cave hill

Cave hill

We wanted to spend a few days relaxing, and chillin; set up base. We spotted this place on the map called cave hill. It's on the granite and woodlands "adventure" trail. Thought that might be just the spot. Once we arrived we knew we wee right. There was a well provisioned campsite, with fire places and long drops. Plenty of room, and no-one else around. We arrived quite late and after a quick walk around we cooked over the fireplace. Next day we went for a wander up this massive granite rock, and got a feel for how big it actually was. We found an awesome cave that we explored and a smaller outcrop of caves round the corner.

 

 

When we got back we decided to walk around the road a bit more and headed off. We noticed a sign that lead 4.5km on a 4x4 track to another campsite. We thought we'd give that a blast, after following this granite rock for a good 4 Km we came to a 'lil info booth that lead us to the other campsite, this Rock was massive. We explored all the campsites and liked one closest to the rock, but thought that if other people arrived they would have to walk past our camp to get to the rock, so we settled for a more "open" camp, but still had a nice fireplace.

 

We had a few more exploratory missions and could not believe how large this magnificent rock was, the colours that the rock displayed, depending on time of day(pink, red, orange, yellows and deep rust, with lots of lichens and moss too) we were amazed at all the trees and plants that were doing a great job of surviving and the wildlife that was up there like these cute little lizards. Some local "thinker" had actually put up loose pieces of granite, and cemented them in, to direct all the run-off to this large dam, just up from where we were camped as a water source. We had many a fantastic sunset.

Then came the day of rain, total inside activity day, while playing Mahjong (brings up stimulating discussions) we were getting worried about our water supply, as we wanted to stay out here longer, but didn't want to run out of water. There were big signs up around, and on the info boards warning of "contaminated water/water borne diseases/ if you must use dam water boil before drinking" We collected water from the top of our car, the dam and run off, and spent the next day collecting fire wood and boiling it, to refill the tank!!! Mah Jong- its golden!!

Lucky we didn't choose the camp closest to the granite and the path to it became flooded, from a runoff down from the dam, and we would have been stuck in till the water subsided a fair bit.



No longer worried about water we kicked back and "dried" out for a few days.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

When we did decide to move on it was Friday, and we thought we would aim to follow the Holland 4x4 track.

As we were leaving we encountered our first water crossing, and thought we might have some due to all the rain. I was able to walk up the embankment to the other side to get a few pictures. We soon discovered that we were going to have alot of these crossings. The longest was over 20m and at least a metre deep, we had water coming in the car from the gearstick holes in the chassis, Nicks toolbox got all wet. We had a few hair raising moments where the back tires would just slip into deep ruts. we now raised why no-one else was out this way and why we had the camp to our selves.




Tuff stuff Nissan!!!

 

 

We drove straight past the "breakaways" where we had intended to pull up for the night, and when we sound the next spot on this brochure we had, decided to turn around to try and find it.

Glad we did, as it was amazing!! The colours coming from these mountains were simply stunning. and the whole area was full of these gum trees which had these lovely streamers hanging off them. We lit a small fire and heated some soup, and i made the most stellar damper (thanks Tjinkuma from Wiltja) that Nick and I struggled through the soup after we had gobbled down all the damper.







We were keen as to get to "wave rock" so off we headed towards Hyden, approx. 100km away. Once we arrived we noticed that we had to pay $7 to park in the car park. Well no way, off we went on a renegade mission and we had a good look at the rock. Was very impressive but very similar to where we had been staying, and we were overloaded with tourists.



To the salt lake, pond thing, its water is 10X saltier than the sea so its really buoyant. It was a cold day round 20'c but we still wanted to get in. BBrrr...... Nick did a bomb (maybe thinking he'd skim off the ultra bouncy water haha) and got salt in his eye. They went red as and burnt like hell..... I preferred the steady Eddie approach and floated in and around for a good 10-15 mins. The water was crazy, never felt anything like that before. had heaps of fun, but when I dried off my skin felt weird like the salt was cracking.