The Aussie Road Trip

[simage=2472,200,n,left,]Sunny, big, expensive, not as warm as you might think – welcome to Australia. Our road trip began in Melbourne on Christmas Day and ended in Sydney on January 12 in time to see Sons and Daughters play in the Sydney Festival. News Years Eve in Broken Hill and more than 5000 kilometers travelled.

Day 1 – Melbourne to Ballarat
Christmas Day. We started with a picnic in the park to enjoy the spoils of our shopping trip to the Queen Vic market. Then we headed up to Ballarat to meet Anna, Nick and the kids at Nat’s house. The cooking was in full swing when we arrived and we helped by mixing up some gin and tonics. We had a great Christmas meal together, including ample drinks and a proper Christmas pudding.

Day 2 – Ballarat to Halls Gap
The day started with a 7km recovery run round Ballarat Lake, before we headed off towards Halls Gap for the start of the road trip proper. We took the Grampian Road into Halls Gap to check out the hiking options, arriving late afternoon and setting up camp. We heard our first kookaburras, a mad hysterical laughing sound echoing round the trees. An early night after the late night on Christmas Day.

Day 3 – Halls Gap
The weather at the campground seemed deceptively warm so we set off for our hiking with what proved to be not enough clothes. We bagged the top of the appropriately named Mount Abrupt, seeing Wedge Tailed Eagles on the way. After lunch we headed to William Summit, the highest point in the park. After an afternoon siesta we headed over to Nick and Anna’s campground for a BBQ and a fond farewell – our road trips going in different directions. Hope to see them in Vancouver soon.

Day 4 – Halls Gap to Wyperfeld (via Little Desert)
We made an early start, calling in at Halls Gap bakery to pick up some allegedly award winning custard slices (not as good as English ones, I’m afraid). We headed north, stopping off at Horsham to get some information on the two national parks (we discovered that all of the tourist info offices are really excellent). On their recommendation we entered Little Desert from the south, stopping at Natimuk, which is a small historic town well known by climbers for a large sandstone outcrop. We enjoyed the most expensive coffee and cake of the trip at $19.50. We explored a couple of the short interpretive trails in the Little Desert, which had really great information on the diversity of the flora in the mallee bush. It was already much hotter, and got hotter as we headed further north to Wyperfeld National Park. This has a really great campground, and we had the whole place to ourselves, apart from flocks of pink and white parrots, green parrots, and white yellow-crested cockatoos. While resting from the late evening heat, we had kangaroos and emus wandering past our tent. The evening heat and and strong warm wind meant it was a hot and noisy night until the temperatures finally dipped in the early hours of the morning.

Day 5 – Wyperfeld to Mildura
We got up early before the heat built and completed the 7 km Desert Discovery hike. A really interesting tour through the different habitats, again with great park information posted. There were fabulous views from the sand dune wall to the west across the mallee bush to the Big Desert. We broke camp and then headed north again towards the border town of Mildura, stopping for coffee and a custard slice at the pleasant small town of Ouyen. This led to the end of the custard slice sampling, since this award winning slice had pink icing (acceptable) but the icing was strawberry flavoured (unacceptable!) The town of Mildura is very nice – situated on the south side of the Murray River, just downstream of the confluence of the Darling River. The rivers are important and support the local farming and wineries – we opted for a few halves in the local brew pub to escape the heat. Apparently it’s also in a fruit fly exclusion zone so you are not allowed to move fruit in and out of the area.

[simage=2495,200,n,left,]Day 6 – Mildura to Mungo National Park
After an early morning run along the river we enjoyed a lazy morning in Mildura. We then set off for Mungo National Park aiming to arrive in late afternoon to miss the fiercest heat of the day. The road is unpaved so the 110 km was a little slower than usual. The park is famous for being the site of the oldest known human cremation, and was inhabited by Aboriginal peoples for 45,000 years. Until 17,000 years ago the lake beds that make up the park were filled with water. The drying and filling of the lakes over time left a ring of sandstone outcrops and white dunes round the edge of the lake beds that is known as the Walls of China, where evidence of fireplaces and human habitation from 35,000 years ago are regularly revealed as the sandstone erodes. Mungo Lady and Mungo Man revolutionized understanding of the spread of Homo sapiens to Australia (much earlier than thought). In the last century there were two homesteads in the park, and some of the old buildings such as the sheep shearing shed are still there. We joined a tour in the evening with an Aboriginal guide to walk on the Walls of China and watch the sun set over the park.

