The Hollow Mt, Stapylton traverse loop

Frank and Sylvia mentioned a hike that they had done years before and things fell into place for an adventure. Ruth and Aiden ended up not coming along at the last minute and that was probably fortunate given that the terrain was a little more rugged than initially thought. Darryl came along for the adventure and geocaching. Frank also pointed out this neat site called EveryTrail which lets you upload your GPS track and then associate pictures so that they can be automatically geolocated along the track.

Hollow Mountain to Stapylton to Flat Rock at EveryTrail

The Dunkeld Cup

We were catching up with Aaron (Aussie who came over to Riding Mountain on exchange) the other day and he mentioned that he and Kat might be up our way for the Dunkeld Cup. He was rather gobsmacked that we hadn't taken in a country race to experience some Aussie culture. Sure we have horse races in Canada, I think, but we have never been to one and I am fairly certain they are not the to do that they are in rural Victoria.


On his recommendation we decided to take in the spectacle and were certainly not disappointed. There is nothing comparable to this type of thing in Canada. 10,000 people descend on a beautiful little town the size of Erickson, all dressed in suits and fancy dresses, park in a paddock and walk in high heels to the edge of a horse racing track. There they can go to a rented tent with their mates and cook up some BBQ and kick back with some cool ones to take in the action, or enter competitions for fashions on the field to determine who is best dressed, or place bets with local or national betting services on races across the nation. When races aren't happening live, races from other parts of Australia are shown on a large television on the field. There is food, fun and a general stage of drunkenness.

As we entered the grounds, two blokes dressed as Superman and Batman were being escorted away by police for stealing beer. Aiden was also impressed by the buck party (stag) who decided to dress in drag for the occasion. Mixed in the chaos were very civilized wealthy looking people having picnic lunches and a glass of bubbly while drinking in the excitement of the races.


There was also a great little spot set up for kids and Aiden headed straight for the tallest climbing thing he could find. Luckily ropes and safety gear were involved to keep grandmother anxiety to a minimum.


All in all, it was an excellent afternoon of entertainment, ice cream and unique culture. We may not become regulars to the country races but it was certainly an experience we savoured, so many thanks to Aaron for the recommendation. Now we will have some idea what all the talk is about when it comes to the weekend races.

Brush-tailed rock-wallabies return to the wild in the Grampians

Exciting milestones in ecological conservation in national parks have been few and far between in the past few decades, so we feel very privileged to have been involved in an amazing event in the Grampians. Ten critically endangered brush-tailed rock-wallabies were released into a remote part of the Grampians today. ABC news has a story and video of the event here.

Sean has been flat out like a lizard drinking the past couple of weeks helping to get ready for the big event and for the extensive monitoring program to track the animals in their new home. They will be tracked around the clock for the first few weeks to see how they settle in.

Aiden and his class were fortunate enough to be involved as well. They were able to get in to see the wallabies before they were released and talk with the project manager, Tony Corrigan and one of the charismatic vets, Shultzy who shared the wonder of the occasion with the future stewards of the park.

With all the challenges and amazing background work that was required to be able to bring the wallabies back into the wilds of the Grampians, Sean feels very proud to be part of the Parks Victoria team that was key to making it happen.

For more information about Brush-tailed rock-wallabies in Victoria here is the recovery team website.

Count Us In!

Phew!! With Aiden's birthday party and Halloween out of the way I can now focus some of my time on blogging. Sorry about the lapse but there were parties to plan.

On Thursday, October 23, at 11:30 am all the kids in Aiden's school along with over 350,000 other children from 1,700 schools across Australia participated in the second annual simultaneous sing-along "Music ... Count Us In" event. It is aimed at highlighting the need to boost music education in schools. From tiny rural schools to big city schools, ‘Music. Count Us In’ gave principals, teachers, parents and students a focal point for discussions about the value of music in schools - and an opportunity to collectively, loudly, celebrate it and make the call for more.

