Day 4 Horsham to The Grampians

We’ll as the day started early and we’re in a motel we get away pretty quickly.  We top up the fuel and water tanks in town and start heading south. We make for the Mt Zero at the top of the Grampians.  It’s a bit of a hike up to the mountain, so we continue on.  We follow Pohlners road, it’s dirt, but not really very difficult driving and a 2wd could do it easy.  We wonder when the decent tracks will start.  Fortunately, we don’t need to wait long….

We come across Chinaman’s track, it’s marked 4×4 so of course we take it.  The entrance is “Whoa-Boy”, one of those dirt mounds across the road to divert water off the track, only this one is huge and I need 4×4 to get over it.

The track is really good, mostly pretty easy, but there are a few challenging places, not bad enough that we think we need to backtrack, just the right level of difficulty.   I start off in 4H, but about halfway along need to switch to 4L to get over a tricky part.

The track ends at the Wartook Reservoir Dam wall, which we stop at for a bit of a look.

From here we drive the short distance over to MacKenzie falls.  It’s only a 570m walk from the carpark, but it’s steep.  Speaking of carpark, it’s pretty full, but I wouldn’t have like to have seen it yesterday, it must have been nuts.

We take the walk, I think I’ve reached the bottom only to find another bunch of steps to the main falls at the further down.  The stairs are really only single file so passing people going the other way is interesting.

Wow, I can see why these are the must see in the area.  Really spectacular. 

The walk back is hard, but not as bad as I feared, certainly not as bad as I remember the Gap Creek Falls walk.

The place is too crowded to have lunch, so we drive a few k’s to Old Zumsteans Camp. A nice enough place.

Here we take the Zumsteans Track, which is pretty tame and meet up with Rose Creek Road again just a dirt road.  Finally, we come across Wallaby Rocks Road, this ain’t no road, this is a track!

The first part is pretty easy and around 1:30 we come to the first option to camp at.  It’s pretty impressive and we think about staying.  There are two other sites further along that are meant to be a bit better, we elect to risk it and have a look.  They are only 6ks further up the track, but the track gets much more difficult so it’s 20odd min before we get to the 1^st of the other two options.  Unfortunately, there is a flash small expedition vehicle already camped up, bugger.

We push on and go for the 2^nd, I’m panicking a bit thinking if this one’s taken we’ll need to backtrack.  The track gets rougher and rougher and a few places we need to jump out to pick the correct line to drive.

I needn’t have worried, we pull into this prime spot and no-one is here.  It’s sensational.  With a perfect view out over the mountains and valley right from the campfire location.  I’m not sure it gets any better than this.

We arrange the cars, setup out swags and get ready to light the fire.  Such a great place and kinda makes the burning of yesterday OK.  This place would have certainly been full yesterday, especially based on all the empties in the firepit!

We watch the fantastic sunset, This one of those places that you do trips like this for.  It’s got to be in my top 10 camping locations!

As the sun sets we can see the cresent moon high over the horizon, with Venus, just a little below, we check and it’s due to set at midnight. 

A great fire and dinner (thanks George).

The wind picks up and it ends up being very cool indeed, lucky I brought cold weather clothes 

We end up staying up till midnight to watch the moonset, I’m not sure I’ve see the moon get that real red tinge as it starts to set.

A windy cool evening, but still a great place.