Grampians National Park 16/07/16

It was another early start this morning. I had to be ready by 6.30am in the lobby of the hotel to meet my new tour group. I was travelling to the Grampians and The Great Ocean Road to Melbourne with a company called Groovy Grape. 

I was picked up by our tour guide, Sid. There were 11 of us on our tour although to start everyone was really quiet. Our first stop was for breakfast at a little town called Tailem Bend. We then crossed the border from South Australia to Victoria. 

We spent most of the morning driving to the Grampians National Park. Our first scenic stop was at Mount Alapines, which is one of the most popular rock climbing sites in Australia. There are apparently hundreds of different climbing routes and we saw loads of people abseiling and climbing up. 

I got talking to two English girls, Jade and Sarah, which was nice as a lot of the group kept to themselves! After lunch we drove to MacKenzie Falls which was another waterfall (and hike with lots of stairs).

 It was about a 2k return trip but when it's walking up stairs the entire time, it feels a lot longer. The waterfall at the bottom was really cool though and worth the hike.

The only downside was that to get near to the falls, you had to cross loads of rocks in the river which were really slippery. A few people lost their footing and fell in, including Jade! Luckily it wasn’t deep but she got soaked.

We then drove to the Balconies, which is a famous lookout point in the Grampians. I decided I wanted to push myself so climbed down past the lookout point and walked out onto the Balcony rocks. It was so high my legs were like jelly, but the view was incredible.

As we walked back we saw the sunset over the park which was gorgeous.

Our last stop of the day was in a town called Horsham, which had really friendly kangaroos we could go up to and get selfies with. It was at this point I slipped getting out of the bus and landed flat on the ground. I was absolutely fine but pretty embarrassing when you’ve only known people for a few hours.

The kangaroos were really sweet and one came right up to the bus. We then carried on to our accommodation in Halls Gap. Jade and I sussed out pretty quickly that our tour group were not very social. Everyone just sat on their phones, not saying a word.

We ended up going into the kitchen with Sid whilst he was cooking dinner, talking to a bunch of Irish girls. They were living in Australia, but had come away for Christmas in July. Apparently that’s quite a common thing in Australia as it’s so cold here in July and warm in winter.

We had pasta for dinner and then everyone went to bed really early. Sid, Jade, Sarah and I stayed up for a few drinks and played some cards. I was planning to go to bed but then heard from some of the Topdeck group, so we ended up chatting for ages! The two tours are completely different atmospheres.