<< The Balconies - A Mystic Journey

09/10/15 - Climbing in the Southern Grampians

With all our wandering in the Northern Grampians, we were rather exhausted when we finally made it to the Southern Grampians, so we decided to climb the gentlest hill near to our hotel, The Royal Mail, in Dunkeld. If nothing else, we had to work off our eight course tasting dinner and experiment in molecular gastronomy. We chose the unfortunately named Picaninny, roughly a 400' climb. Perhaps it is a tribute to molecular gastronomy, but we were surprised at how quickly we climbed and how energetic we felt back at the car. This called for a new challenge.

We briefly considered climbing Mount Abrupt which loomed large in the area, but only briefly. Instead, we attacked Mount Sturgeon, perhaps an 800-900' climb. Once again we climbed past grass trees and through forest and when the trail opened up we had magnificent views of the area. Our original plan was to climb until we were exhausted, but we made it to the top and a fabulous overlook.


Grass trees on the Picaninny

An old grass tree, damaged by fire

One of the views of the plains below

Mount Abrupt - maybe next time

A rock wallaby

Blue flowers which we aren't even going to pretend that we are going to look up somewhere.

The view from Mount Sturgeon

Another view under the changing sky

A spider

Carnivorous sundews

The forest

Keywords: australia