Halls Gap, The Grampians

We had dreadful weather at Halls Gap, so we really didn't get to enjoy the place very much. It rained, drizzled and poured most of the time we were there and there were horrendously strong winds for much of it too. After the tree branch fell on Rory's head at Omeo we are very careful not to be out among trees in the wind, and in all honesty, sometimes the wind was almost terrifying, it was gusting that strongly. While the weather was disappointing for us, it is so very good that the area was experiencing so much rain, as farmers just out of the mountains (at Stawell and Ararat) have been selling off their livestock due to drought.

 The rock formations are amazing - so rugged and different. We were camped at the bottom of one section and the view was breathtaking.

We drove up to Mackenzie Falls as it really got talked up as a great waterfall, but I am guessing the serious lack of rain the area has been experiencing for years has affected it, as it was not overwhelmingly impressive. We had hoped to do a couple of bushwalks but weren't able to because of the wind and rain. We did a 100m walk to the Grand Canyon at the start of the walk to The Pinnacle, but couldn't go any further because of the steep climb and the shocking weather. Still, we did see a very pretty creek which was flowing very well thanks to all of the rain.

 Mackenzie Falls (from the lookout so it doesn't look that big. It would probably look much more impressive from the bottom, but the weather was too horrible to do that walk)

Locking back towards Halls Gap (this is what most of our time there looked like!)

 The water is very stained with tannin

 Rock hopping across a creek in the rain

I fell on my butt to get this photo so it had to be included :)

We drove to Stawell on the only sunny afternoon we had, primarily so Greg could check out a creek for gold, but with all of the recent rain it was flowing too fast to be able to pan. We found a working underground gold mine at Stawell, which everyone found very interesting... even Rory as he could watch the diggers loading the rock into the crusher and Tilda really did enjoy reading and learning about the underground mining operation.

Tilda and Rory standing on the 1 million ounce gold bullion replica

 (to give some indicator of just how much gold had been mined)

Our caravan park was full of roos, sulphur crested cockatoos, long beaked corellas and emus ranged just outside the camping area. This was fun for the kids. One afternoon there was a large kangaroo just outside our van. He looked cold, wet and very bedraggled and I felt sorry for him, so I decided to give him some food. What I didn't realise was just how tame they are! He came right up to the door and took the food from my hand, before I could even step out of the van! It would have been OK except I thought he looked like he would come inside for more... and he was a BIG boy, bigger than Tilda, so a bit over 4 foot high. We spend the next 15-20 minutes trapped in our van as he wasn't leaving and Rory insisted on locking the door so he couldn't come in!

The "standover" guy in the background, after he'd moved away a bit