Last Monday we drove up to the Grampians (also known by its aboriginal name – Gariwerd), which is a mountain range here in Victoria. It’s well known for its spectacular rock formations and views. On the first day the weather was quite clear. We went on a walk to ‘The Pinnacle’. It’s a 2-3 hour walk that takes you through forest, a small canyon and then up to one of the highest points in the Grampians. Being a smoker and a programmer who spends most of his day at the keyboard, I have to say that I was totally knackered by the time we got to the top.

It was worth the pain though.

On the second day we drove around a couple of other well known site seeing places and then decided to drive up to another lookout before we headed home. On arrival at the lookout there was very light rain falling but not enough to really bother us. There was also some lightning and thunder which sounded fairly close, but not right over the top of where we were. We all agreed that we needed a toilet stop and as there was a toilet block conveniently positioned nearby we headed over there. Just after going inside the toilet the skys opened up and poured a deluge of heavy rain. It was really loud … and then the hail started. It was almost deafening on the tin roof of the toilet block.

Fortunately the heaviest part of the downpour didn’t last long, so we decided to head back to the car and say goodbye to the Grampians and Halls Gap.

As we began the first leg of the journey back which is about 45kms from Halls Gap to Ararat we noticed quite a lot of bark, small to medium sized branches and other debris from trees scattered along the road. This very quickly progressed to whole trees and very large branches that were, in some cases, blocking one lane of the road. I’d estimate that we saw around 25-30 trees that had blown over completely. We had to stop and wait a few times for the road to be cleared and passed 5 or 6 crews that were working with chain saws to clear the fallen trees. I’ve never seen anything like it. I’ve seen trees blown over of course but never so many along such a short stretch of  road.

When we got back to Ballarat I checked the news and apparently these strong winds had cut across a fairly wide area with one woman being killed by a falling tree and power cut to many rural areas. Halls Gap, where we had been staying, didn;t have its power restored until around 3PM the following day.

Next week we’re off to Uluru (Ayers Rock) for a few days and I don’t expect that we’ll see much rain .