Today we headed off back towards Halls Gap – which is a great little village with a spectacular backdrop of the diverse and majestic Grampians rocks. Up the hill and out to the start of The Balconies walk. The lookout at the carpark is mind-blowing. No wonder there is a fire tower set up here – a pretty good establishment too. It might be built up 20 or even 30 metres higher than the view we could get and the vista takes in the whole of the Grampians in every direction. Some dedicated smoke-watcher was up there – a great job on the crisp, clear days but challenging when the fog, mist, haze and probably even dust made reading the possibility of fire an expert task.
The walk to The Balconies is flat and easy. Sometimes you think the outstanding features or locations in an area will be difficult to get to but on this occasion – easy. The Balconies – or Jaws of Death as they were known – are amazing rock formations. There were a few people down in the actual “Jaws” getting photos of their ‘bravery’ taken from above – but there was no room for error on the edge – and they’d clearly climbed past the sign saying “danger no entry”. Having said that, you could see down there that not that long ago there had been infrastructure – some old poles; maybe a wire fence – and the common thing to do was to climb down and ‘live life on the edge’.
We headed back to camp and had a casual arvo doing a bit of exploring around.
Just out of Halls Gap was a paddock that at first had emus when we drove past on the first day. The next day we couldn’t see the emus but just lots of kangaroos had moved in to graze of the flats. And then today as we drove past….reindeer – not just little Bambi-size deer but big bucks with antlers – it was like a revolving zoo.
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