Victoria — A road trip (#1)
1 — Melbourne to the Grampians
Australia.
Without even getting into the animals it’s a land of the diverse and the unusual. In the state of Victoria alone, the ever-changing landscape and the unexpected geological features are astonishing.
The plan? As straightforward as it gets. Hire a car, set out from my sister-in-law’s home in Melbourne, and drive back to Melbourne, in a kind of roundabout way. I’m a planner — I can’t help it, I’m an engineer — so all the accommodation has already been booked, each connecting journey researched. Now, all we have to do is drive.
We’re not even out of the Melbourne area yet and we find ourselves gawking at ancient geology. Australia’s not the first place that comes to mind when thinking about volcanoes but these features are believed to have been formed about a million years ago when, surprisingly, volcanoes in Victoria were very active. Molten basalt was thrown out of the earth to cool, dry, and crack into these incredible shapes that look just like organ pipes. The surrounding Keilor Plains were created from lava.
Nearby there’s another crazy formation known as Rosette Rock. This is also formed of basalt columns but is shaped like a radial array.
Next stop, Ballarat. This place reminds me in many ways of visits to Kimberley in South Africa — those childhood memories of an imagination running riot as I pretended to step back in time to the days of Kimberley’s frantic diamond digging and the excavation of The Big Hole in the late 1800s and early 1900s.
They’ve done a similar thing at Ballarat, recreating the gold rush town as it was in the mid-1800s.
We settle down in Halls Gap in a rented villa for a few days in order to explore the Grampians and its “top of the world” views.
It’s a strange thing to say, but for all the spectacular scenery we take in here and the charm of the MacKenzie Falls, the thing I’ll remember most about Hall’s Gap is sitting in the hot tub in the villa, drinking bubbly and watching the wallabies on the lawn.
Hall’s Gap might be a touristy town but its outlook is stunning, nestled as it is under imposing rocky cliffs. Our villa had these as a backdrop too. I’m only sorry that this trip was taken before the formation of the Silo Art Trail. I’ve only been able to do this trail online but hopefully one day I’ll get to see these totally awesome works of art for myself. Take a look at the website— you’ll be amazed.
Part 2 of the Road Trip story? I’ll be following the leg from Hall’s Gap down to Portland and Victoria’s incredible coastline.
