The Great Southern Touring Route – Day 2

Sunday, 3rd January 2010

Invariably all of us were rudely woken up by my handphone’s alarm to How I Met Your Mother’s theme song at 5am, but as I was sleeping on the top bunk above Estee (and the double decker bed does not have a ladder, so climbing in complete darkness seems foolish), so I continued with my pseudo-sleep, and when Esther finally rouse, I told her where my handphone is located (somewhere next to the bottom bunk) and she switched it off lmao.

Our room.

I was the last to wake up, prolly around 9am-ish. After showering, I had instant noodles for breakfast, briefly packed, handed the room key over to the old lady before we went exploring a little at the backyard.

Estee and a giant tree.

Me with said giant tree.

Behind Tim’s Place, which leads to another backpackers.

A little girl and her cute dog.

Can’t recommend Tim’s Place enough—would love to be there again someday.

We got into our Hyundai Getz, didn’t know how to get to our next destination (as it wasn’t in my GPS), so we stopped by at the information centre (after obtaining help, we were asked for our nationalities, as the lady at the counter noted that down O_o).

The idyllic town of Halls Gap.

We went to the local supermarket to get some bread and ham, but they were significantly more expensive compared to buying them in the city (at least twice the price for bread).

We eventually made out way to The Grand Canyon (that’s the official name, no kidding), but it’s really less grand compared to its American counterpart (not that I’ve been to the latter anyway).

Rocks galore.

Esther too afraid to climb any further as she was only in her thongs (Aussie term for flip-flops, for those of you not in the know). Eventually it was decided that both Estee and I would continue while Esther and her aunt would hang around some place else and meet us at the Wonderland car park in an hour’s time.

Photo op time.

The canyon.

The only section of the canyon with a staircase.

HDR of the canyon (prolly a little too dark).

Behind Estee lies a steep fall to solid ground.

Atop some rocks.

And more.

My turn.

One of the easiest climb of The Grand Canyon.

A look at the surroundings.

Climbing these with my worn out soles can be treacherous wtf. In fact, Estee and I missed a turning and found ourselves at a more dangerous and narrow path, with an Indian man tagging behind us, before we thought that we may have been on a wrong route. The Indian man turned around and eventually asked another person who pointed to us the right way.

Click to enlarge this panorama when we reached the Pinnacle.

HDR of me on the other side at the top. We took our time to snap some photos when we were there, savouring the view, before we had to rush back so as to not make Esther and Aunty Betty wait.

In between.

Funny story, this. I told Estee that we have to try the alternative route that we saw on the way up, which would perhaps take us out of the canyon quicker. “But what if it’s not quicker?” she asked. “Well, that’s just the risk that we’ve to take,” I replied.

Then the Aussie in the photo passed by us and Estee quickly stopped him to ask if this alternative route is quicker to the Wonderland car park than the other, and he told us “about the same”. But less than 15 minutes later of hopping down rocks and blazing through the path—along with some small talk; apparently he climbs up and down The Grand Canyon all the time, and he lives in Melbourne too—we reached the ground with Esther snapping photos of us (“we could hear your voices from below!”), and then Estee requested a photo with our de facto tour guide.

Estee and I proceeded to have our lunch (sandwiches with ham and red beans) at the conveniently available picnic tables, and then we left again once more, with Esther driving us through the twisting corners and turns (Estee had to pop some anti-nausea pills as a result).

At the Reed Lookout, if I got that right, overlooking Lake Wartook.

Ohai.

Click to enlarge—Balconies Lookout, if I’m not mistaken.

Me and Esther.

Overlooking Lake Wartook with better blue skies this time around. :D

And another.

Mackenzie Falls, which was incredibly tiring for Esther (and all of us actually, especially when Estee and I have done the hike all the way up to The Pinnacle in The Grand Canyon).

Yeah you can’t see me, but I’m in this picture wtf.

