RoadTrippin' Part I: The Grampians

Our borrowed little red Toyota fully loaded with camping supplies and containers of water ready for the road, I was navigator; compass round neck and multiple road maps sprawled over my lap, Andy was at the wheel. Our first stop was the Grampians National Park, a formation of mountains created by ancient river deposits they stand lonely in the middle of a vast, completely flat and sun scorched landscape. Along the way we stocked up on provisions in the small towns. These sparsely populated communities are like stepping back in time, they have only a few shops and everything closes down by sundown. Our food supplies consisted of pasta, noodles, marmalade, eggs, bread and beans (all cooked to perfection by moi).  It wasn't until nightfall we reached the Grampians and we set up camp in the darkness. Every night in the wild we had to carefully check the tent and sleeping bag for; trap door, funnel web and whitetail spiders, Some have a nasty bacteria mixed with their venom that eats away at living muscle, leaving disheveled limbs, others carry atraxotoxin (one of the world's most deadly toxins). Luckily our only encounters were brief and uneventful. You spot them after dark when the hunting spider eyes flash in torchlight and kick them away from your camp ground. The tent's interior remained arachnid free but during the night you could here the scattering of legs against the outer sheet.

Another frequent visitor was the kangaroo, we saw our first leap in front of the car on the first day and then many many more after that. At night they are brave and come within a few feet, they stole rubbish and made weird snarling noises. We tried chasing them away a few times but they are persistent and up close they really aren't small with adults when reared up on hind legs stand human sized, their bodies are weird with fat muscular legs and tail forming the base of a slender cone of a body that supports a skeletal narrow face. In the mountains we also saw foxes, lizards, owls and deer. By one of the cliff edges overlooking a lake we left our mark in the form of a small stone tower. Most of the time we managed to get back to camp before the night set in. But it really wasn't that dark with the bright stars and galaxies gleaming above.

In the bush we didn't really meet anyone for days, but it was kinda nice to get off the standard backpacker's path and really explore an area for yourself. We explored waterfalls and canyons in the car sometimes taking it offroad through dusty paths and occasionally breaking for Roo's, but the highlight here is the trekking. We walked over the rugged landscape, scrambled between crevices and canyons and shimmying around narrow ledges working our way to the tops of mountains, the views need to be appreciated with your own eyes but what hits you is how truly immense Australia is. The sandstone rock that form the Grampians has been weathered and carved away by the elements, so you can be walking on the edge of a cliff with only eagles souring above you're completely oblivious to the fact that you are standing above a massive overhang with only a thin slither of rock between you and a whole lot of air. Sometimes you step over crack in the clifftop and get hit with a blast of wind, looking below you could see the bleached landscape and the tops of trees too far down to make out many details. On one of the descents I got a bit cocky and sprinted down, jumping between boulders although I had my swissarmy knife just in case my arm got trapped in a rock and I might have to cut it off. I wanna do this every day.