I had completely forgotten that the time zone changes when you cross the border into another state here in Australia and hadn't realised till this morning when I went to get up and it was later than I thought! Anyway after a later than planned start we left the rest area and went into Halls Gap which is the main town in the centre of the Grampians. The lady in the tourist office was helpful despite me coming back in there 3 times to ask different things and she told us what to see in the area. After a coffee at a random coffee bar called life start (not as random as the Black Panther cafe next door...) we got on our way.

We headed north to go and see Mackenzie falls. There are several different lookouts here and we ended up going to see another place called Broken Falls first. Nice little waterfall. The route to Mackenzie falls was less than 2km away but it was all down hill down a lot of steps. It was worth it at the bottom though to get to the base of the falls. I had a fun moment, I decided to climb onto a rock in the middle of the water and have Bea take a photo of me. All good, till it came to getting down again. I had to have her come over and spot me in case I fell! Lol. Only would have gotten wet but would have ruined my phone and random other things in the pockets lol.

We figured that if we started at the top we could see things on the route down and then out of the park so we went to the Reed lookout and Balconies next. Most of these things you can drive to in a car and then do a short walk to the attraction. We were prepared for a massive walk and then discovered it was a very short one. I had some more fun when we were taking pictures on the balconies. The balconies are just as they sound, areas of rock which hang over a cliff face I.e. like a balcony. Anyway, the fun...I balanced my camera up to try and take a picture and it fell though a hole into the bushes. I didn't mind but it took a picture of the bushes. Well at least it wasn't over the cliff.

When we were in Coonawara the lady in Parkers suggested to us that we go and do the Pinnacle walk. I was a bit skeptical at this thinking it was another 'drive and stroll' walk but it was quite the opposite. For something that is only 2km in length it packs a wallop of a walk. We started up the track and promptly came to climbing up rocks which were almost like stairs. We then came to an area dubbed the Grand Canyon which you really did need the handrails to get up into. The creepiest part of the climb was dubbed 'Silent Street' and oh it was silent! Almost eerie silent. We made it to the top and there were some breath taking views of the Grampians which made the hard climb all the more worth it. I almost had us go back the wrong way instead of the way we came but it was alright.

The last thing we did today was climb up to the summit of Mount William which is the highest peak in the Grampians range. It was already getting late so we were really against the clock in making it up there before the sunset. The initial 10km you drove in your car and then you walked the last 1.8km still on a sealed road to the top. It was so steep! Every time you turned a corner and you thought you might have finished there came another bend in the road. To make things worse, the sun was setting rather quickly and we were getting so high up that we were in the cloud base. It started to rain by the time we got to the top. I got some amazing pictures though. Of the mountains close to us, the ones behind them and then the shadows of the ones even further behind those whilst the cloud was closing in and the sun going down. By the time we got to the top it was almost dark and within about 5 minutes you could see nothing but grey as the clouds closed in on the summit. We walked down and went back to the rest stop for dinner.

Tomorrow we will be driving down south and heading towards the start of the Great Ocean Road.

The picture is the view from the top of Mount William.