Lane's Ramblings

Sometime in December I took a roadtrip east of Melbourne - I had no idea where I was going, I was just going to drive until I got somewhere. I started out going the same way as I went to get to Wilson's Prom but kept going east once I got to Foster. It was after that town that I realized that this was a boring, boring drive. I looked at the map and there was nothing there - Sydney was a world away, there may be fires up in the mountains, and nothing along the coast looked interesting. But there was a road called Grand Ridge Rd that was supposed to a cool place for a drive so I decided to loop to the end of that and start at the end of the road and head back towards the city.

I just kept driving and driving in the middle of nowhere until I came upon the town of Sale, which is pretty stinking huge. It's not a city by any means but a sizeable town where it seems all of mideastern Victoria does its shopping. While there I had to fill up with petrol and found what must be the only pay-at-the-pump gas station in Australia - yeah, I couldn't get it to work.

After a turnaround or two I finally found the Grand Ridge Road, which is "shared with logging trucks." Not fun usually considering how fast these guys probably drive on these roads but to add to that the road might be wide enough for another lane and a lot of it was dirt or gravel. And I have to drive this for 135km?

The road itself was cool - it ran along a ridge (hence the name) and had amazing views; of course there was no way I was going to stop and take a picture. But I found a reserve called Tarra-Bulga National Park and that's where our picture show begins.

1) These little hikes were short - here I'm walking through a cold weather rain forests that you can find in the gullies between mountains.

2) Looking out into the valley.

3) Very tall trees.

4) A suspension bridge in the forest. They actually moved it from another town a long time ago to bring tourists up here. I think this is a rebuilt one.

5) The bridge with zoom.

6) The bridge without zoom.

7) This tree was huge and one of the oldest trees in Victoria.

8) The top of the tree.

9) Oh, we're getting to the bridge.

10) We're on the bridge.

11) The forest from the bridge.

12) Looking back on the bridge.

13) One of the weird shaped trees.

14) Yeah, going down Tarra Valley Road - they ain't kidding. There were some tourists up here and the road was so narrow that I was literaly going 5mph around corners in case I met someone coming the other way.

15) Although at times you could really hit the accelerator. You're not allowed to dial your mobile when you're driving, how about taking pictures? I mean I was stopped.. yeah.

16) Cyathea Falls - not as impressive as the brochure. We'll blame the drought. How do you have a drought in a rain forest?

17) Maybe if I zoom in... nope.

18) A valley taken from the car.

19) More of the valley.

20) Valley.

21) Ok - I was driving along and saw a sign that said "Historic tree stump, 1km". How can I turn that down? And this is what I see. There were two of them and they're actually what all of the trees were in that area until it was cleared out for settling in the yearly 1900s. So, they cut down all of these beautiful, enormous trees to settle the area and guess what - NOBODY LIVES THERE!! It's in the middle of nowhere!

22) The other one - I must say that it's pretty convenient that two of the only remaining stumps just happen to be next to each other and off the main road.

23) Hey, that's me! Just to show scale. My head looks little in that picture.

24) Uhh, just some trail - I actually took the picture so that I could remember where it was. I'm not sure why I uploaded it.

25) More valley.

26) Logging the side of the hill - that's gotta be good for erosion.

27) It's the same damn valley - what was I thinking?

And that's my little roadtrip. I should probably point out that I never finished the Grand Ridge Road, I made my way north to M1 after about 30km. This weekend I'm going to try for a tour of Melbourne. We'll see how that goes.