We belong in the zoo...

Zoos and children go together like apple pie and custard – and for us adults this was a great day too. We spent most of it at Halls Gap Zoo. It was a very hands on experience compared to most visits to the zoo. Read on and find out.

Zac has wanted to do a ‘Meerkat Experience’ for a while now and they are booked up and hard to get into at Melbourne Zoo, so when we heard you can do the experience at Halls Gap, we locked it in as somewhere to go.

We got there on opening time and looked at some of the animals. We noticed a red panda, Gemma’s favourite animal. It was low down in its tree and it was feeding. We’ve only ever seen them as small balls of red fur high up in the trees, so this was quite a treat. We stayed and watched the red panda, snapping lots of cute photos.

Soon it was time for Zac’s meerkat experience and he was able to have 3 of the little critters crawl over him and feed them their breakfast out of his hands. The smile on his face said it all. It was a wonderful experience. As parents, it was wonderful to watch!

A large part of the zoo is through various enclosures, many of them open so you can wander with the animals. You can also feed a number of them from the bag of pellets you get on entry to the zoo. So that’s what we did over the next couple of hours.

The ostriches were a couple of real characters, following us up and down their fence line, pecking at arms if they ventured too close. How do you describe the sensation of being pecked by an ostrich? It’s not easy to do, but imagine if someone used a couple of thick books and clapped them on you… well it was sort of like that.

We found ourselves back at the red pandas at around 12:30 after having a bite to eat ourselves. The same keeper who took Zac into the meerkats was due to give a talk about the red pandas as well as do some training. The two red pandas were both young males, and are recent acquisitions by the zoo. Jet explained Gemma’s love of red pandas to the keeper and she had words with her boss and next thing, Gemma was in the enclosure hand feeding Mohan the red panda! Amazing! The zoo hope to offer a full ‘red panda experience’ in the future. Gemma was a guinea pig trialling how it would work!

Hand feeding the wallabies was another highlight for the kids, especially the one with the joey in its pouch!

There were tiny piglets who enjoyed a pat. Feeling their little noses was really cool, soft but firm, leathery… again hard to describe! Cutest bacon I’ve ever seen.

After the zoo, we decided to take a drive up Mt William, which is the highest mountain in the Grampians. Amazing views in a number of directions. The road stops nearly 2km from the peak and the walk is described as strenuous. We opted not to do it, but enjoyed the views from where we were, and with a few stops on the drive back down got ourselves some good pics.

That night we enjoyed another camp fire, this time we also cooked our sausages and potatoes in the fire. We were joined around the fire by friends we coincidentally bumped into who happened to be staying in of the park cabins.

Staying Dry, Getting Wet

At this point of the holiday we had ourselves a couple of days where it rained on and off. So one morning we ventured into the town of Stawell, around 25 km’s away. This also allowed us to visit the supermarket and stock up on supplies for the second part of our Grampians adventure. The small supermarket in Halls Gap is rather expensive.

In Stawell we had a little look around, admiring some of the nice old buildings. A sign in the bakery caught our attention… so what else do you do on a cold winter’s morning than head in for a coffee and a piece of award winning vanilla slice. I’ve since conducted some research and it turns out that the award is about 10 years old! It was a nice piece of slice though!

Back in Halls Gap, we rugged up, put on the raincoats and went for a short walk to Venus Baths. The sign declared this to be the most visited site in the Grampians, but surely on this wet drizzly day there would be no one else silly enough to venture there? How wrong, there were lots of people out and about!

Venus Baths is a series of smooth rocks at the base of Elephants Hide where water pools and in summer it is a popular place to paddle and cool off. Not exactly a quiet oasis I’m guessing judging by the number of people there today. It is attractive though and we did enjoy exploring it.

On the way back we took a detour to Bullaces Glen – not really knowing what to expect. It was a bit of a climb, and we found ourselves in a green, rocky glen or steep valley. Tree ferns seemed to like it at the base of a rock face. 

Back near the car park in Halls Gap we explored the small Botanic Gardens which had some interesting features including sculptures for the kids to explore.

Jet met another friendly local once we left the Botanic Gardens:

Later in the afternoon we explored some areas along the edges of Lake Bellfield. The dead trees in the misty lake were quite eerie and photogenic. We got soaked when it rained some more.

Quarries and Beehives

Heatherlie Quarry declared the small, white wooden sign in Halls Gap, indicating in the direction of Mt Zero Road. Most people wouldn’t notice this sign, but in seeking out some geocaching adventures we discovered this ‘quarry’.

Mt Zero Road was a gravel and dirt road – quite wet mud in places due to recent rains. About 10 km’s out of Halls Gap we came upon the car park to Heatherlie Quarry.

Way back in the 1800’s at the time of the Victorian gold rush and when the colony was swamped with cash, they went about building grand buildings in Melbourne and regional cities such as Ballarat and Bendigo. Most Melbournians would not be aware that famous landmarks including Parliament House, State Library and the Town Hall were all built of stone excavated / quarried from the Grampians.

A short walk from the parking area and we found ourselves among the remnants of a small village – complete with rusting machinery and derelict stone huts. Information boards filled in the interesting story of this place. Heatherlie Quarry was so busy for a few years in the mid 1800’s that it had its own school and post office.

You could see the sides of the rocky escarpment where the stone had been cut away. A rail line was built to this point and along with bullock teams, huge 4-5 tonne pieces of rock were sent off to Melbourne.

The place is listed by the National Trust as a ‘significant’ piece of Australian history, but they obviously want to keep it to themselves as it is not widely promoted.  So glad we found it, a fascinating story!

We continued along Mt Zero Road to Roses Gap and then went on an easy, flat walk that follows Mud Hut Creek to Beehive Falls. 

These falls were very green – with lots of greenery (foliage variety) clinging to the rocky walls. We timed it well, with the afternoon sun creating a rainbow across the falling water. The water drops around 25 metres from the top.

It was a great spot to sit and enjoy the sights, sounds and smells of nature.

The path continues across the falls and climbs up to Briggs Bluff. Ethan, Gem and I (Daz) decided to keep going a little further… another not so short 700 metres to be exact! This followed a path of such marked by yellow / green arrows, but it was mostly rock hopping. It certainly got the heart pumping and the leg muscles working overtime. The views from where we got to were great. Of course, it was the pursuit of another geocache that inspired us to venture up here. It was located inside a ‘fake rock’.

We returned to Beehive Falls, then back to the car park after another great day exploring lesser known parts of the Grampians.

We did see lots of cliff edges and slippery rocks but didn’t encounter any children at risk.