Day 2

Day 2

10-JUN-06 - evening

Hey It’s my birthday :)

Sligh glitch – failed hardware. The camera flash card reader has packed up. Managed to connect the camera using the CD burner USB connector, got the laptop to recognise the camera make, but no drivers – no internet – groan.

We drove out of Halls Gap just after midday, heading to Horsham over the Grampians. Halls Gap is nestled in a narrow valley that for some reason escaped bushfires that raged through the Grampians earlier this year. The same could not be said for the rest of the National Park. Where once the mountain slopes were covered in lush vegetation, only blackened trees remain.

Despite the damage, the Australian bush thrives on bushfires. Many plants have adapted to only release seeds from their pods after a fire. The soil replenished by the ash and burned vegetation becomes fertile with first rains and a new cycle of life begins.

Lush green ferns have sprung from the ashes and burned tree trunks are bursting with new foliage. Only a few months have gone by since the fires and the bush is coming alive again.

Some 70km northwest of the Halls Gap lies the town of Horsham. The landscape could not be more different to the rugged steep peaks of the Grampians. When Mark Twain visited Horsham in early 1890’s, he described it as ‘ a country town, peaceful, reposeful, inviting, full of snug homes, with garden plots and plenty of shrubbery and flowers’ the landscape ‘remarkably flat, gray, bare, sombre, baked, cracked, in the tedious long droughts, but a horizonless ocean of green grass the day after rain’. 116 years later, the description is as fitting as the day it was written.

With the Grampians behind us, it was time to make tracks toward Port Augusta, our next destination, some 1,000 km northwest.

Dimboola, Nhill, toward the South Australian border and onto Bordertown, famous as the birthplace of Australian Prime Minister, Bob Hawke.

Keith, Tailem Bend, Ok, that’s far enough for the day. 700km from Melbourne and only 100km from Adelaide, we should make it to Port Augusta sometimes tomorrow afternoon.

11-JUN-06 - morning

One last look back at the Grampians as they leave their impressions of nature on our minds: rosellas, white cockatoos, the tiniest feathered creatures hopping around playing a tug of war with the worms, their tails high in the air. All kinds of native birds galore even a crane walking unperturbed through the caravan park. And just as we were about to leave an old “kookaburra sat on the old gum tree” only a meter or so from our front windscreen.
Narrow winding roads with views in all directions, a turn off here and there for a closer look, and we leave the Grampians behind. The road becomes straight and long. The sun is bright. The land is now flat. The occasional turn in the road only reveals another straight and long road ahead. H20 the sign post reads. That’s Horsham 20 km ahead.


He was an old man. A beer in one hand, a toothless grin, an old tweed hat (a throwback to the sixties) hid his curly gray locks, which emerged into fluffy sideburns. His nose, broken somewhere along the long path of his life, formed a perfect “C”. A for sale sign advertised the old small caravan. The type that only has two wheels. He got it off the old bloke’s son: “He’s 82 now. There was stuff in there that he hadn’t seen for 40 years. I gave it all back to him. He still had all his clothes in the wardrobe, and some old papers and stuff from 1922. I’ve got stuff from 1918 and” did I hear right or was it my imagination? “a model T.”

An old cast iron, wood stove stands outside the “portable” one room cabin. “Can we take a photo of you? We are on a Walkabout…” Didn’t get a chance to finish the sentence. He had so much to say. “I had a guy, come down from Sydney. Asked me to give it to him, and I sad no, because I didn’t pay for it, he gave it to me, so I’m keepin’ it. Sold a stove to a guy going to Melbourne for $150, not as good as that one. Do you want that old one for the back of your van? I can let you have it for $300.” He would have continued, a sparkle in his eye. “Maybe we’ll stop by on our way back..”