Blogs from Victoria, Australia, Oceania

Here we are, back on some blogging! hope your travelling is bringing you to amazing places! After Cairo came a big week in Congo followed by a lot of wine, golf and friends at home in South Africa. No blogging on those as it has been done before! Funny fact, my lovely wife Tanya has been more often to Melbourne than I have. My first and only visit must be something like 18 years ago! We actually flew in Melbourne together few years ago, but this was to drive the Great Ocean road! This time, I flew in the long way from Durban to Johannesburg, hopping from their on Emirates to Dubai and the long flight to Melbourne! Good for me, got my upgrade on miles all the way through and business class was pretty empty ... read more

Though I’ve been to Sheepyard Flat I can't remember doing anything here, so today is my chance. Davons Flat is only a short walk from where I will be picked up tomorrow, so I have the whole day to rest and explore. Though there are some good day hikes from here I want to give my feet a break so take just a short walk along the river to Frys Hut. The hut is impressive and would have been a comfortable place to live. Fred Fly built it in the 1940s and it was his home until his death in 1971. On the way I pass a large chimney, a legacy of the gold rush years in this valley. The gold rush here was short lived and a financial failure for just about all the companies ... read more

I am now 8km and 4 hours behind my plan, so it is foolish to push on for another 4 days to Hotham. So, even if I have difficulty sending a message out today, I feel I need to walk into the Jamieson and Howqua valleys rather than on to Hotham. With the decision made I don’t rush to start walking, but when I'm up at 7am I find the couple who camped last night have already left. The weather looks poor with cloud base only just above the camp which is at about 1500m. I’m walking by 8:30am and reach the saddle at the bottom of King Billy in about an hour as it is easy walking. Before the saddle I see a water monitoring station so correctly guess that this is a good area ... read more

Apart from the annoying flies which had a liking for my feet, I was generally happy about how things went yesterday. It was good to be out in the country and I learnt a few good lessons. Last night I slept as well as I could have expected, and I seem to have no ill effects from the 1stday. However, I am concerned about water. My water capacity is 2.6l (maybe not enough!) with the 0.6l being a LifeStraw, so although I can drink just about anything safely, I am constrained by the amount I can carry if there are no places to fill up on-route. The other factor was the speed I could walk. Yesterday I was more or less on the pace indicated by the guidebook, but I realise with the weight I'm carrying, ... read more

I have not done much long-distance, multi-day hiking, apart from a couple in the Himalayas and some in South America when I was travelling. Now that they have the time, a few of my recently retired friends have been quicker on the uptake than me and have been doing some great long treks. So just after Christmas, after I walked a section of the 13-day Grampians Peak Trail, I thought I ought to stop thinking about treks, get my act together and actually try to do one. The next question was which one. The only long treks in Australia I knew of were the Overland Trail in Tasmania and the Australian Alps Walking Track (AAWT) from Victoria to the ACT. As I live in Melbourne, I thought the AAWT might be the most convenient and after ... read more