ANZAC Day and a trip to the Grampians

It's been a busy few days!

Friday was ANZAC Day, and Jen and I were up at 4:30 in the morning so we could make our way downtown to the Shrine of Remembrance to attend the Dawn Ceremony. This ceremony begins every ANZAC Day, as a way for Australians and New Zealanders to remember the battle of Gallipoli during World War I, where both Australia and New Zealand found their identities as a nation.

We caught a tram towards the downtown about quarter past five, and I was impressed at how full it was already, as we live pretty far from the city centre. As we headed towards downtown more and more people piled on the tram with us, until there was absolutely no room to move whatsoever. Once we passed Flinders Station and were close to the shrine, we could see hundreds - if not thousands - of other people all heading the same way on foot. Remember that this was all well before dawn and the city was pitch black.

When we reached the Shrine, it was really eerie. We piled off the tram with everyone else and walked up the hill towards the Shrine. All around us were hundreds of other people walking with us - and everyone was completely silent. The Shrine is set in the middle of a large parkland and there were no lights on anywhere, so we were all walking up the hill in complete darkness. As we approached, Jen and I could hear a voice over a loudspeaker. Turned out that the organizers of the ceremony had a someone reading a history of ANZAC Day over the speaker system while the crowds assembled.

The dawn ceremony began at 6am and was actually very short, lasting only about half an hour. A single light shone out from the top of the Shrine while we sang Australia Fair (the national anthem) and God Save The Queen. "In Flanders Fields" was read (which brought a tear to my eye, being Canadian and all). A young Australian soldier spoke about what it means to be an ANZAC today. A lone piper played the bagpipes from the observation deck near the top of the Shrine. At the end of the ceremony, the Governor of Victoria entered the Shrine to lay a wreath at the stone in the centre. Then the Shrine was opened to everyone so that anyone who wanted to could lay a poppy there. The line was huge though and we had a long drive to do later in the day, so Jen and I headed home at this point.

I am so glad we went down for the service though.

Once we'd made it back home, we both actually went back to bed for a couple of hours - and I surprised myself by actually sleeping! But we were up again around 10am to get ready for our weekend trip to the Grampians, along with our other Canadian teacher housemates and a few other folks from Leading Out, the company that helped Jen find employment here in OZ.

In total there were eight of us heading to the Grampians for the weekend. We drove out in a convoy of two cars. It took us longer than we'd expected to get there, but that's likely because we stopped at a winery along the way. Not such an exciting stop for us non drinkers, but everyone else looked like they were having a lot of fun. :-) (We didn't really mind - it was nice to get out and stretch our legs!).

The Grampians are a chain of big hills/small mountains found in inland western Victoria. The hills are high enough that the clouds were brushing their tops as we approached. The hills themselves are forested, but the land all around is mostly farmland now. As we passed the fields, we saw HUGE mobs of kangaroos - we're talking hundreds of kangaroos in each mob! Some of the girls we were traveling with had never seen 'roos before, so of course we had to pull over and snap some photos. It was almost dark by the time we made it to the Emu Holiday Park, where we would be staying for the weekend.

Since there were so many of us on this trip, we decided to rent some cabins instead of staying in a hostel. What a great choice that turned out to be! The cabins slept six people each, so we were able to spread out and enjoy some space. Each of the cabins had a wood stove inside and a fire pit outside, as well as a small BBQ on the porch. We wasted no time moving ourselves in and claiming beds. Vicky and Alyesha were in charge of dinner on Friday night, so Jen and I amused ourselves by making a fire in the fire place, and all of us just kinda sat around, nibbling on Alyesha's tasty beetroot dip and crackers, and enjoying various drinks. There was also lots of wildlife at the holiday park - we had kangaroos come right up to the cabin, and also a possum who ate the grapes and pear slices we put out. Cool! Apparently the local kookaburras will eat out of your hand too, but we had no luck there.

You could sure tell we were all teachers though - even though it was a holiday weekend, we were all in bed well before midnight! The cold likely had something to do with it. I think on the Friday night it went down to below 10C. BRRRR! We pretty much all hung out together in the one cabin, although four of us (including me) were actually sleeping in the other cabin. So of course, our cabin's fire didn't get lit until we went back to go to bed! I don't think the fire we did light actually warmed us up at all. Let me tell you, was I glad that there was an electric blanket on my bed!