All the students sang the song, called 'Sing', a joyous, upbeat song composed by four Victorian high school students in a songwriting workshop led by John Foreman (MD, Australian Idol).

The Halls Gap kids walked down to the Venus Pool bridge and sang there. There were a number of tourist who stopped to listen and enjoy the singing. The kids did a wonderful job. 

Track/Trail works in the Grampians

While in Canada we distinguish trails from roads from highways, in Australia most roads and highways are sealed bitumen (not much worry about frost heaves) and anything else you can travel along is referred to as a track. This is further broken down into vehicle tracks and walking tracks. The Grampians has a wide array of 4x4 tracks and caters to 4x4 clubs although they are not allowed to travel off of formed tracks. The tracks are much like the old dirt roads we used to have criss-crossing Riding Mountain that were subsequently converted to trails. The Grampians has a lot of them, as many of the tracks double as fire breaks.


Out of curiosity I ran a quick query on all the tracks, roads and highways in the Grampians and they total close to 2000 km which compares to the 500 - 600 km of trails, roads and highways in Riding Mountain which is twice the area of the Grampians. So 4 times the length in half the area in a park much more challenging to put roads and tracks into.

Speaking of which, one of the track recovery crew leaders (thanks Graeme) sent out these photos of a piece of equipment they use on walking tracks to move stone steps and gravel around. It is called a power barrow and as you can see they use it in some pretty challenging terrain.







The Grampians have some extra funding to recover many of the tracks that were impacted by the Mt. Lubra Fire. They have crews to do the impressive work on the walking tracks which involves stone steps, steel railings and grate or boardwalk portions that are being designed to be more immune to fire. Outside of this special funding there is basically one person responsible for walking tracks and three people who look after the mowing/slashing/grading of all the roads and vehicle tracks the park is responsible for. The state of Victoria, VicRoads looks after the paved roads in the park.

All play and no work... counting kangaroos

Well, some people might say that for a 'work' exchange there doesn't seem to be much work going on in these blog pages. My excuse is that I've been too busy at work to provide an update on all the play... I mean hard work that I get to do for Parks Victoria. Actually I have been assigned a fantastic project while I am in the Grampians, monitoring kangaroos and wallabies (macropods: large feet). It is the main project I am meant to accomplish while I am here, but I am also helping out with the natural values management team when and where I can. There are a number of exciting projects on the go here, which I will provide more detail about in future blogs.

I am fortunate to be following in the footsteps of Jeff Weir who on the inaugural exchange with the Grampians not only helped fight a fire that burned half of the park, but established 250 km of macropod monitoring transects in five gorgeous regions of the park. Jeff's forte is experimental design and monitoring technique, while my strengths are in data management, field data collection and spatial analysis, so our collective effort thus far has been a perfect fit for the project.

The monitoring program uses a technique called distance sampling, where you walk along a track or road (transect) and record the distance and angle to every kangaroo or wallaby you see. The idea is that if you get enough sightings in different regions or vegetation classes then you can figure out how far away from the transect you are effectively counting animals and through some interesting statistical analysis you can determine the density of each species in different vegetation, inside and outside the park, and in burned versus un-burned areas. This information feeds into a bigger project that is looking at the impact of grazing animals within the Grampians. With the introduction of rabbits, hares, red deer and foxes thrown in the mix with other marsupials and emus there have been dramatic impacts on some endemic vegetation communities.
Here's some evidence of me actually working. That isn't me up at the top left, just in case you were wondering, it is one of the summer rangers, Emily, who was brave enough to illustrate the proper technique for sighting a compass bearing to the animal. A number of summer rangers and international volunteers have been interested in the project as well so they have been helping out with the monitoring. I'm using the range finder to determine the distance and recording the GPS point and data in a PDA. Fortunately kangaroos and wallabies are only active in the early morning or late evening when the temperature is below 20°C so I generally start work at 5:30 am which gives me time to put a bike at the end point and get to the start point of a transect. Most transects range between 3 - 9 km in length and depending on the number of observations take between 2 - 4 hours to complete. Tracks in the Grampians are rarely flat, so needless to say I'm getting fairly fit. Once all the field work is done, I can take the data back in and have the computer plot the points in MapInfo to see if there has been any errors in collection. Below is an example of a transect with observations along it, with the different coloured dots representing different species.


