Sonja & Ian's Excellent Travel Adventures - Grampians - Great Western Rodeo

It’s been a shocking night. As Ian’s back was giving him such a hard time he was extremely restless, which means that neither of us get a great deal of sleep. This, of course, given his ongoing back condition, is not unusual - what was remarkable, however, was Miss Kiddle’s behaviour in (what we believe to have been) a direct response to his suffering. Usually she shares her affections between the two of  us, this time, however, she stuck to him like glue. Before we turned out the light she sat on his chest, attempting to groom his face, his hair and whatever else she was able to grab ahold of. After the lights went out she went straight underneath the doona and squashed up as close to his body as physically possible. Whilst this was rather restrictive for Ian, who was in such great discomfort already, it was so incredibly sweet that he didn’t have the heart to move her out of the way. It seemed like she wanted to look after him in whatever capacity she was able. She is a much loved and very loving little creature who, we are sure, thinks of herself as another human member of the family. Ian has given her a new name - she’s now called his little Night Nurse!

Never one to give up, Ian decides that we must carry on regardless of his by now extremely limited ability to walk. So we decide to visit Great Western, a small township that is holding their annual Eastern Rodeo – an event for which riders come from all over Australia. Because the Stawall Easter Gift, that attracts tourist from all over the world is also held on the East weekend, the rodeo is very well attended. As this is the sort of thing we don’t usually do, it is terribly exciting for both of us.

  

We are lucky and find a relatively comfy seat on a hay bale from which we have a pretty good view of the arena and so enjoy, over the next couple of hours, a number of rather impressive events. 

  One such event is bronco riding. This is a competition where cowboys ride unbroken horses that are none too pleased about this and tend to buck like crazy to get rid of the uninvited guest on their backs. The cowboy has to stay on the horse for a little while (I’ve forgotten for how long exactly – but approximately 10 seconds) whilst only allowed to hold on to the rope with one hand. The other must be raised high. Needless to say most cowboys get thrown rather unceremoniously well before the allotted time has elapsed. Those who manage to stay on are honoured with rousing applause.

                                                          

Another event is bull riding where the cowboys ride bulls instead of horses. As this is a rather dangerous undertaking, as the bulls may attack the rider once they’ve shaken him off, this event requires the help of rodeo clowns. Their job is to distract the bull, thus helping prevent injury to the competitors. This seems a wild and crazy competition where the cowboys frequently get hurt. We saw quite a few guys being targeted by their bull and only narrowly escape being mauled. Miraculously, only one of the competitors required medical assistance.

 Yet another event is team roping. This is the only event where men and women riders compete together with the aim to capture and restrain a steer. One rider lassos the running steer’s horns, while the other rider attempts to lasso the steer's two hind legs. This requires incredible skill and we are amazed at the number of cowboys succeeding in this task.

Those we admire most, however, are the Marshalls. These are two guys on horseback who ride along the competitors. Their job is to steer the horses or bulls away from those cowboys who’ve fallen off and then guide the horses back into their pens. They also assist those competitors who’ve succeeded in staying on to transfer mid-ride from their bucking horses or bulls onto the Marshall’s horses. These guys’ riding skills are awe-inspiring.

Although we’d had a rough start to the day, I am happy to report that it turned out to be a good one in the end.

Tomorrow we are planning to attend The Stawall Easter Gift. Stay tuned….

PS I'd love to add some video footage of the Rodeo. If anyone knows how I can do this, please let me know!

Sonja & Ian's Excellent Travel Adventures - The Grampians

Having made very brief acquaintance with the Grampians some years ago when I was invited to speak at a conference at Halls Gap, I decided then and there to, one day, return. Well, here we are, driving through the majestic mountain regions, headed towards the only caravan park that still has vacancies – one that does not allow pets. Poor Miss Kiddle has to be smuggled in, yet again. What this means is that we stop the van a few hundred meters before the entrance to transfer her from my lap into the van. She then has to endure a few minutes of a pretty bumpy ride. I know just how bumpy this ride can be as on a number of occasions, feeling sorry for her, I’ve stayed in the van, sharing her experience.