Day 7 – Mungo National Park to Broken Hill
We got up very early so we could enjoy the 70 km driving tour around the park before it was too hot and while there was still a chance to see some wildlife. The first lookout at the Walls of China gave us a great view over the park as the sun rose. Next we headed off into the Eucalypt mallee and saw lots of emus, kangaroos, and more pink parrots. We stopped at an old watering hole from the wagon train days and walked up into dunes behind the Walls of China, then headed back to the camp ground via one of the old homesteads; not much was left apart from the chimney from the house and the dugout where goods (and people!) could keep cool in summer. We broke camp and headed back towards Mildura, before heading off on the Silver City Highway for the 300 km drive to Broken Hill. We arrived mid-afternoon in still-baking heat, checked into our hostel (camping in a 4-season tent in the desert summer wasn’t so appealing!) and had a nap to prepare for New Year in Broken Hill. We made a tour of the local pubs, ending up in the amazing Mario’s Palace Hotel (featured in Priscilla Queen of the Desert), where every inside wall is covered with murals. It also has a great first floor veranda for enjoying open air drinks. Happy New Year!!

Day 8 – Broken Hill
The new year got off to a slow start, but improved after ginger and kola “spiders” (ice cream floats) at Bell’s Milk Bar, which still has its 1950s interior and makes all the syrups for the drinks in the traditional way. We then headed off to the former mining town of Silverton for scones and tea, a look round a couple of art galleries and to the Mundi Mundi viewpoint where you can see the curvature of the earth as the vistas are so wide. Gill wasn’t convinced but Andy was quite certain he could see the effect! This was the plain where Mad Max II was filmed. We then headed to another desert view point for the late afternoon sun and views to Broken Hill and the huge line of lode (mine tailings) that dominates the town, and now also has a restaurant build on top! After that it was quiet night in at the hostel after the excesses of the previous evening.

[simage=2526,200,n,left,]Day 9 – Broken Hill to White Cliffs
We made a relatively early start from the hostel and went to the Pro Hart and Regional Art Galleries before heading up to the fancy restaurant on top of the line of lode for a coffee and morning cake (the most expensive yet, at $22). Then we hit the road to Menindee Lakes. We didn’t have time to look in the national park but access in a small Toyota is a bit tricky so we just took a quick look at the lakes which were full for the first time in 10 years after the recent Queensland floods. Then we spent 3 hours on a dirt road to Wilcannia, and another hour to White Cliffs on a road that is a fantastic drive. White Cliffs is a small and historic centre for opal mining, and has numerous small mines which are basically a small vertical shaft into the ground with a mound of tailings all around. It’s extremely hot, and many of the buildings are dugouts built into the hillsides of town. We stayed in an underground motel, which Gill enjoyed more than Andy, who would have preferred a window!

Day 10 – White Cliffs to Cocoparra National Park
After a bit of opal shopping we were ready to burn some miles in the quest for the Snowy Mountains. We headed back through Wilcannia and then east to Cobar, before turning south towards Griffiths. The change in vegetation was really noticeable as we left the outback behind and the landscape became more pastoral. We decided to camp overnight in Cocoparra NP, which looked like a lovely campground with many species of bright coloured parrot and cockatoo. Unfortunately this was among the worst nights spent in a tent, and was even less enjoyable than the sand-blasting on Tambora and the flood on Slamet (in Indonesia) as the temperature stayed high all night and there was a strong wind across the tent which gave no breeze but made a huge amount of noise! it was also very humid as rain was forecast for the next day.

