Towns on Sunraysia & Henty Highways

Sunday 18/10/09

As we continue our journey we are making our way towards Mt Gambier in South Australia. It will probably take us about 5 days to get there.

The countryside continually changes from drought areas to lush countryside. Roads are also either quite bumpy or fairly good. The bumpy roads make for interesting times when we stop & open cupboards in the caravan!! We are learning to catch items pretty fast. We have lined all the cupboards with that non-slip matting but bumpy & non-slip don’t go together!!

I continue to read books, sleep & sometimes see the country side as we travel to the next destination. It is sometimes a bit boring just sitting in the passenger’s seat doing nothing & Pat isn’t too keen on me driving with the caravan attached (probably not that keen on my driving full stop if I’m honest!!)

Anyway we continued on to a placed called Ouyen. We don’t seem to have to travel too far now before we are in the next town. We took a wander down the main street to stretch the legs. It was interesting to see that at each of the roundabouts in the main street they had statues depicting the wool industry. Something a bit different. We then had a bite to eat back at the van and continued our journey.

We have decided to make camp at Lake Lascelles – a rest area near a Lake at Hopetoun. This lake was empty for approx 12 years (we believe from evaporation & drought) but is now slowly refilling due to water being pumped into it at half an inch a day. (Reasons behind this are political.) They started on 24/09/09 and should be full by Xmas!! It is bringing lots of birdlife, etc back to the lake. We walked the lake the day we got there and the next day.

Pat was talking to a local farmer who stopped to chat to us & he told us that they should be averaging around 15 bags of wheat this year!!

Hopetoun didn’t have much to offer - just another small town. (It is also just coming out of 10 years of drought.)

Pat is enjoying seeing a bit of farming land & taking note of the different crops that are growing in the area.

Monday 19/10/09

After our walk this morning we continued towards Horsham. As we drove along Henty Highway we went past a sign to Minyip. For those that aren’t familiar with the television series “The Flying Doctors”, Minyip was the town where the series was based – called Coopers Crossing in the series. We had travelled a couple of kilometres past the turn off before I said I wouldn’t mind visiting the place!! Pat patiently turned the car & van around & we went the 21kms into Minyip. Unfortunately, it was a bit of a wasted journey, as there was not much to show that the television series had been done there. Emma’s garage sign is still there, V Carnegie’s General Store sign & a sign outside of the Senior Citizens Centre showing the Royal Flying Doctors sign. The local hotel had quite a bit of memorabilia in one of their rooms, but that was the total sum of it. Rather disappointing. The only good thing to come out of the visit was that we got a good meat deal at the butchers!!!

Anyway we then retraced out steps & continued on to Horsham. We didn’t actually do anything here other than a quick drive around & then continued 5 kms out of town to camp site. There were 3 others vans there for the night but it was rather a noisy place to stay as it wasn’t far from the highway & trucks were going past most of the night.

Tuesday 20/10/09

Stawell was our first place to go to this morning. It is only 60 kms up the road & Pat would like to see where the Stawell Gift is held each Easter. After all we have watched it on television each year. Stawell was a nice place to visit. We went through the Stawell Gift House of Fame which housed lots of memorabilia. The Stawell Gift started in 1878. In that time there has been 1 Aboriginal win the event, 1 dead heat (one of the winners thought it was a good idea to split the pot but the other winner thought they should have another heat to decided the winner – the one who wanted to share won!!) & the first winner of this event’s had a great grandson win the event 119 years later. The town’s prosperity, in part, is due to its gold mine, established in 1984 & one of the largest gold producing mines in Victoria. Stawell is steeped in history & was interesting to have a look around.

From Stawell we decided to go through Halls Gap & the Grampians. The Grampians is a National Park & we were told we could take the dog through & he was allowed to get out of the car on the road or the car park (on leash) but not allowed on the grassed areas!! Anyway the Grampians are a majestic sight to see. We had out lunch at Halls Gap but decided not to do any of the walks around the mountains as we weren’t keen to unhook the van & leave it in the street whilst we went off to some of the walking areas.

On our way out of the Grampians National Park we came across a police woman stopping traffic & asking us to proceed with caution as there was a police exercise going on up ahead. We heard on the news today that a 28 year old bloke had fallen from Mt Abrupt & there had to be a rescue on foot done as helicopter access wasn’t possible!!

Our next destination was to another rest area near Dunkeld. We think we must have taken a wrong turn as we didn’t find the rest area and as it wasn’t that far to Hamilton decided to continue their to the caravan park.

We have booked in for two nights here.

Wednesday 21/10/09

Our caravan park is right on the Grange Burn & about a 5 minute walk to Lake Hamilton. A small caravan park with excellent facilities. I had a nice walk along the Burn this afternoon & hope to be able to walk the Lake tomorrow morning before we leave town (5km walk).

We took a drive out to Nigretta Falls & then onto Wannon Falls. Both spectacular falls & have only been running in the past few weeks because of the amount of rain recently in this area. Another place of interest was the Botanical Gardens. The Gardens also had an aviary that you could walk through. This town is so green & restful.

Hamilton was the starting place for Ansett Airlines, so a tour of the Ansett museum was undertaken. An okay place to visit.

The past few days have been very pleasant weather during the day but the nights are still pretty cold.

Tomorrow we will reach Mt Gambier – it is only a 130kms away. This is also another quarantine crossing so any fruit or vegies have to be disposed of. We don’t have too much to throw out but do have some of the lovely oranges we got in Mildura left – guess that will be a present to the caravan park owners here in Hamilton!

Pat’s birthday tomorrow – so maybe dinner out tomorrow night. Yeh.

Oct 21, 2009

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