Thinking back to the first trial run we did with our caravan about 1½ years ago, I have to say that Miss Kiddle has come a long way. Then she cried, widdled, pooed, spewed and made such a jolly nuisance of herself every step of the way that I was ready to disown her. Now, she takes it all in her stride - she happily settles into her basket, which rests on my lap throughout the journey. She spends the driving hours snoozing, washing herself, standing up every so often to purvey the passing landscape (very much to the amusement of passing traffic - I guess you don’t often see a cat staring at you from the front seat of a passing car!) and she absolutely loves being in the caravan. This certainly increases the enjoyment factor for us.

The caravan park, huge and as rugged as the landscape, is relatively empty this early Thursday afternoon before the Easter weekend. After setting up, which has become a very comfortable routine by now, we drive into Halls Gap to check out the lay of the land. By the time we return the park is unrecognizable – filled to the brim with vans of all shapes and sizes, tents, some of which are as large (I am sure) as some people’s houses; children running, hopping, skipping, some racing around on their bikes; groups of adults (of all shapes and sizes) seated around fire pits, chatting, laughing, enjoying ‘wine o’clock’. The atmosphere, filled with the smoke of dozens of such fires, is one of relaxation and happy anticipation of a long and lovely Easter weekend. It’s nice to see, hear and feel the vibrancy of all the life around us and earplugs ensure that the screaming toddler in a close-by tent, perhaps woken by a nightmare, doesn’t dampen my enthusiasm. Earplugs are definite MUST when caravanning.

We wake from a restful sleep to hundreds of corellas combining their voices in early morning song. Thankfully, even Ian had a good night, which is relatively rare these days and is often a barometer as to how well his body will behave during the day. As I have a craving for Devonshire tea, we head out to Halls Gap in search of such a delight. Halls Gap is also teaming with people; the coffee shops are packed and even their outdoors areas filled with hardy folk – it’s only about 10 degrees C.

Fortified by the delicious homemade Devonshire tea we now wend our way up into the mountain to the Boroka Lookout. The viewing platform, which is within easy strolling distance from the car park, provides a great view over the Halls Gap Valley and the eastern plains. We marvel at the rugged mountains as well as the vast plains stretched out below. Walking between viewing platforms we discover a kangaroo busy munching its morning tea, that doesn’t seem at all worried about us.

Next we target the Reed Lookout that provides majestic views overlooking the Victoria Valley, which is a truly marvelous sight! We notice 2 couples who, despite the signs that warn about stepping outside the boundary fences, sit right at the edge of a craggy outcrop, legs dangling way above the tree tops. Some people just seem to love courting danger!

 Having had enough of sightseeing for one day we return to Halls Gap, where we do a spot of grocery shopping.

After returning to the caravan park it’s time for me to do some tennis practice. Ian offers his services as my ‘ball machine’. This is a very kind offer but one that is fraught with temptation, as he used to be a very good tennis player once upon a time. Having functioned as my ‘ball machine’ a couple of times already on this trip I know just how challenging it is for him to ‘hold back’. Serving spin balls and slam dunking me every so often proves to be just too much of a temptation. I am grateful, though, as I don’t want to lose all the progress I’d been making on the tennis court prior to leaving on this journey.

After an hour of fun on the court we take a stroll along Lake Fyans, a man-made lake that is located next to the caravan park with its shore no further than 100 meters from our van.  With dozens of tree skeletons reaching out of the water’s depth towards a grey and heavily laden sky, the lake looks almost ethereal. With dusk falling it is rather chilly but very easy to imagine his place in summer. It would be a truly magical spot for families keen to enjoy the pleasures of lake-side holidaying.

We had a great day!

