Lane's Ramblings

As I said earlier, I needed to get outside and take a walk through the trees. So, I had a plan to go over to the Grampians west of the city to do some hiking and get relax a bit. A couple problems with this plan - A) I was exhausted from the week and I went to the pub Friday night, which caused me to get out of the city a little later than I would have liked and B) I had no idea where I was going. My thinking was that I was heading towards the mountains, they have to have trails, and there are information buildings everywhere and signs and whatever else I need.

I did have a map, although a very general one, and an idea of what the area is like. So, I drove down the Western Highway, past Ballarat, and into Ararat where I grabbed some lunch (yes it was that late) and gas. Ararat is a pretty big town for being in the middle of nowhere and not having much around it aside from the Grampians.

Next, I drove a back road to Hall's Gap, which was a pretty small town. There was a sign for some falls so I took a quick right heading up a mountain and quickly realized that I was in the middle of a recent bushfire. All of the trees were black from burning but the forest was very green from all of the vegetation that had started to come back. I found the trail that led to the falls but it was closed because of what the fire had done to it.

I drove further down the road and stopped at a huge information center where I bought a hiking book that I hope will come in handy in the near future. My next stop was at another waterfall but the trail for this one was open. I met some people from New Zealand on the trail, they pointed out a lizard to me but shared in my frustration of not seeing a wild kangaroo. We also talked about traveling and they gave me some places to go in New Zealand. We went our separate directions and I found the falls, which were strange because the there was no river or pond at the bottom (see pics on link), the water went into the ground and then became a river further downhill.

It was a long drive and I constantly see signs that say to watch out for kangaroos or koalas or whatever but I still never see anything no matter how hard I look - a sheep can look a lot like a hunched over kangaroo out of the corner of your eye when you're hopeful. But I passed a sign that said to watch out for the kangaroos and emus - now your talking. The mountains were on my right and fields were to my left and I was going a bit fast to see anything but off in the distance and through the trees I saw it and said, "that was an emu". I turned the car around and went back, he was far away and I didn't get a really good picture but it was certainly an emu. The only problem? It was on the other side of a fence. But there weren't any others that I could see and it didn't seem to be an emu farm. There was also a sign nearby that said treefarm but I can't be sure if it was wild so I gave myself half a point.

I got out of the mountains and back into farmland - mostly cows and sheep - the trees on the farms are amazing, I think I could take a picture of every tree in Australia because they are all so different and bend in every direction. I started hitting small towns, in one a guy on a 4-wheeler was herding sheep across the road in front of me. And I noticed in one town a small stone church that seemed a bit too expensive for such a small congregation but it was a nice church. Then I noticed other towns had the same thing so I took pictures of a couple of them. They were very interesting and if I knew how to take good pictures I could make a hobby out of taking pictures of small town churches and Australian trees - certainly not wild kangaroos because they obviously don't exist.

For pictures see link below:

http://www.kodakgallery.com/ShareLandingSignin.jsp?Uc=s8e95zp.bv6k0yx9&Uy=3j328w&Upost_signin=Slideshow.jsp%3Fmode%3Dfromshare&Ux=0&UV=365107020026_338993492109