Gone Walk-about

Our week of fun and travel is over now.  Leighton has just caught a plane back to Sydney to start school and I am staying out in Victoria to WWOOF (Willing Workers On Organic Farms).  I am just settling into a nice place near the Grampions where they make olive oil.

 View Hunter Leighton walk-about in a larger map

The rout is not correct due to google maps being shifty but the information points are still right

After our first mosquito infested night in the Grampions we decided it would be more worth our while to see the country than to stay and get sucked dry.

So we took our van and went walk-about.  First our travels lead us down to the ocean to a town call Portland Victoria, which was much warmer than Portland Oregon is this time of year.  Portland Victoria was a beautiful sea side town that sported several very nice ocean walks that Leighton and I ventured upon.  They also had quite a large wind farm, which is where we met Eco (see Eco the Grey Nomad).

Near Portland is a strange ponensila that sticks out into the ocean.  When you walk out upon it it give you the feeling of walking on mars.  The ground is red and jagged and there is no other life to see.  According to tourist information this is the location of Australia's largest petrified forest, and by looking around, you see hundreds of round stone shapes that look very similar to trees, but don't be fooled.  Those round stone shapes are actually made by geological reactions where the minerals are drawn out of the soil to form these cylindrical stone shapes.  I don't know why but the Victorian tourism council decide to play a joke on every tourist and called the area a petrified forest.  It's not until you drive out, walk 400 yards and read an information sign that you realize that you were the butt end of a tourism joke.  Touche Victoria :).

Eating lunch on the ocean

We spent the night sleeping just over the boarder in South Australia at Eight Mile Creek where we saw amazing sunsets on the cow pastures, and had a very spicy tofu curry meal.  I don't think we made the curry right and it burned the heck out of us.  I was sweating and my face was beat red while Leighton could hardly eat because of spice hick-ups.  The next day after our morning spent on the dairy with the Gilmores (see Dairy on the Ocean) we continued on up the coast drinking from our liter of fresh from the cow milk, it was so tasty.  When we reached Mount Gambier we learned that the whole town was built on the slopes of a dormant volcano and that sink holes were located all over town from where the lava tubes ran.  Many of these sink holes were full of water and went for several miles underground.  It makes me wish I had a cave diving license since many of the caves can be explored without fees if you have the correct permits.  From Mount Gampier we headed up the cost to Beachport where we went for a refreshing dip in the Pool of Siloam, which is seven times saltier than the ocean and reputed to have therapeutic healing properties.  I'm not sure about the healing properties, but it was pretty fun to float in.

We made one more stop that day at Robe, which hosts a strange Obelisk on the ocean front.  It was built in the early 1800's as a form of navigation for ships, it also supposedly stored rockets that would be used to shoot line out to sinking ships in order to save the crew.  Sounds like a crazy form of rescue to me.
We spent our third night on Cape Jaffa right on the ocean.  We stewed up an amazing lentil stew with two large crayfish, thank you Tricia Gilmore, which we sauteed in some butter and garlic to give it some flavor.  It was the tastiest meal we ate the whole trip.

The next day we headed inland to Boardertown which is located just on the South Australia boarder with Victoria coincidentally.  The temperatures steadily increased as we traveled inland and we made only one stop throughout the outback wilderness.  The one stop that we decided we had to make was at an Emu farm.

This Emu farm was far back in the outback with only a tiny brown sign every few miles to direct us.  We learned a lot about the strange bird at the farm, we got to feed the young Emu's which was an experience to be sure and we even bought and ate some Emu sausage, which is quite good.  I bought a small bottle of Emu oil that I plan on putting in a soap recipe when I get home since Emu oil is supposed to have healing properties to it.
We had dinner just outside of Boardertown but ran out of luck when the gas ran out for our stove, this forced us to eat cold porridge for the rest of the trip, but we were fortunate enough to have dried fruit and brown sugar to season it with.  Since we were getting back into the interior the mosquitoes again picked up as soon as the sun went down, so we packed up and drove to Keith where the cooler weather prevented the mosquitoes from being as active.

We  had visitors of another kind that night though, as about midnight two drunk Auzzies came pounding on the van asking if we were alright.  I guess in their altered state of mind they thought we were wrecked off the side of the road, or they wanted to try to steel our van...  Either way they went off after a short unintelligible conversation (I was half asleep and they were only half sober) and Leighton and I were able to get in a nice sleep for the last few hours of night.
We spent the last day of our adventure climbing in the Grampions again before heading to the Laharum Grove olive orchard, where I will be WWOOFing for the next 3 weeks.  It is a beautiful place right on the edge of the Grampions and I can't wait to start working with them.  Due to its location I will also be able to take advantage of the Grampions climbing which is a bonus.

Leighton carrying the gear

Leighton climbing One Flash and You're Ash V1