Saturday morning dawned cloudy and grey, with the promise of rain to come. We gathered for breakfast around 8 and were out the door and on our way by 9. Our goal for the morning was to hike to the top of The Pinnacle, one of the big peaks in the Grampians range. What a hike! Definitely one of the more difficult hikes I've done this year, as it was basically 2.5kms straight up the side of the mountain. I must be getting into better shape. I was the slowest hiker in our group (not a surprise there) but I made it to the top and wasn't nearly as tired as some of the girls who'd power-walked their way up. On our way we passed through the Grand Canyon (cool narrow crevasse) and at one point had to clamber up a steep, narrow gorge where I swear it looked like we weren't going to fit! The views at the top were spectacular though.

We got off the Pinnacles hike just in time for the rain to begin in earnest, so we drove just down the rode to the small village of Halls Gap, which is the touristy center of the Grampians. With the rain bucketing down, we browsed through the shops and enjoyed hot drinks at one of the restaurants. (I think the waitresses at the restaurant were a little annoyed that we didn't order more than drinks, but ah well! We'd already eaten our lunches on the trail.) We also checked out Brambuk, the local Aboriginal cultural centre. Jen and I watched a 10 minute presentation in the Dreamtime Theatre about the creation story of Gariwerd, or the Grampians. It was really well done and we walked away with a copy of the story on paper so we can tell it to our students.

The rain let up as we drove back through the hills for two shorter hikes. Our first stop was the Balconies lookout, where we enjoyed a spectacular panorama of the hills and of course the jutting cliff faces that are called balconies. Jen and I enjoyed yelling at a couple of stupid, stupid tourists who had completely ignored the "do not enter" signs and were posing right on top of the jutting rocks - completely unaware of their instability and the thousand or so foot drop to the forest below. GADS! We unashamedly turned our "teacher voices" on and made them come back to the path. It was funny - as we were getting the tourists to come back, another guy passed us and said, "You know, it's their own lives they're risking out there, you don't need to interfere," to which we responded, "Yeah, but we're the first aiders who would have to go and get them if they fell off." The response - "Oh." Hee hee!

(Can't turn off the teacher now matter how we try!)

The last hike of the day was down a cliff face to get to the bottom of the MacKenzie Falls. It was about a 200m descent, I think - and not so bad going down but a lot harder coming up! We were hoping that since it had rained so nicely earlier in the afternoon, the falls would be roaring, but no such luck. Don't get me wrong, they were very pretty, but not as spectacular as some of the other waterfalls I've seen this year. We paused for the mandatory group shot and then huffed and puffed our way back to the top of the cliff and the cars.

Since Jen and I were in charge of most of the planning for this weekend trip, we were also in charge of dinner - so when we got back to our cabins, I took the meat and headed to our cabin to BBQ it, and Jen roasted the veggies and potatoes at the first cabin. We all feasted on sausages, lamb chops, roast veggies and baked potatoes, and of course the required tim tams and other yummy Aussie goodies. Vicky and Alyesha had brought the game "Canada-opoly" with them, so we spent the rest of the evening playing. One by one, folks folded and sold their properties and headed off to bed, so that at the end of the game there were only four of us playing and somehow I managed to win the game! Not sure I've ever won at Monopoly before. Ha ha!

Sunday morning, after packing up and checking out of the cabins, we headed off to find some of the Aboriginal rock art sites in the Grampians park. The two sites we were searching for ended up being way down a long, challenging dirt road, and so for the first time I was glad that the rental car we had for the weekend had all-wheel drive! We found one of the art sites, but somehow missed a turn as we were searching for the second one and ended up about 25kms away from where we needed to be. So instead of retracing our steps (that was 25kms down a crazy dirt road that we shouldn't have been on in the first place with a rental car!), we turned for home.

We made one random, random stop on the way back to Melbourne - at a castle! When we were passing through Ballarat on the way out on Friday, we'd noticed a castle sitting up on a hillside just outside that town. So we made a point of stopping to check it out on the way back. Turns out that yes, it's a whole medieval-style castle, set up in much the same way as the Renaissance Fair used to be, with halls and dungeons and towers to explore, jousting and magic shows, and much more. We certainly didn't have time to explore the place properly (we were already running late), so we took a pass and headed for home. Hopefully Jen and some of the other folks who were on the trip will get a chance to go back out there in the next few months though - it looked really cool!

So suffice it to say that we were all rather tired when we got home last night. I took some of my housemates grocery shopping in the car, since it's not often that we have wheels to take advantage of in the city. Then I curled up on the couch to watch the finale of "So You Think You Can Dance" (sadly, I somehow got addicted to that show, ha ha!) and went off to bed.

I can't believe I'm now officially down to a week left in OZ. I have so much to get done! Yikes!