The Pinnacle

I decided to walk to the pinnacle from Hall's Gap this morning. I was a planning a bigger walk anyway and decided not to go to Mt Sturgeon to do the most southerly peak. Too far. So the pinnacle! It is 400 metres of elevation and 5.6k to the Wonderland car park where I arranged Marjan to be for the application of heart massage.

Headed off about nineish and was going pretty good. The route I chose is not the steepest but it does have four quite steep sections. The end of the first steep section brought me to a beautiful bluff which ends the Wonderland Range.

Whilst it was a hard slog I kept the heart rate below 200 so all good. Some flowers around here as well

but mostly rocky ground and scrubby plants.

no shots of the pinnacle, you'll just have to trust me that I made it. The light was in my face so the shots are a sub-par even for me. But here is one I liked from the way down.

Marjan was waiting for me at the car park and the thoughts of doing the complete loop, another 3.5k, disappeared with her offer of ice-cream.

We had a swim, a bike ride, a nap and an ice-cream, but not in that order. I need to bring a little uncertainty to the blog to add dramatic tension.

So a celebratory steak for the walk, a nice sleep, a 5:30 am wake up call from a thousand cockatoos a view of some roos and then we drive back home to torment Anna.

Unexpected Guests

A birdy shot for Dom from this morning.


As we were driving off after the bird shot, we got  message that Viv and Graeme were going to be in the area and would love a coffee. Awesome, we thought and changed our plans to accommodate. We did a short walk to the Venus Baths, before heading down for said coffee and of course cake!!!!!

A lovely, photo-less time was had by all and we finally head off about midday. That means not a lot of photos as the light was a bit harsh.

We headed down into the Victoria Valley and had lunch atop a small rocky outcrop in the middle of this huge flood plain called Paddy Castle. Some emus wanted their share.

We did a couple of small walks, but did not see too many interesting things. The Acacia amber, 4 pointer buck and River Red gums drinking their fill are exceptions.

It was warm and we decide to give the walking a rest and essentially drove up and down mountains on dirt tracks. Well I say dirt tracks, but really they were rocky Subaru torture tests. Someone had let a tender to the highest bidder and instead of gravel, or crushed rock they got the lowest bid as some farmer who decided to get rid of every rock from golf ball sized to basketball size and spread them on the roads in the Grampians. At times Marjan was hard at it making sure we did not hit one of these boulders.

Still it kept us amused as we traversed all sorts of different bushland as we criss-crossed the middle of the national park and avoided the weekend crowds.

Sorry we are closed

So let us start with a couple for Dom from when I was waiting for Marjan to make me breakfast. Don't tell her I said that!

Once we were fed we headed north up the Mt Zero road. We decided to give the subie a 4WD try out. All was going well it was handling the sandy track magnificently. However, we decided not to risk this creek crossing. I know it looks tame but up close it did not look as if the only slightly higher clearance would make it. Besides that Marjan was giving me her "we are all going to die!" look and breath intake.

Still, it was a good spot to look around. The fires had ravaged through here recently and as you can see the trees were only beginning their recovery. What that meant was that the understorey was starting some profuse fecundity  (good phrase........for plants, not people) in the ash enriched sandy soil and the grass trees were loving the sun.

Back on the road, the scenery was much the same, very sandy soil an very burnt trees.

Our first planned stop was at the Hollow Mountain car park, where we were going to skip Hollow Mountain, bad previous experience, and instead visit some aboriginal art. Sorry we are closed! said the sign. Bushfire damage and we do not pay enough taxes to fix things quickly.

So off to Mt Zero, where we had no recent traumatic history and hence were able to ascend. Mt Zero is the very last hill in the north of the Grampians and has a magnificent vista over the Wimmera and off to Mt Arapiles. I however, perversely perhaps, have decided to show you the view back to Mt Stapylton and the rest of the Grampians.



and to show you the olive grove we were planning to stop at for some oil and coffee.

We trekked back down and took a slightly different route. Marjan loved it.

We lunched at the Mt Zero picnic ground and after a fine repast of pre-prepared sanggers headed off to the second aboriginal rock art site. You guessed it. Sorry we are closed!

Nothing for it but to soldier on to the olive grove for a coffee. Sorry we are closed!

It just wasn't our day. Still on the drive back to the highway we saw a mob of roos travelling along and across the road, jumping fences and generally making us travel slower. Quite a sight!

I can see why farmers have fences like the one below and gardeners in Hall's Gap have variations on the prison compound. The roos made small work of normal fences.

