Wildlife Tours Day 2: Real Wildlife + Grampians

Been in Lancefield for almost two days now, and I am really enjoying it. Great to catch up with my family here again. Went to my cousins families farm and met some of the animals there, which was very nice. I am still good with dogs, no real surprise :P. Have to find out how to behave amongst cows though ;). What I have learned: do not approach a cow when she is seperated from her calf, she gets extremely angry when that happens. Never knew a cow could be so threatening. Very happy that cows and me were separated by a fence.

Food has been amazing out here: Had a lovely dinner last night and a delightful lunch today. All the yummy food will require some extra running though. But that is going to be no problem in Lancefield, have already come up with a nice running route. Went running twice already :).

In a sense, Lancefield reminds me of Coopers Crossing (the hometown of the famous Flying Doctors series). Just remembered that a very small portion of the series WAS indeed filmed in Lancefield.

Now some more about my three day tour. Covered day one (Wednesday) yesterday. Will now move on to day two (Thursday) when we drove from the Great Ocean Road up to the Grampians.

We started Thursday off with a short walk along the coast, one of the last portions of the Great Ocean Road. After that, we went to a Wildlife Center. We arrived early and were allowed to help feed the animals. Yay! Fed kangaroos, wallabies, emus (clumsy, try to bite of your fingers), deer etc. There were quite a few kangaroos with little joey's in their pouches. So cute, from time to time you could see a curious little joey popping his (or her) head out of the mother's pouch. When I was done feeding the hungry animals, I was able to hold a little Joey (six months old) who was rejected by his mother. Poor little thing. He was extremely cute though. So was the koala Diesel that I also held for a couple of minutes. Got the pictures to prove it :). Will upload some more pictures to my Facebook page when I get the chance.

After the Wildlife Center, we made our way to the Grampians. First visited the magnificent Mackenzie Falls (not as massive as the Niagara Falls of course, but still impressive and situated in such a beautiful area). Then we were finally given a real challenge: to climb Hollow Mountain. It was a pretty hard climb, very steep at times (particularly when I had to climb over rocks). But it was amazing, very good training indeed. Apparently I am still in good shape, since I was the first one up the mountain (well mountain might be a little bit of an exaggeration, it was not really that high). Not on purpose though, I simply was going my own pace, when I was suddenly all by myself. Continued climbing, did not want to break my rhythm ;).

When I reached the top of Hollow Mountain, I had a truly amazing view. Waited for the other group members to arrive and, in the meantime, just enjoyed the natural beauty around me. The steepness of the descent worried me a little bit, but unnecessarily so. Compared to the steep, slippery (many loose and wet rocks on the track) descent of Cradle Mountain, this was an easy one. The rocks on Hollow Mountain were not wet and very firm. So I climbed down easily (but continuously watched where I was going of course) and didn't even trip once :). Managed to leave all my group members behind me again. Really cannot help it ;). It was probably not only me being in good shape, but also me being one of the few people wearing proper walking shoes (my faithful Timberlands provided me with very necessary grip).

From Hollow Mountain, our still very enthusiastic driver/tourguide Ryan drove us to Hall's Gap, our final destination of the day. We would be staying in Ned's Beds. Another small hostel, like the one in Warrnambool, but again very clean. And a lot of wild kangaroos in the area!! Had a delicious BBQ that evening. Went to bed early, because I knew the last day of the tour (Friday) would be another busy day. With another interesting climb, this time up to Reed's Lookout.

Gotta go know. Going to watch the new series of Junior Masterchef with my aunt :P.