Wednesday 11 April through to Saturday 14 April 2012: The Grampians area.

Dave and I set up our tent at a caravan park in the middle of Halls Gap, a little village right in the middle of the Grampians. This place was chock a block full with caravans and tents of all types and lots of little kiddies running around, as it was school holidays in Victoria, and The Grampians is one of the favourite spots for people to come to. Just about every campsite had a campfire going, so it smelled like a gypsies' paradise. At first I was dubious about all the people here, and the campfire smells…I was thinking it would be way too crowded. For the first time in 7 weeks I had to queue for showers and the camp kitchen was crowded too.

But I soon became happier once we had met our camping neighbours; as usual, people in caravan parks are so friendly. And the kiddies are delightful; we find that people who take their children camping always have the happiest families. Makes us miss our grandkids even more, seeing the shining little faces of children here!

For the next few days we went riding through the Grampians mountain areas on absolutely beautiful twisty forest roads, in stunning scenery. The roads are well made with good cambers on all the corners, so I didn't feel nervous on my bike.

On the first day we went sightseeing at a place called "Mt Difficult", aptly named because Dave dropped his big grey bike on top of himself in the sloping car park, trapping his foot underneath. I heard him yelp inside my helmet speaker and I nearly dropped my own bike trying to reach him, but a nice young man came over and flipped the 300kg Honda up and off poor Dave….how he managed to do this so easily is a mystery to us both, as this chap hopped in his car and drove off just after that. I heard Dave say "Thanks mate!" to this man angel. Dave had only grazed his foot luckily; I had visions at first of having him carted off in an ambulance, but the biggest dent was his pride, and the only broken thing was his camera, which was packed on his hip. Well, I'd rather see a broken camera than a broken bone on my darling! We bought a nice new camera in Horsham the next day.

We went on some great Grampian mountain hikes with our "hoiking poles" as we call them. I use two poles and Dave uses one. I call my hiking poles the "differ sticks" because they make the difference between misery and happiness! No more gammy knee and hip pains on long walking trips.

Some of the Grampian high viewing spots were crawling with wall to wall human rock lizards; tourists from all over the world everywhere. The views were worth it, no wonder people come here.

The geology of the Grampians fascinated us; apparently this big mountain range towering over the inland country was once the coastline of southern Victoria, starting off as sedimentary stuff, but over millions of years there have been huge earth movements, some volcanic activity and erosion also causes changes in the rocks. Everything is a continual process of change!

We spent one day riding to the old towns of Stawell and Ararat. Some of my family have been born and bred in these towns, though none are left there now. Both towns have a gold mining past, and some lovely old heritage buildings. We particularly enjoyed the Gum San Chinese Heritage Museum at Ararat, where in the early 1800s 700 Chinese men walked across from the port of Robe in South Australia to the Victorian goldfields as a way of beating a harsh tax on them if they landed from ships in Victoria. These Chinese men got lucky and found a rich vein of gold in Ararat, so stayed a while to try and make their fortunes. But white settlers were jealous of the Chinese, whom they called "the Celestials", and so this did not make a happy cultural mix!

At Halls Gap there is an outstanding cultural Aboriginal place called "Brambuk" which tells of the human history of the Grampians area before white settlers came in the 1830s. The Aboriginal name for Halls Gap is "Budja Budja", and the Grampians is "Gariwerd." The building roof at Brambuk is designed to look like an enormous cockatoo bird's wings, and inside is fascinating, you have to visit it yourself to see all the detail and how the design shows Aboriginal culture. I was interested to note that here, and in some other tourist places in Victoria, the cultural clashes between the Aboriginals and the white settlers from the 1830s onward are now honestly documented, and massacre spots are being shown on some maps. So many of these sad and terrible spots! Only a few original Aboriginals survived these cultural clashes or white man's diseases, and those that did survive, or those who had Aboriginal/White blood were rounded up and put on horrible missions. I do not agree with the excuse that this was considered the "right thing to do" for the times, as this is just a bullying cop out in my opinion, for arrogant white people to make excuses for their past behaviour.

Anyway, the Brambuk centre in Halls Gap was very good in showing the seasons and lifestyles of past people. Some of the old photos of the original Aboriginals had such haunting sad eyes. But it is good to see modern Australians now being more honest about telling our history.

We have been lucky so far to have great weather for most of our journey. It has been freezing cold in our tardis tent at nights while in Halls Gap, but we have been snuggling up into our own feather down sleeping bags, looking like giant caterpillars. Dave has been looking very cute wearing nothing but his beanie to bed ha ha! I've been looking like a cat burglar wearing my black woollen thermal gear. But the days have been wind free and perfectly sunny; perfect camping weather.

Time to pack up tomorrow, Sunday 15th April, to ride towards the Great Ocean Road!