8 January 2011 - Freshwater Lake Reserve, Victoria Valley, South Grampians, Victoria

Soon after I stowed the computer away, a further eight or so parties arrived in camp, one lot towing quad bikes and looking like they were in for a fun Saturday night. After dinner we wandered about the camp, engaging in conversation with one chap travelling with his family in an amazing rig. While we were quizzing him on the advantages of such an outfit, the “bikers” set off  into the forest, obviously armed with the key to the locked barriers, with great revving and far more noise than was called for. The two German tots recently settled to sleep by their cycling parents woke and started to wail and men emerged from their caravans to observe the carryings on. We settled back into the caravan and sat up late watching a movie on television, and were later disturbed when the adventurers returned with as much noise well after one o’clock. Later I could hear the carousing and was glad that we were parked at the far end of the camp, but was concerned for those two families with tinies a whole lot closer. Some people just have no consideration at all!

We also discovered on finding that the news was rather abbreviated, that we were half an hour out; we had failed to reset our watches when we crossed the border from South Australia.

This morning dawned with blue skies, the rain having spent itself during the night, or so we thought. We were among the first to leave the camp. I was tempted to suggest to Chris we go around past the forest “bikers” and toot our horn and yell farewell greetings,, however decided that was too petty.

We drove back down to the coast and eastwards toward Tyrendarra where we turned north, and crossed through gently rolling farmland, grazed by sheep and cattle, both beef and dairy. It was the first time we had seen large herds of friesian cattle here in Australia, but no doubt not the last. We passed through Condah, where we saw an old stone church seemingly deserted in the middle of a paddock, surrounded by a large flock of sheep; quite picturesque. Further on we passed through Branxholme, easily missed if distracted, and soon arrived at Hamilton.

Hamilton, with a population of about 10,500 people is a major rural centre built on the wool industry, centre to a thriving pastoral industry for more than 160 years. The weather was still blustery and showery. We had intended to visit the botanical gardens which are lauded in the tourist literature, however the rain put us off and so we drove to the manmade lake, parked up on the shore and pulled out our maps and brochures to do some travel planning, achieving little but raise more questions and possibilities. Lunch over, we headed back into the town centre, stocked up at Coles and then wandered around the town calling in to the few shops open. Unlike so many of the towns we have visited, the streets are quite narrow and the town feels much more intimate because of this. We liked Hamilton and also enjoyed the Art Galley which finally opened at 2 pm.

Here there are several galleries, contemporary and more classical. The gallery houses quite a large collection of work by Paul Standby, an 18^th century English artist, whose landscapes of England and Wales are quite brooding and dark. Chris assures me that this is mostly due to the fact that the colour in the paints has changed since it was originally applied, however I am not convinced. I think most of the artists of that time were just depressed and trying to exorcise their demons.

Camping beside Freshwater Lake

We had decided to check out this camp to the south of the mountainous Grampians, and set the Tomtom with the co-ordinates. He brought us safely here but not by the route I had marked on the map. Tomorrow we will head north right into the National Park, perhaps taking a shortcut across the low pass between Mount Sturgeon and Mount Abrupt that lie immediately to our east.

In the meantime we are parked right on the shore of this reedy lake, with the windows on the one side tightly shut against the very blustery wind. There has been little sun to charge the solar panels so we will have to be conservative with power usage. Hopefully the sun in the days ahead will be more productive.