The Grampians

For the first time, we travelled with the Fiedler family from Colac to Wannon Falls. It is great fun travelling with another family. We spent the whole trip talking to each other on the CB radio.

The Fiedlers following us.

We arrived at Wannon Falls to discover that they have changed the campground rules so that you can only stay overnight. We had planned on staying there for a few days so it messed up our plans a bit.

Wannon falls is a nice little campground. There are drop-loos, lots of space and a nice shelter with fire pits and a camp oven.  Julie got very excited when she saw the camp oven. She is very good at baking and we all love her home-made goodies.

After setting up, the kids got their bikes out and had a play. We all helped Molly ride her bike without training wheels for the first time and had a big celebration when she did it all by herself!

Rasmus and the kids collected firewood and after dinner we toasted marshmallows over the campfire. Before going to bed, Rasmus put the coals from the fire pit into the camp oven so it would be ready to bake bread in the next morning.

While the kids were doing schoolwork, we were all surrounded by the delicious rustic smell of homemade bread baking in the oven. We all stuffed ourselves on tea and hot bread for morning tea, then went to the water hole to cool down. After a swim in the water we packed up and headed to Cherrypool.

Cherrypool is located at the back of the Grampians, and the campground is not far from the Henty Hwy and next to the Rocklands River.

We set up our caravans so that they faced each other and we were able to pull out our awnings so they made a big covered area. We put up our fence from the ends of each van so we had a big secured, covered area for the kids to play safely in the shade.

It was really hot while we were at Cherrypool, so we didn’t do a lot. We spent a lot of time trying to keep cool, which was difficult with limited water and no power.

Sam and Ben discovered how easy it was to catch carp in the river so spent quite a lot of time practising their fishing techniques.

We spent an afternoon driving around the area and found some caves with old Aboriginal paintings in them.

After being at the hot, dusty campground for a few days, we decided to head into Horsham and find the local pools. It was wonderful to spend the afternoon swimming and to be able to have a nice cool shower and wash my hair!

From Cherrypool, we headed around the Grampians towards Halls Gap. We spent the night at a rest stop at Dadswell Bridge, and then went to a caravan park in Halls Gap.

We were greeted by an Emu when we pulled up and he followed us to our site. Marvel wasn’t too keen on the friendly emu but the emu wasn’t bothered by Marvel. That was until one day when Marvel got off his lead and decided that he had had enough of the emu drinking from his water bowl.  Marvel was quick, but the emu was quicker! I had to check Marvel’s mouth to make sure he didn’t have any tail feathers in it, but the emu managed to get away without harm.  He was back again the next day to continue teasing Marv though!

It was Will’s 8^th birthday while we were at Halls Gap, so Dan’s parents came up to spend the weekend with us.  Before they got there, we spent a day at the Halls Gap Zoo. For Kasper and Will's birthdays we paid extra for them to go into the Meerkat enclosure at feeding time.

The Zoo is small but full of interesting animals , most of which you can feed and pat.

When Dan's parents arrived, we did a bit of sightseeing and walked up the Grand Canyon which was great fun. Will decided that he wanted to give me a heart attack and not stay to any of the paths. He chose the harder route over the rocks and had so much fun clambering up the side of the cliffs. I put my foot down when we got higher and made him stick to the path. He still managed to find a few caves and crevasses to climb through on the way.

We celebrated Will’s birthday by throwing him a party. We had 6 very excited kids, party games and lots of junk food – all the ingredients for a successful birthday party.  We spent the afternoon of Will’s birthday in the swimming pool, and then walked to the pub for dinner.

Almost as soon as the party celebrations were over, the heavens opened and showered us with a huge downpour.





We said goodbye to the Fiedler family and they continued their journey west. We decided to stay for an extra few days in Halls Gap. It had been really hot for most of the time we had been there and I didn’t feel like we had seen everything I wanted to see.

We spent a couple of days relaxing and then took a drive over the Grampians to McKenzie Falls and Wartook Reservoir.

We are now heading back home to crash at mum and dad’s to spend some time sorting through the caravan. We are still very overweight and have to get rid of some more of our stuff to try to ease the weight on the car.

 

Déjà vu!

Our new rig! All set to start part 2 of our Aussie Adventure!

 

We were ready to get back on the road again!!!!We were really torn about heading back North, or spending time travelling Victoria with our friends who were just setting out on their trip around Australia. We had inspired our close friends Rasmus and Julie to follow our lead, and pack up their house and take off to explore the country.  So Rasmus quit his job, they rented out their house and purchased a caravan the same as ours, packed up their three children and headed off on their own adventure.

 

We have decided to take our dog with us travelling this year. Marvel is a beautiful yellow lab who is 4 years old. Last year we left him with my brother and his wife while we travelled. It is a big commitment to take a dog travelling and we thought we would only be gone for 6 months. I missed him so much while we were gone and when we decided to travel on a more permanent basis, I told Dan we couldn't leave Marvel behind again. We all love having him with us and he loves this life too!

 

 Marvel was the guinea pig for one of Will's science projects: are dogs colour blind?

