View of the Grampians towards Lake Bellfield
Yesterday, March 2, we got our oil changed in Ballarat. It certainly costs a lot more to change oil in a vehicle here than in Canada, probably three or four times as much. This motorhome does take a lot of oil (almost 10 litres) and has two filters, but I don’t think it would cost anywhere close to what it cost us here to change it in Canada. Anyway, that will be the last oil change we need.
We drove to Halls Gap, which is a tourist town on the edge of Grampian National Park. The Grampians are a set of mountains, roughly 500 metres high, not very high of course, but they are quite rugged and pretty.
It wasn’t very warm today (just under 20 C) and this morning it was drizzling a bit when we left for a hike. We stopped at the visitor centre and the receptionist showed us the weather forecast for today which was sunny with a 5% chance of rain. I said “I think there’s a 100% chance of rain as it’s raining right now.” That struck her as quite funny and she laughed.
We hiked to the top of Boronia Peak. There were a lot of kangaroos, wallabies and emus near the visitor centre. They were quite tame. The walking trail was easy at the start, but got more and more rugged and stony as we got higher. The last one hundred meters or so were just a rough scramble up through a rocky ledge. I went to the top, but Enid did not. On the way down after lunch I tripped and fell over some rocks and skinned both my knees and my left wrist.
There was a major flood and storm through here in mid-January (when we were trying to avoid all the rain and so headed to South Australia). It did a tremendous amount of damage to the park, and destroyed many of the roads with landslides and washouts. Most of the park is closed, and so there are very few hikes that are open. That is unfortunate as The Grampians are renowned for their nice walks.
When we got back from today’s hike I shot some video of Kookaburras. There are quite a number of them here in this camp site, and they are quite tame. This morning one was sitting on the electrical outlet box beside our motorhome pulling at the electrical cord with its bill. Someone had left clothes on the line overnight, and about half of the clothes were on the ground. I suspect it was the Kookaburras that did that. I still haven’t managed to capture a quality sound recording of them laughing though.