Day 11 Cocoparra National Park to Kosciuszko National Park
Not much refreshed, we set off for Wagga Wagga, via many small towns and villages. Wagga Wagga offered us the most expensive cake yet, at $12 a slice. Even we couldn’t bring ourselves to spend this and so with only a coffee inside us we moved on to Kosi, as it is more simply known. The park is lovely and is the only alpine area in Australia, although alpine Eucalypts seem quite outlandish to us. Summer comes late here and it seemed like spring to us, with wildflower and the amazing smell of the Eucalypt forest around us. We drove through most of the park before finding stopping at the Leatherbarrel campground and settling in for a better night’s sleep with the company of a forest full of noisy kookburras for company and (for the first time) the pleasant sound of a gurgling stream.

[simage=2563,200,n,left,]Day 12 Kosciuszko National Park and Jendobyne
We drove 1 hour from Leatherbarrel to the National Park office in Jendobyne to buy a permit to enter the park and hike Mount Kosciuszko. We the drove up to the Perisher Valley and as we climbed we escaped above the fog and damp weather that had descended on the area over night. The trailhead at Charlottes Pass was already busy with cars, probably because it was a fantastic hiking day – very windy but sunny with clouds racing above creating patterns on the landscape. We set out along the Summit Track (9 km one way to Kosciuszko) and quickly were on our own, but the track is still quite large and two National Parks four wheel drives passed us on the way to the huts near the summit. The summit is also accessible by a shorter route if you take the ski lifts, and so when we merged with that trail it was really quite busy at the summit. Still, it was great to be at Australia’s highest point (and no trash, which is a pleasant change from Indonesian mountains). We chose to return to the car by a loop along the so-called Main Ridge Track. This was a real highlight of the day and much more like the kind of hiking we are used to from the UK (Lake District). Great views and much less of a managed tourist experience, although the National Park had still installed some really dreadful “erosion control” footpath things that were like walking on 100s meters of plastic can rings. After a great hike, we enjoyed a pint of Kosciuszko Pale Ale at the local brew pub and camped at the local campground.

Day 13 Jendobyne to Croanjingolong National Park
After our great Alpine change of scene, we looked forward to heading south to coast, aiming to stay at the popular campgrounds in Croanjingolong National Park. We stopped in Bombala for coffee and then headed to the local platypus reserve to see if we could spot the rare egg laying monotremes (the echidna being the other). Unfortunately, they are apparently nocturnal and we had to settle for seeing a burrow. We ate another average vanilla slice purchased from the bakery in Jendobyne. We arrived at the Croanjingolong Thurra River campground and managed to get a good pitch. There were lots of empty ones, but because of some bizarre booking system we could not initially take one of them because they were still officially booked by people who and already left (but paid a full week of camping). This is a wonderful campground, nestled in Eucalyptus forest behind some huge sand dunes and kilometers of pristine deserted beach. We really enjoyed an afternoon and evening just hanging out. The campsite’s best wildlife are the large Lace Monitor lizards, which appear to wander around quite oblivious to the campers.

Day 14 Croanjingolong National Park to Bateman’s Bay
Our first mistake of the road trip, but we blame Victoria National Parks and Wildlife booking system. It was a bit difficult to stay in Croanjingolong – the next batch of week long campers were due to arrive, but given the booking system, nobody actually knew when people would come. We could potentially have stayed, but risked the indignity of being evicted and cramming onto the few overflow pitches. (Note to the Park’s people – sort your crap out and stop a situation where one of the best campsites in the State has 25% of its pitches empty at peak season). We did enjoy a good walk along the coast from the campsite to the Point Hicks Lighthouse, where Captain James Cook’s voyage first sighted mainland Australia. A really beautiful and wild stretch of coast. Leaving Victoria, we head west and then north, starting the homeward stretch that will ultimately end in Sydney. We stopped for coffee and a vanilla slice in Eden (this was topped with passion fruit icing – surprisingly good!). The Lonely Planet had recommended two other national parks on the coast near to Canberra – as we traveled north we realized we were heading into serious summer holiday territory, and called and found that these national park campgrounds were completely full. We looked for a campground on the way to Bateman’s Bay – the coastal town directly accessible from Canberra. As we entered Bateman’s Bay, Gill got pulled over by the police and breath tested! After initial nerves, we remembered that a) Gill had not been drinking and b) police in Australia don’t stop you to extract bribes. The policeman recommend a “Big 4” campsite a few km along the road to Camberra – big mistake, it was expensive, the non-powered tent sites were in the least desirable locations, and it was full of people with huge camp setups and large boats.

