Day 23 Moving on to The Grampians

Up early 

Spent time downloading and reading email seeing as we had access to the internet and power.

Moving on today but wanted to do a few things before heading off

Closed up the van and headed into town.

I took a few photos as we were driving past of some of the historic buildings

Called in at the information centre to see if they had anything there that was of use for our continuing journey

Discovered this railway place right next door to the information centre and also the fact that there is a rail Trail from here







This Memorial stone was just next to the railway place

More historic buildings that I took photos of as we were driving around looking for the post office, for me to post an important package

























drove down towards the Lighthouse down the Norfolk pine lined roads

Stopped off at the footbridge to go on it to look across at all the boats moored  in the port











I had difficulty getting any photos of the Norfolk pines as we were driving along so I took the opportunity to take a photo of just one standing on its own

We drove down to the end where we could walk across to Griffiths Island to walk around to the Lighthouse









The walkway across the water to the island

These plants were growing in amongst the rocks on the side of the walkway across to the island







Sitting on a seat conveniently located underneath this wide stunted looking Norfolk Pine



Evidence of the mutton birds with these burrows with footprints at the entry but we did not see any





The path around to the Lighthouse





Eventually the Lighthouse came into view

















Some different pretty wildflowers in this area





An explanation of the sculpture at the start of the walk







After getting back to the car park we drove a little bit further around the coastline past this church


I hadn’t realised I hadn’t stopped my all trails tracking so it also shows part of the route we took to drive back to the caravan park to pick up our van

Took a better photo of the wooden sculpture of a whale in the van park

We eventually headed off at about 12:45 out on the main highway back towards Warrnambool

 I took photos of some houses on the way past

















Not far back along the highway we turned off towards the Grampians










Through open farming land



And through some small towns



Spotted a massive windfarm in the distance



Some interesting clouds forming ahead



















More canola fields





Eventually we could see some of the mountains of the Grampians on the road ahead





Stopped off at the lookout to the mountains 















When we got into Dunkeld we went straight to the information centre to pick up information about the Grampians - the  roads we could take, the places we could stop at and what there was to see

Apparently this road is closed so to go to Wonderland we will have to go round

Unfortunately the Brambuk Cultural centre is also closed which is a shame because that sounded as if it was very interesting



Took photos around Dunkeld











Had a late lunch here

Refuelled here in Dunkeld as well

We took the Victoria Valley Road to go north through the Grampians as the lady in the information centre said it was a nicer way to go









Stopped on the way to rescue this File Skink























Looks as if there had been fires through here fairly recently





Stopped off at this look out and took photos













Came across the rest area that the lady at the information centre told us was a free camp so we pulled in here at Wannons Crossing

There was only one other person here in a van so we pulled up at the opposite end and set up camp




We walked around the campsite and down to the creek





Checked out the nice grassy tent camping area where there wasn’t anyone

I wasn’t feeling to crash hot I had had a weird stomach for a day and a half now didn’t feel like having dinner so we ended up just having a few snacks

We discovered that there was no signal in this area so we activated the Sat Phone and rang Corina Bronwyn and asked her to pass the message on to the others to let them know that we were out of range
We turned in to bed early this night as we had arrived at the campsite at a reasonable time and were able to get ourselves organised early

The HEMA maps route of our journey today