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Published: October 15th 2007
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Map
The yellow area is Melbourne and the green peninsula at the bottom is where we went to...Wilson's Promontory. The map is very zoomed in so it looks a lot further apart than it really is...only about 230 km. First let me clarify for some of you...cough Ashley cough...I went camping at Wilson's Promontory this weekend...I did not attend Prom with someone named Wilson...HAHA!
Well, Thursday night we (Craig, Jorai, Tom, Theresa and myself) went shopping at Safeway for food for the weekend and then Friday afternoon around 2 we met up, packed up the car and headed off to Wilson's Promontory. It is about 230 kilometers (about 160 miles) away from Melbourne and is also the southernmost point of mainland Australia. It took us right around 3 hours to get there as there was only a little bit of traffic as we were leaving Melbourne. It did not seem like that long of a drive as we plugged in Theresa's mp3 player and just sang along/laughed the whole drive there. We arrived at the campsite around 6ish and set up the tent right next to one of the BBQ areas. As we were setting up the tent a woman came past and said she thought we were not allowed to camp there as the roads in that area were blocked off (it was blocked off about 2 campsites over from where we were), but it was about to
get dark and we figured if we needed to, we'd just move in the morning. So, we got the tent up and then Theresa and I grilled up some delicious dinner of Aussie burgers, snags (sausages), and beef burgers with cheese and coated in honey. It was quite delicious. That night we just broke out the goon, played some cards and hung out in the tent as it was getting down to around 10 degrees and there really wasn't much to do in the dark. On our trip to the toilets to brush our teeth to get ready for bed, a wombat crossed right in front of us and it was pretty sweet. Wombats are not the nicest animals in the world for those of you who don't know and we had been warned about 50 times in the visitors information about these wombats and how they will eat your tent, attack you, etc...so, I tried to stay as far away from them as possible. After brushing our teeth, we went back to the tent and we all laid down. We had a pretty cool tent which actually had two tents in it and then in the middle there was
the "lobby" as we called it which was just an open area in the middle between the 2 smaller tents, but it was actually all connected. It's hard to explain but was actually pretty cool. Jorai brought an air mattress (who does that?!) so he had the one side to himself and the other 4 of us squeezed together to sleep on the other side. At the beginning of the night, Jorai was on our side too (yes, we had 2 tents but for some reason we all tried to squeeze into one), but it was just too crowded and no one could sleep, so he moved over to his side of the tent. We all were pretty much completely curled into our own sleeping bags (including our heads) because it was pouring down rain and only about 10 degrees.
Once we all finally got to sleep, we were woken up around 9 am by this...."knock knock, anybody home? It's the ranger." Well, you guessed it, we had to move our tent. So, he said we could have some breakfast and then we needed to move. So, we did that, went and paid our camping fees at the information
Squeaky Beach
A view from the trail on the way down center and then moved the tent to a new campsite in a part of the park that wasn't closed off...WHOOPS! From there, Theresa and I packed up lunch a lunch for everyone made of a PB & J sandwich, shapes (kind of like cheese nips but they come in different flavors), and a bottle of water. From there, we headed off for a day of hiking around the Prom. We made our way up to Squeaky Beach, the Pillar Outlook, Tidal Overlook and back down the Lilly Pilly Gully Nature Trail. In all, this was about 10 km of walking and 6 hours of hiking around the Prom. It was so amazingly beautiful. At Squeaky Beach (called that because the sand literally squeaks when you walk on it) there were these amazing rock formations which we all walked out on and Tom climbed all over and eventually ened up getting soaked. Then, we left to head up to Pillar Outlook where we sat on a huge rock looking out over the ocean and had our lunch. It was really windy up there so we quickly decided to leave and head back to the other side of the mountain to Tidal
Overlook. Tidal Overlook was an overlook of the Tidal River that runs right through the mountains in Wilson's Prom, the campsites were right along Tidal River. So, when we got there, on the one side was an overlook of the river/mountains where we could see our tent and the other side was a view of the ocean and the beaches we had just been on a few hours earlier...it was so breathtaking. It was really cloudy as it rained off and on all weekend, but it was still beautiful!! We headed from there via the Lilly Pilly Gully Nature Walk back to our campsite. We were all so exhausted that we all ended up falling asleep for about an hour and a half (except for Tom who was left to entertain himself). We woke up and made some grilled cheese sandwiches and played some more cards in the tent as it had started to rain again. Later on, we all went down with Theresa to attempt to make some smores (we were not allowed to make camp fires because of the 3 year drought that Australia is experiencing, so she had to do it over the BBQ) and then we
Pillar Outlook
The boys on top of some rocks at Pillar Outlook where we had lunch. went on a bit of a nature walk during which we saw 2 possums and 2 wombats. Then, again, it was raining so we went back to the tent to sleep.
Sunday morning we woke up, got dressed/changed at the toilets, took down the tent, made egg and cheese sandwiches and packed up the car. We headed down the road a bit to Whiskey Bay/Beach and then from there drove back toward the front of the park to do some more hiking. Once we arrived, we hiked up to Vereker's Lookout and then down to Miller's Landing and back to the car. This was about another 10 km of walking in about 4 hours. Vereker's Lookout ended up being a 3 km hike literally straight up the mountain side and I completely over-did it with my knee, but the way I see it, it was totally worth the views. Also, as I've told my mom, I'm not going to let my knee hold me back from experiencing things over the next few weeks...I can just deal with the pain and deal with it when I get home in a few weeks. It was really cloudy that day so the
Tidal Outlook
View over the tidal river from Tidal Outlook pictures didn't turn out so great, but there were still such amazing views. Right as we got back to the car and were ready to start to make the drive back to Melbourne, the sun came out and it made for a beautiful drive back to Melbourne (we were driving through the countryside/farmlands). On our way out of the park, we ended up seeing 5 wallabies and 2 wombats right along side the road which was pretty awesome. We got back to Melbourne around 7 pm on Sunday and I ate some dinner, watched Australian Idol, took a LONG shower after not showering for almost 3 days and then got to bed very early as I was absolutely wiped.
Now, here we are on Monday afternoon and I'll be doing some homework as soon as I finish this post. This week will be dedicated to getting to work on these 4 papers that I need to write and also studying for my test next week. I think we may be going surfing this weekend which should be pretty cool, but we'll have to wait and see what happens with that....it all depends on the weather. It's actually 28 today
Animal Crossing
In my opinion...WAY COOLER than a deer crossing sign! (feels about 85 because it is literally just pure sun with not a cloud in the sky)....they were not kidding when they said that heat here feels very different than it does at home. It's not a sticky kind of hot, it's just plain hot and the sun really does kind of hurt. I think I'll be investing in some sun screen later this week as it's supposed to stay pretty warm for a while now..WOO HOO!
Well, until next time, I'm out of here.
Enjoy the photos.
Katie
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