Day 15 Bateman’s Bay to Canberra
We headed off early from the mega-campsite and drove up to Canberra to meet our friend Jasmyn. She has a great house in Collector, population 150, as well as a lovely dog who was also pleased to meet us. We went into Canberra for a pint and some lunch then did a quick drive round town. Arriving back in Collector it seemed time for sundowners drinks, so we walked down to the 150 year old Bushranger Hotel for a few beverages in the historic bar. Since Jasmyn has just moved into the house, and wasn’t really set up for guests, we camped out in the yard overnight.

[simage=2579,200,n,left,]Day 16 Canberra to Kanangra National Park, Blue Mountains
We hit the road to the Blue Mountains with Jasmyn, arriving in Oberon round lunchtime in time to sample the custard slices from the local bakery. After lunch we headed off to Kanangra Walls for some hiking and to check out the campsite there. The walking was very nice, on forest and heath covered plateaus incised by deep forested gorges, as well as a foray down into the gorge to see one of the many waterfalls. Jasmyn returned to Collector, and we stayed in one of the nicest campgrounds of the trip, with red kangaroos and birds all around.

Day 17 Kanangra National Park, Blue Mountains to Blackheath, Blue Mountains National Park
We spent the first half of the day at the Jenolan Caves, which are very extensive and actually much better than we were expecting. There are also strombolites (ancient cyanobacteria which live in a colony and form a large calcified structure, something like a coral) to be seen, as well as owl roosts, an ancient burial site, and lots of stalactites, stalagmites, and helictites. After lunch we headed to Blackheath, visited tourist information for the usual selection of excellent advice and maps, and then did a very nice canyon-top walk from Govatt’s Leap to Pulpit Rock, with wonderful views into and across the gorges, complete with their waterfalls. That evening we stayed in the Perrys Lookdown campground run by parks NSW just outside town, which was OK and free but also quite busy.

Day 18 Around Blackheath, Blue Mountains National Park
We decided to move on from the Perrys Lookdown campground for our final night, and packed up and headed off early in very windy weather. We chose to do the Grand Canyon hike which the park staff had said was one of the best in the Blue Mountains. We weren’t disappointed, as the walk was wonderful: the trail drops down from the canyon tops into the deep gorge among temperate rainforest with tree ferns and lush plants, surrounded by towering canyon walls. We were done in time for lunch back on the top. After coffee and a cake in Blackheath, at the excellent Bakehouse on Wentwoth, we decided to head up the Megalong Valley to check out an alternative campground marked at the end of the Megalong Valley Road. The campground was lovely, situated on top of a grassy hill at the end of the valley. We sat out in the wind and sun for the afternoon, enjoying a last look at the hills.

Day 19 Blackheath, Blue Mountains National Park to Sydney
We packed up the tent for the final time, and threw all the gear in the car. We spent the morning looking at a few of the tourist viewpoints round the town of Katoomba, including the famous Three Sisters, plus Leura and Wentworth Falls. After that we headed off to the big lights of Sydney, arriving at our friend Heather’s house mid afternoon. After a much needed shower we headed off into the city to see Sons and Daughters, a great finish to our road trip.

We spent a few days in Sydney at the end of the trip seeing the sights and catching up with a selection of friends from previous lives: my friend Lynne from High School, plus our housemate Heather, and Sarah and Jamie from GradSoc Hockey, from our Durham days. It was great to see everyone, we hope some will pass through Vancouver sometime soon!

The Grampians and Outback
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Snowies to Sydney
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