 

Queensland has been unseasonably wet this summer and is having an extended wet season so we decided to hang around Victoria for a little while longer and spend some time travelling with Rasmus and Julie. This also meant that we could accept the invitation to our friends wedding in Gippsland in March.

So after a week at Badgers’ Weir caravan park, we packed up, had another small farewell party and headed west to catch up with Rasmus and Julie in Colac. It was very exciting to be on the road again and even more exciting to be in our new car. The Navara was towing the van beautifully and the van was sitting really well behind the car.... until we hit a really strong head wind as we crossed the West Gate Bridge. The car started to struggle but we thought it was due to the strong wind we were driving in to.

We were about 60km out of Colac when the clutch completely died! “This feels very familiar!” It was the same weekend one year before that we had set off on our trip and only driven about 150ks from home when the clutch went on our new Patrol. We couldn’t believe our luck (or lack thereof). We had just spent so much time (and money) researching and upgrading the car so that this exact thing wouldn’t happen! It felt like déjà vu.

A phone call to Roadside assist and a few minutes later the car (with Marvel in the boot) and the van were hooked up to the tow truck and we were all in the cab with the driver.  We had planned on staying at a free camp on the North side of Lake Colac with Julie and Rasmus but instead we got towed into a caravan park in town.

This feels familiar!

 

Dropping us off at the Colac Lake Caravan Park

Will and Zac laughing at the car coming off the tow truck

 

The following day Dan managed to ‘limp’ the car into town to a mechanic that had been recommended to us by friends. RACV arranged a hire car for us to use until our car was repaired.

We spent the next few days catching up with Julie and Rasmus and their three kids. The kids all get along really well so they were more than happy to spend hours playing together. That left us plenty of time to sit down, swap stories and share advice over some cold drinks.

We only spent one day out sightseeing. We drove to the other side of Lake Colac to Red Rocks Lookout.  The Red Rock Volcanic Complex was the site of many violent volcanic eruptions which resulted in the craters and lakes found in the area. I wasn’t well so stayed in the car, but I did get a chance to have a look at the spectacular views!

 

On the way back from the lookout we called into the Red Rocks Winery. After tasting a few different wines (and pretending we knew what we were doing – which we didn’t!), we bought a couple of bottles.

 

By the end of the week our car was ready to pick up. The mechanic was fantastic. They rang us at every step of the repair, gave us all the options, prices and explained it all to us really well. They also did a complete safety check on the car and found a few other things that the Road Worthy Check hadn’t found.  A few thousand dollars later and we left the mechanic with a brand new heavy duty clutch on our new car.

I had been worried about the weight of our van since we first set off on our trip last year. I had spoken to so many people, some telling me how dangerous it is to be overweight, and others telling me “every caravan on the road is overweight. They (the officials) don’t even worry about the caravans; it’s the big trucks they are concerned with.”

The manufactures of larger caravans try to keep the Gross weight of their caravans down to a minimum, so that some of the smaller cars can tow their vans. This means that you can normally only take an extra 400kg of you own belongings. That weight allowance has to include everything that you take, plus the gas in your bottles, plus the water in your tanks. In our van we can carry 190ltrs of water (190kg) and 18kg of gas. We have also added two solar panels and replaced the one small battery with two bigger (and heavier) ones. This means without putting any of our belongings into the van we are already almost at our weight limit. Then you add clothes, bedding, food, toys, etc etc etc. I was sure we were overweight but I just needed to convince Dan to get it weighed.

By wrecking the clutch on our new car (and for the second time) I managed to convince him that we may have a weight problem. So on the Saturday morning we packed up everything and towed the van down to the local weigh bridge. We couldn’t believe it when we weighed in at over 1 tonne overweight!!! I thought we were over, but didn’t think it would be that much! However, it was very hard not to say “I told you so!” to Dan.

We went back to the caravan park and started he huge job of unpacking everything that wasn’t essential. We decided that we couldn’t risk doing more damage to the Navara so we were leaving the van in Colac and taking as much as we could back home in the car.

Meanwhile our friends, Kat and Terry were down visiting family in Colac and called in for a visit. They, along with Julie and Rasmus got to witness my bad mood as I had to reluctantly sort through everything we had and decide what we could do without. I was grumpy with Dan because I had just had a big sort out back home and was having to do it all over again!

At the weighbridge!!

We loaded up our car and Kat and Terry’s car and by the time we were finished we thought that we must have lightened our caravan by at least a few hundred kilos.

We spent a day driving to mum and dad’s, filled up their garage (again) and drove back to Colac. We stopped on the way back and bought Sam and Will e-book readers because we had taken all of their books away.

By the next day I felt good about our weight and it was really good to have such a big clean out. My cupboards were nearly empty and everything was clean and sorted. We decided that we would no longer travel with water in the tanks, and we would shop when we had arrived at our destination and only buy what we needed for our time there. This meant that our pantry and fridge would be almost empty whenever we travelled.

Monday morning we packed up and once again headed to the weigh bridge. We were absolutely shattered when we realised that we had only dropped 200 kilos! We had no choice but to leave it as it was and try to figure out what to do next.

 

 

  A spectacular lightning storm over the Otway Ranges