To Walhalla and on to Bacchus Marsh

Leaving White Womans Waterhole we headed more or less north and found ourselves to be about the only visitors to the Tarra-Bulga National Park – or Tarragon-Bulgaria Park if the predictive text on my iPad were to have its way. A short walk took us across an impressive suspension bridge over a fern filled gully then down into the gully itself for a walk in a landscape “which hasn't changed since dinosaurs roamed the earth”

Hunting dinosaurs in Terragon-Bulgaria National Park

Trees in the National Park

Then on to a large town called Traralgon to pick up a few supplies including a new cooking pot as the handle had broken off the one bought at great expense in Aldi a few weeks ago. We were heading for an old mining town called Walhalla. A few kilometres outside Traralgon was a view point with an amazing view of a valley with an incredible number of power stations – four I think – which between them supplied almost 100% of Victoria's electricity. In addition there was at least one coal mine in the area which produces 50 million tonnes of coal a year. However the amazing thing was, despite all this very heavy industry, there was no suggestion of an industrial wasteland – all the power stations seemed to fit their environment and we could see no evidence of coal workings.

Walhalla turned out to be a twee little ghost town (Pop 21) full of holiday cottages and a few shops and aimed very much at tourists. Once the most productive gold mine in Victoria with a population of around 4000, Walhalla went the way of most of these boom and bust mining towns – when the gold ran out the town went rapidly downhill. The main tourist attractions, apart from the village itself, are visits to the mine – which went down over 1000 metres – and trips on the narrow gauge railway. Both of which had closed by the time we got there.

Walhalla - a town out of its time

Even the adverts were well out of date!

There was a free campsite on the outskirts of the village which, whilst quite attractive, had a number of caravans already in situ. After a closer inspection Sandra decided “No” - the deciding factor seemed to be the strident voice of one of the female campers. A bit further out was the site of the old Chinese gardens. In the “golden” heyday of Walhalla some entrepreneurial Chinese had set up a market garden to supply the burgeoning population. Now long gone the garden is now a campsite – but we gave that a miss as well.

We are now in the Moondarra State Forest on arguably the best site we have found so far. An open grassy area with plenty of surrounding trees for shade and bounded on three sides by a slow flowing river. It is very quiet and peaceful and we have decided to stay a couple of days and vegetate, and unlike Sandy Point there will be absolutely no problems getting away from the site. Sandra has spent the day in the sun re-organising her packing system (yet again) doing some craftwork, birdwatching, drafting a few emails and planning where we head to next.

"Yes, there's only one solution - a trip to IKEA

Leaving Moondarra with the re-organisation of the vehicle almost organised – all that was needed was yet another trip to IKEA for storage bags – we foolishly visited Mount Baw Baw Alpine Resort – it was closed and the weather was bloody freezing, only just getting up to double figures. The long descent was notable for being very long and the smell of the brakes of the Honda starting to smaell with the effort of slowing down our heavily laden vehicle. A short stop about half way down seemed to sort that problem.

With Melbourne almost within sight a visit to the iPad gave us the address of the nearest IKEA – this was put into the Satnav and before long the Big Blue hove into sight. Sandra knew exactly what she wanted but still had to have the grand tour just in case there was anything else she had forgotten. Rather phased by the sheer scale of the big city, after all we had been living in forests and on beaches fot the last few weeks, we decided to give Melbourne a miss and eventually found ourselves in the quaintly named little market town of Bacchus Marsh. Goodness knows where the name came from – it sounds as if it came straight from PG Wodehouse and the rural English shires.

A visit to the local tourist information office revealed there was no camping in the town (this transpired to be incorrect when several hours later we were forced to break in to the local caravan park) With no camping in Bacchus Marsh we headed for Lerderderg State Park to look for campsites at Wild Boar Gully and O'Briens Crossing. Managing to miss both, we ended up in the even smaller town of Gisbourne – again no camping. With darkness starting to fall we re-traced our steps, this time using the satnav rather than human navigation and eventually found Wild Boar Gully – a not very attractive site, on a slope, with almost every conceivable space fully occupied with what looked like a full scale boy scout jamboree. Dozens of small boys sitting outside their tents prodding their campfires with sticks – so it was off to look for O'Briens Crossing.

After 10k's on a very bumpy and steep dirt track O'Briens Crossing was pretty fully occupied with not a site to be seen - people were pitching small two man tents on the sides of precipices, our eight man tent didn't have a look in. So it was back to Bacchus Marsh.

A quick Google search revealed that the ever-so nice, but wildly misinformed, lady volunteer at the Information Office was wrong – there was a caravan site. By the time the satnav had guided us in however there was a problem – not only was in now pitch black but the office was closed and there was a barrier down across the entrance. Undeterred I drove at the barrier, stopping to let Sandra out, and asked her to use her strength to lift the barrier manually whilst I drove through. Low and behold we were in – we pitched the tent in the dark and hit the sack almost immediately Another day done.