week thirty | grampians national park, victoria

Not far from Horsham is the incredible Grampians National Park. Steph and I packed lunch and set off for some hiking and waterfall action. It was my very first trip to the Grampians and I couldn’t wait to start planning my next trip almost as soon as we had arrived. It is quite something.

Last summer the whole area was devastated by some massive bush fires and the area where we were was obviously still on the road to recovery, going through the extraordinary path that the Aussie bush tackles a lot.  Because of the fires it was a little bare at ground level and there were ‘furry’ trees are far as the eye could see.  Blackened trees with fresh leaves.

Our first stop on our hike was near McKenzie Falls, a stunning water fall.  It was a great day for hiking and the walk down to the base of the waterfall was packed with families and visitors. Steph and I were both thrilled to see so many people because there is always a fear that after a fire people will stop visiting.

McKenzie Falls is possibly one of most beautiful places I have ever had the pleasure of seeing and I’m already so excited to head back for more hikes and some camping as soon as possible.

From the waterfall we made our ways into the town of Halls Gap. Halls Gap is a small town right inside the Grampians. It is adorable, and on a day that was sunny but not too hot it was perfect to grab an ice cream at the famous ice cream shop and sit by the creek in the sunshine.

I adored my weekend, and like most trips for this blog – I cant wait to visit again really really soon!

5/5 WATERFALL HIKES

week twenty nine | horsham, victoria

This past weekend I took a long awaited visit to my friend Steph’s new place in Horsham. As a fully-fledged grown up she is working away at her new amazing job and I was thrilled to be there and be a part of her life for the weekend.

Horsham is a town in Victoria’s West and most people drive straight through it when driving from Melbourne to Adelaide. However it is the largest town in the region, population slightly larger then Ararat’s at almost 15,000.

While visiting Horsham I was determined to learn some fun facts about the town so that I could share them on this lovely blog of mine. So by far the stand out fact was that Coner’s parents got married in the Horsham Botanical Gardens some years ago, it is natural to be impressed with this fact and then perhaps go find a glass of wine or two.

Seriously though, Horsham is charming and filled with all the very normal country town things you’d expect to fin, plus there is nothing better then a weekend catching up with soul sisters. 

TRIP RATING: 5/5 GLASSES OF WINE

week twenty eight | canberra, act

Ah home town lovin’, there is nothing quite like it. This Christmas and New Years I was once again at home with the family, the dog and the sunshine. As someone who has a pretty hard time switching off I found all the rest time slightly overwhelming and placed a few calls to friends in Melbourne declaring life dull when in actually fact I should have just read more and probably taken Ellie for a walk. My last weekend in Canberra was a little out of the ordinary though, and meant playing tour guide for a little while, making sure that after all my unnecessary whining Max actually liked Canberra and enjoyed all of my favorite Canberra places.

Day one saw us hitting the National Portrait Gallery – one of the best in the world. The modern stuff is great, Princess Mary was looking fab as per usual and the older style stuff was brought to life by some very classic devere/pfeifer gags which we found hysterically funny but gained some raised eye brows from the guards. We then turned our attention to the sculpture garden at the National Gallery – the egg out front still as oddly peaceful as I remember and the ones out back are still taking pride of place in the game ‘yes but is it art.’ The sculpture garden though is on the banks of Lake Burley Griffin and the shady grass is just picture perfect for some lazy cloud watching.

Questacon was next on the hit list. However once we made it to the lobby we realized that a Saturday afternoon in the middle of the summer holidays probably wasn’t the best time to visit and we bailed quite quickly, leaving the mass of screaming kiddies behind us.

Apart from some driving around and giving Max a taste of “Matilda – the early years” the only other notable place we visited was the National Arboretum – the best place on earth.

Another successful Canberra visit and now it’s back to Melbourne, back to work and back for another year. WOOHOO!

5/5 REST DAYS 

week twenty seven | newtown and marrickville, sydney, nsw

As a Melbournian liking Sydney seems a little odd, but I do. I really really do. I especially like the parts of Sydney that feel quite a bit like Melbourne and so you can only imagine how thrilled I was to spend some summer days in Sydney doing some very Melbourne things, with Max who is a very okay dude.

Like in Melbourne, staying in Sydney can be drastically different depending of where you are, lucky for me though my dad has a little weekday flat in the cool western suburb of Marrickville. It feels young, lots of share houses and a bunch of cafés (all closed because of the date)  tiny shops and a lot of Vietnamese restaurants which I can really get behind. And his flat is just adorable – high ceilings, crown molding etc. Loved it.

We also visited an amazing deli and picked up some ‘impress the parents’ cheese on our way out and I was just in heaven. Good coffee and cheese? I’m sold.

Quite close to Marrickville is Newtown, a slightly more up market suburb with a hipster reputation and it held all the gems we could have wished for. We had brunch after noon, we tried on the new Gorman hats, we looked in some book shops and whilst hunting for some records in a small record store we got a call from some Melbourne friends and we all caught up for a beer. Enjoying Sydney in the best possible way.

5/5 CHEESES 

week twenty six | tidbinbilla nature reserve, act

Canberra is the kind of place that requires one to be really good at resting, and after about four days you suddenly realize that unless you are going to watch another documentary about the Tudors or turn your mind to uni (ew, no!) then you’re going to have to come up with something cool to do a bit outside of town.

Lucky for me, my wonderful friend Rose suggested we spend a day in the sunshine going on a light hike in Tidbinbilla Nature Reserve, do some bird watching and have some time to catch up. It turned out to be one of the best ideas she’s ever had.

Tidbinbilla is about an hour from my house, on the edge of Namadgi National Park. The country side is stunning. We passed great campgrounds, lovely picnic spots and some pretty picturesque scenery on our way. Once there we made our way into the info centre, paid our $7 entrance fee and got on our way.

First stop was ‘the sanctuary’. Now Tidbinbilla (I now know) is one of the best places in Australia to see native wildlife because of the huge lengths they take to preserve habitats and keep out unwanted alien predators. On our walk we scared a couple of red belly black snakes, saw a few kangaroos, saw a lot of brilliant birds and a few pretty rad lizards. It was so much fun, and made even greater because of who I was with, and the fact that Rose is a biologist and so knows far more about pretty much anything then I do.

Other highlights included the wild platypus we spotted (a first for me!) and also the cutest little koala we saw climb down his tree walk across a log and back up the neighbouring tree – now if you know anything at all about koalas it would be that they sleep almost all day so we got extremely lucky.

After that we stopped by a creek to eat some snacks and talk about boys (Dan and Max are you at all surprised?) and enjoyed the quite and the sunshine.

I really loved our visit and will definitely be going back for longer hikes, and also to bring visitors – because it really is a new favorite Canberra must see.

TRIP RATING: 5/5 FLUFFY KOALA BOTTOMS