Sonja & Ian's Excellent Travel Adventures - Great Ocean Road & Warrnambool

Since arriving at the Grampians numerous days ago we’ve been without internet access. It always amazes me, when this sort of thing happens, just how dependent I have become on the cyber world. It’s really quite crazy and I sometimes wonder what would happen if the World-Wide-Web were to vanish one day. Well, it hasn’t (yet) and I haven’t updated this blog for over a week, so it’s time to put my fingers to the keyboard.

Leaving Lorne on a cool but lovely Sunday morning we drove along the most amazingly beautiful road that one could surely find anywhere in the world – The Great Ocean Road! Although the glimpses we caught of the rugged coastline as we made our way to Warrnambool were very impressive, the world we encountered the following day when we returned to explore it’s spectacular limestone rock formations, simply left us speechless. As I still cannot find appropriate words to describe the extraordinary scenery that spread before our eyes I’ll just have to let the photos speak for themselves. Sadly as Ian was having another one of his shocking bad back days we were restricted to merely enjoying the spectacular sights from the various ocean lookouts. Even then his inability to walk further than a few meters made most of the viewing platforms impossible for him to reach. I, however, trotted from lookout to lookout, soaking up every moment of this extraordinary experience. Despite the rather cool and overcast weather, I absolutely loved it and had an amazing and truly memorable day.

 

 

The weather, having been unpredictable from the moment we set out on this trip, surprised us with brilliant sunshine and mild temperatures the following morning. As Ian’s back was behaving itself a little better that morning, we decided to use this opportunity to get in a bit of exercise.

Warnambool, like so many Victorian towns, has a number of “rail trails” (disused railway lines that have been converted to cycle paths) of varying length. The one that caught Ian’s eye was the 37 km trail that links Warnambool with the historic townships of Koroit and Port Fairy. Ian frequently takes 60+ km rides back home. But as I haven’t ridden my bike in months (biking not being one of my passions!) he realised what was blatantly obvious to me that a 74 km was out of the question. We figured, however, that if we drove to Koroit we’d only have to peddle half that distance and since most rail trails are fairly flat, I agreed. Although it was rather lovely, sunny day we soon noticed a consistently blowing headwind slowing our progress quite considerably. This wasn’t on the program and I could be heard to puff every 5 kms (or so): “ARE WE THERE YET?” Finally, after what seemed like hours, we arrived in Port Fairy, found some life in the center of town (which otherwise was as dead as a doornail) and had a pleasant lunch.

 

I can’t pretend that I was excited about getting back on my bike after having spent an hour or so of feeding my face at Port Fairy. My legs seemed to have seized up whilst stationary and immediately started protesting. Ian, the experienced rider, assured me that his legs were tired also; that this was a normal byproduct of sitting down for a while after a longish ride and that the pain would subside after a couple of kms. LIAR!!

Whilst we’d been having lunch the temperature had somehow risen to 33 degrees C, the wind had picked up even more and was now blowing harder than ever …. straight into our faces! This was definitely not on the program and I suffered. My knees were creaking, my calves complaining and my thighs were absolutely screaming. I was huffing and puffing like an ancient locomotive and got slower and slower and slower still. It wasn’t too long before I knew without doubt that unless the wind was going to change direction (quickly!) I wasn’t going to make it. Well, to cut a long and painful story short the wind didn’t change direction and I didn’t make it. To my everlasting shame I conceded defeat after covering half the distance (with much moaning and groaning). My darling husband (or should I say my murderous husband, for after all this was HIS idea!) graciously rode his bike back to where we’d parked the car and came back to collect the sore bundle of misery that was me.

It’s actually really rather funny. The day before I was leaping about the Great Ocean Road like a mountain goat whilst my hubby could barely muster a step. This day I was grinding along the bike trail at 0.01 km an hour whilst the very same ‘sorry’ husband was flying along on his bike. Go figure!!

To be continued....