The roaring Mackenzie Falls. Aunty Betty chose to rest near here instead of following us all the way down, as she thought it would be incredibly exhausting to climb back up (and she was right).

Esther perched on a tree.

A front view of the falls.

Vertical shot.

Me in front of the falls.

German guy (I think) posing atop a large rock.

..which is much more difficult than it looks to climb up (or down).

We eventually left (with the rest getting cones of homemade ice-cream from the store near the entrance to the Mackenzie Falls), with me driving while the rest (except for Estee, who was sitting with me at the passenger seat) sleeps. I can’t resist to ask Estee to snap this for me, as I’ve always wanted to go to Ararat ever since I saw that we could take a V/Line train there months ago. Proof that I was in the region, so to speak.

“A beautiful drive back to Melbourne” would be an understatement. As I was using the GPS (and I’m unsure if it’s part of the Great Southern Touring Route or not), the routes we took were nearly empty of cars, and they’re mostly straight all the way. I stopped by the roadside a lot—occasionally breaking hard—just to snap these picture perfect views.

Easily one of my favourite pics of that day, just to show you how empty the road was that I could stand in the middle of it to snap a photo (it wasn’t completely empty though, as there were a few cars zipping by).

This almost reminds us of the Savannah in Africa. (It’s around this time when my 8GB memory card was full wtf, and I didn’t have the hindsight to bring extra memory cards with me as I thought a 2-day road trip shouldn’t require that much space, but turns out my attempt at developing HDR photos snapped way too many photos than I had expected.)

Africa 2.

What I normally do: stop by the roadside. This is possibly one of the greatest advantages of travelling with your own car instead of a tour bus, you get to stop whenever you want, wherever you want.

Hilarious sight that I just have to stop the car to take a photo of this castle made out of hay!

We eventually were out of the Ararat region and re-fueled at one of the petrol stations, with this excellent view just across the street.

Another breathtaking look.

The incredibly long drive back to Melbourne was interrupted with a stopover at Ballarat (partly just for the sake of saying that we’ve been there wtf), and we finally found this Hungry Jack’s in Ballarat (courtesy of my GPS) at around 7.15pm. Yes it was still bright as day.

An Angus burger.

With Esther taking over the wheel, I took the opportunity to sleep as I’d have to drive myself back after sending Esther and her aunt back at Mooroolbark, and Estee at Oakleigh. Initially, the plan was to send back Estee first, but as Estee’s place is nearer to the city, we changed our plans a little. What interrupted our linear route back home via some industrial roads was when a road was cut off and I had much difficulty trying to assign a detour on my GPS (but we did it anyway).

It took us what seems like an hour just to reach Mooroolbark from the city of Melbourne (yeah we reached it first before going to the suburbs), and then another 40 minutes to Oakleigh, with Estee driving it. By the time I reached Estee’s place, I was mentally exhausted, but followed her pretty simple instructions (“one long straight road”) via Kings Way.

But as usual, said pleasant drive was interrupted with some late-night road works and so I had to detour to Albert Park, along with other cars, before I finally, finally reached Walsh St at 11pm. First time I parked a car there, and also my last.

I miraculously managed to get up early to get my car off the parking spots at 7.30am (which was when we have to start paying parking fees via the ticketing system, which was supposedly quite strict there), drove myself to Collingwood to a small family petrol station (first time I’ve ever seen it actually, and I only came here because a Google search led me to a site that consolidates petrol prices around Melbourne, and it was the cheapest here (this experience is definitely different compared to the one (subsidised) price across all petrol stations). I was fairly nervous about the entire thing, especially with my inexperience with the J-hook turn, and when I reached Collingwood, I didn’t know if I should do it or not (I didn’t in the end, and when I asked the petrol station guy, he told me that there’s no such thing in the suburbs, which was awesome).

And somehow my GPS managed to lead me away from doing any J-hook turns by going straight to Flinders St, and turning into Southbank and after a turn there or two, I managed to return the Getz in one piece. And then hitched a tram (illegally) back to Walsh St.