So off to Stawell (an onomatopoeia or a synonym for stall?) for a bit of a shop. I had forgotten how oddly narrow and closed in the main street shopping area is. Also we spotted perhaps the ugliest building we have seen.....ever...no qualification. The Diamond motel, check it out, I refuse to pollute the blog with its photo.

Marjan decided to have a slow afternoon, so I headed off to take a few more. Nothing special, an emu, Mt Sturgeon, Mt Sturgeon and Mt Abrupt and finally sunset at Lake Bellfield.

Woohlpooer is poncy wanker in aboriginal

Well maybe it isn't (the title) but it could be.

We set off into the lower Grampians, The Victoria Valley, along a corrugated dirt road. Some pretty views of the Victoria Ranges, and some pretty wildflowers along the way.

 It was then on to the Billimina Shelter, a rock overhang with some native art.

It was approaching lunch time so we drove off the dirt road and onto the Henty. Lovely country through the Woohlpooer (I kid you not) forest. Very open forest with lovely gums.

Finally lunch at Dunkeld. We had decided to treat ourselves to the Royal Mail. Apparently it has two hats, one for the rain and one for the sun presumably. Anyway, we were the only suckers in the dining room. It is a bit of a poncy wanker feed, or woohlpooer in the local dialect we decided. You will never guess what they brought us from their world renowned menu. Vegemite on toast ! Well it was Myrtleford butter with vegemite on crusty bread...but still! The food was actually quite yummy with each course, we had four, having something special. The local wine was not bad either.

Well fed and watered, we decided that climbing Mt Sturgeon, let alone Mt Abrupt was probably out of the question, so we headed for the Piccaninny, the little hill in between. It was still 1.2k up hill so we worked off a couple of courses. The hill had been badly burnt recently so lots of grass trees among open land.

And on our way back down we ran into a local.

Marjan decided that was enough for the day, but I wanted a couple of late light shots so headed up the hill and took some.

and when I got back the roos, kookaburras, galahs, currajongs, rosellas, cockies and a new holland honey eater were roaming the grounds.

Yum Yum, another lovely day for the intrepid explorers.

Mt William

We arose at a leisurely time, for us, and had some breakfast.

It was then off for our morning walk. We did the Sundial walk which was as long as yesterday's Pinnacle walk but less rocky. The countryside has had some fires and that meant that the understorey had some light. So we had a profusion of small bushes and ground covers, banksias, grevilleas, correas and other stuff we did not recognise. There was the odd flower among them , but probably Spring is the time for this walk.

The view from Sundial peak was nice and we spotted a wedge tailed eagle briefly. This added to the many other birds we saw along the way.

We decided to visit Silverband falls for our picnic lunch. Not a lot of water but a pleasant place for lunch.


























Marjan decided a slack afternoon of reading and ukuleleing was in order. I on the other hand decided to climb Mt William which is the highest point in the Grampians. Luckily it was a road rather than a track as it went straight up. The top was about 1100 metres, which was about my heart rate. I had a wander about and spotted a couple of wedge tailed eagles soaring by.












The way down was much easier and so I stopped and took some photos......strange as that may seem.

On the way back, I stopped at Lake Bellfield and walked across the weir.

So a swim in the pool and a skype to Laura for her birthday rounded out the day before a dinner of bacon and eggs.

Bye

An Easy Day

We got up late, to the screech of thousands of cockies as previously discussed.

We had decided on a slack day, so we went into Hall's Gap to check out the info centre. Then headed up to Wonderland. The return walk to The Pinnacle was only a little over 4k so we decided it was a goers.

We walked up through The Grand Canyon and Silent Street. Pretty much as I remembered. Quite warm walking up hill. The walking poles, which we tried for the first time were pretty good.

The view from the top was of course as awesome as we recalled. Wandered down getting hotter and yearning for lunch. Of course we had forgotten to buys rolls, so our sandwich stuff was not much use. Back to Hall's Gap where we bought rolls, lunched, and had an ice cream.

 

The afternoon was a knee recovery session. We went to the two easy look-outs, that is no walking, Boroka, looking east, and Reed, looking south. We also did the short walk to The Balconies. I seem to recall them being called the Jaws of Death. At any rate we did not go on them , we left that top the young 'uns. We didn't even build one of those Buddhist stone piles. They were everywhere, particularly on the walk to the balconies.

Came back to digs and had a swim in the pool to try to ease the crick in my neck. Yes it is still there!

See an easy day.