. We drove through a couple other historic gold rush towns—Ararat. There was a look-out view from one of them where we got to see much of the Grampian mountain range.
As we were driving back down from the look-out, a snake darted across the road. The tour guide said it was very poisonous, but rare, and we had been lucky to see it.
Drove through another town which our tour guide identified as the home of Australian Rules Football (where an Australian farmer had invented the game after seeing aboriginals kicking around a possum skin.)
Arrived at the base of the Grampians. Walked briefly through the visitors center, where the tour guide pointed out on a map where we would be going.
Unfortunately, all of the most famous parts of the Grampians were closed off because the recent flooding had caused landslides which had buried the roads. (I guess there are advantages and disadvantages to being in Australia the year the drought broke). So we did not get to see McKenzie falls (which was unfortunate, because images of this amazing waterfall on the tourist brochures had been one of the main reasons I had signed up on the tour). We also didn’t get to see the jaws of death rock formations, which had apparently been the inspiration for some of the Japanese animation Princess Mononoke.
Next we went through the Aboriginal Cultural Center, where the guide showed us some aboriginal artifacts (boomerang, didgeree doo) and explained what they were original used for and how they were made.
We then went outside to walk around and look at the kangaroos.
There were tons of kangaroos just lounging about outside of the cultural center, and they were so used to people being around them all the time that they totally didn’t even seem to notice.
Jewel was pretty excited because it was the first time she had seen a kangaroo. (I had been teasing her about it, because I had seen Kangaroos in Australia several times by now, and I was saying it was so old hat to me now I was completely over it.) I had told Jewel before how on the Great Ocean Road tour I had gotten surprisingly close to the Kangaroos before they had started hopping off, and she wanted to try the same thing, so she walked slowly up to them to see how close they would let her get. She was only a few feet away from them when the tour guide called out, “That’s about as close as I would get Jewel. They are wild animals, and they might start boxing you if you get too close.”
(At the time I thought the guide was being overly cautious, but I've since seen videos on the Internet of kangaroos attacking people, so I guess he was probably right.)
The guide pointed out to us the various kangaroos that had joeys in their pouches, and we could see little heads poking out of some of them.
There was also a house nearby which had a fence around it’s yard, and we saw some of the kangaroos bound through the park and just leap over the fence, which was pretty cool.
Walked around for a while more, saw lots more kangaroos lazing about.
Then we went back into town (and by town I mean this little tourist stretch at the base of the Grampians) for food. “If any of you can bear to eat kangaroos after we just got done looking at them, this shop over here serves kangaroos soulvaki,” the tour guide said. So I and a few other people went over there to try it out.
Jewel wanted to get ice cream instead, so we ended up eating separately. I ended up eating with Louis from France, who told me he was touring Australia because he had failed his first semester at college, and he had to wait until the start of the next year to re-apply, so he had some time to kill in between.
After lunch, we got back on the bus and drove up to the mountain range to do a hike. Saw many more kangaroos from the bus, and two Emos walked out onto the dirt road and briefly blocked our way as well.
There were two different paths we could take—and easy one, and a hard one. Aside from the older English woman, we all opted for the harder one.
Although, I think a few people regretted it once they realized how hard it was. (It started out as a fairly simple path, but there was some scrambling over rocks and a bit of rock climbing near the top.) The Malaysian couple ended up not making it up all the way, and the older British guy had a bit of trouble as well.
Jewel and I had talked to Yuki, who was in Australia doing research for 3 months, but was squeezing in various tours when he could. He was actually going to be staying up in the Grampians for the next 3 days and doing some more hiking around.
(You know, had I been a lot more organized with my schoolwork myself, I could have done a lot more tours like that as well. I mean, if I had actually woken up early, worked hard on my schoolwork in a scheduled time block everyday, instead of just procrastinating about it the whole day like I did, I would totally have had time to do a lot more tours on the weekends and stuff. Well, water under the bridge now. I’ll just have to try and be more organized in the future.)
Jewel complained about how hard the hike was, and how hot and sweaty it was, and I remarked, “Ah, there’s always one complainer in every group,” which made Jewel and Yuki laugh—and throughout the rest of the hike Yuki or I would remark to each other whenever Jewel complained again.
Eventually we all got to the top of the mountain, which had a really nice view. The tour guide talked a bit about the rock formations—how they had been formed during millions of years by tectonic plates pushing up against each other, and how the area had once been an inland sea, and so there were lots of marine fossils found in the mountains.
We relaxed at the top and admired the view for a while, and then headed back.
I brought up the rear, behind the older English man. (He had some trouble getting over the rocks, and I thought it would be good to have someone behind him just in case he got stuck, even though I didn’t actually help him on anything—but he thanked me for being patient with him just the same.)
He and his wife were in Australia because their daughter lives in Melbourne, and they come out every year to do a stay for a few months with her and avoid the English winters.
I asked him what he thought of Australian culture versus English culture. He said that it depended on the city. Sydney or Perth were different, but Melbourne city represents British culture at its best. “In the towns of Britain, everyone knows each other and helps out each other in a good way,” he said. “And you see that in the structure of the Melbourne neighborhoods as well.”
Eventually we all got back to the bottom of the hike. And the tour guide announced that it was time to start heading back.
Some of the gang were a little disappointed, because we didn’t get to see Beehive waterfall. (Since McKenzie Waterfall had been inaccessible due to the landslides, the tour was supposed to take us to the back-up waterfall, Beehive falls.) But the tour guide said the hike had taken longer than he anticipated, so there was unfortunately no time to see the waterfall.
Kim, and the British couple were a bit upset about this, and talked about it in angry voices when the tour guide was out of the bus. They clearly thought they weren’t getting all the tour they had rightfully paid for. Nothing ever came of this though other than them venting to each other.
I could see their point a bit, and indeed, after having paid $90, and having driven 3 hours, it was a bit disappointing to only get in one hike before we turned around and headed back. But, as Jewel and I later agreed, the tour guide was clearly trying his best and seemed like a good guy so we didn’t want to make trouble for him.
Having dropped off the people who were staying in the Grampians for another couple days (Yuki, and Louis) the rest of us drove back.
As on the way down, most of us slept most of the way back, including me. We stopped in another small town for dinner, and then ended up back.
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