The Grampians: Pt 167, April 22, 2007 (Click on blue titles for pictures)

On the way out of Mildura, we stopped by Big Lizzie. This behemoth tractor was used to haul bails of wool to market from the interior before there were roads and later used for clearing roads. It used a 60 hp one-lung engine and had a turning radius of 200 ft. The most interesting features to me were the rubber pads that flopped down instead of treads.

As we left the fruit fly quarantine area, we snapped one last picture of the ferocious fruit fly on the sign.

We came into the Grampians National Park from the Northwest. Evidently the park service didn’t much care for tourists approaching from that direction because they did not provide any maps at that end to help us find the camping area. There were signs warning of a steep and winding climb for caravans (campers or camping trailers), but ours was small so we forged ahead to what looked like a nice area by Lake Wartook. The lake turned out to be a reservoir with no camping. We eventually found a decent little campground at Smith’s Mill, the site of a former log mill. I noticed two girls driving a Toyota Landcruiser who had several 20 liter cans and realized that it was powered by vegetable oil. They were heating the oil over a campfire and filtering it for use in the car. (Fires were illegal there but young people seemed to ignore that.) The camp also featured the requisite kookaburra and some currawongs that were beggars and very adept at snatching crumbs of bread in mid-air. Overnight a strong wind came up and we were glad the “tenters” campfires had gone out. Early the next day, we visited MacKenzie Falls, still impressive, although the water flow was minimal. The park was recovering very well from forest fires in 2006. The flies were also out early and we brushed them off with small fallen branches. We learned that the hand-gesture for doing that is known as “The Australian Wave”. The Grampians range of mountains is a limestone uplift with valleys in between the ridges. A large number of species thrive there and nowhere else.

Near Hall’s Gap, we visited the Brambuk Aboriginal Culture Center. Brambuk is the Koori (Aboriginal) word for cockatoo. The center was built in the shape of a cockatoo with outstretched wings. It is run by Koori people. A special theatre there that can show standard movies but is designed to light up taxidermy and other displays of local animals and sights during the showing of the Koori Creation Story. The story features a large red-eyed emu, Tchingal, which was over-protective of it’s single large egg. Assistants to the creator, Bunjil, the Bram-bram-bult Brothers finally killed Tchingal and divided the remains to make male and female birds from 2 piles of split feathers from Tchingal. They could now lay several eggs so they would not be so protective. All emus now have split feathers, too.

After the show we lunched during a very strong wind, at another reservoir, Lake Bellfield with a mob of emus grazing nearby. As we drove down through the Wannon River Valley we saw Mt Sturgeon as we headed to Portland, on the south coast of Victoria. It was pouring rain when we arrived at their maritime visitor center and we were glad to arrive at a beachside caravan park with power, hot showers and a laundry.