8 February 2012 - Stawell and more Grampians

Bit of a late start today as it was a cold start. 2 degrees was the temperature at Ararat, which is not too farm from Halls Gap. Needless to say, I did not leap out of bed to jump on the bike!

When it warmed up, I headed off on the bike to the town of Stawell, home of the 'Stawell Gift'. The tourist centre wanted $10 for a tour of what looked like a rather tacky hall of fame so we gave this a miss and simply took the opportunity to stock up on provisions at the local Woolies.

On the way back to Halls Gap, we stopped at Lake Fyan, a local water storage reservoir and had a picnic.

In the afternoon we visited Silverband Falls, which was an area decimated by the floods in The Grampians in Jan 2011. After years of drought, bush fires and heavy rain in Sept and Oct 2010, the rain of 2011 was too much for the area to handle. Nearly 200mm of rain fell in 2 days resulting in massive landslides and flooding. Many of the roads in the area are still closed for repairs and there is significant debris in most of the creeks. Certainly glad we were not camping here when that storm hit, most of the tourists had to be evacuated.

We then went onto see the Lakeview Lookout and the Pinnacles. We finally managed to convince Em and Lachie out of the pram and they loved jumping on the rocks and running on the sandy track. This tired them out quite a bit and there were no arguments when heading to bed.