The light blue dots are eastern grey kangaroos, who as you can see like open areas and are quite common in agricultural lands. The red dots are red-necked wallabies who like the forest edge or open woodlands. Brown are western grey kangaroos who tend to stay in smaller groups and use a variety of habitats and the black dots are black swamp wallabies who you rarely see together at all but are peppered across the forested landscape usually near drainages or wetlands.

Here's a bit of a Grampians field guide to the four species of macropods.



At any rate, I feel very fortunate to be able to do some meaningful work in this beautiful park. The people here are hard working and get the job done, with obvious pride in what they accomplish. Given their very meager human and financial resources, what they do is impressive.
If you think counting kangaroos is a push over easy job, then check out the image below. It makes counting sheep look easy.

Gold, castles and the whipping of the wicked wench

Life in Australia is moving at a rapid pace, and in our efforts to take it all in, we have been neglecting this blog. Our apologies. Today, however we are observing the first day of rain in about a month so we have no excuses. As you can tell by the title we have had an interesting couple of weeks exploring the gold rush history of the area to the east of us, and checking out a few Victorian attractions.

Two weekends ago we also did a bit more exploring around the Grampians, although the hot weather (a few more days in the 40+) had us cowering by the air con for the first bit. A wonderful weather event called the ‘cool change’ occurred which sees the hot west or north wind switch around from the south bringing some South Ocean relief. It’s a bit of tension when it happens because it often brings thunderstorms and in the tinder dry conditions lightning is like a match dropping into a pool of gasoline. This change though was a cool dry change so (knock on wood) no fires developed.

We decided to check out a bit of the appropriately named ‘Wonderland Range’, which is one of the main centerpieces of the Grampians. One of the must do walks is called the Pinnacle which takes you up to the top of the range for some spectacular views. Although it is only a couple of clicks, we decided that we would go partway up and explore, saving the peak for another day. The first part of the trip takes you through an area called the Grand Canyon. Although it is not grand in size, it is picturesque and well worth exploring. To encourage Aiden to participate we can no longer go on a normal walk, we have to go on a pirate adventure, hence the props. Up the metal stairs, and along the ridge we climbed to the cool cavern tucked under a cliff face. All the metal stairs and rails have been redone since the big fire two years ago and it is an impressive track. On the way back down we ran into a pair of young Canadian women who have been working and exploring Australia for close to a year. Aiden poured on the charm for them and seemed quite interested in people with a familiar accent.

Our next weekend we finally headed to Ballarat which has been on Ruth’s hit list for a month or two now. Many locals have recommended visiting Sovereign Hill, a recreated gold rush town with volunteers in roles appropriate to the context of the late 1800's boom that occurred in the area. It was quite well done with underground mine tours, gold panning, recreated tent towns, shops and restaurants with authentic fare, some of which you can actually buy. A highlight was the lolly shop that had candy that was available in the time period. Very tasty. Another interesting part was the pouring of a gold bar worth close to $100000. Ruth and Aiden went on a stagecoach ride and a magician filled the streets of the town with bubbles that had all the kids running around trying to pop them. It is a busy tourist attraction, which normally would have us heading somewhere else, but it is big enough that you can escape to a quieter area and well worth a visit.

After camping we met some friends from Melbourne (Joe, Tina, Joshua & Anthony) at Kryal Castle the next day. We started off by meeting the king, Keith Ryall who decided back in the 60’s that a large blue stone barrier to a local road development would work as material for his life long dream to build a castle and recreate a medieval tourist attraction. Many stones placed later and he’s ended up with an impressive castle complete with moat, drawbridge, towers, maze, stockades, jousting arena, cemetery, wax people torture chamber, and numerous other items on display. His family and staff help add to atmosphere by putting on presentations of juggling, magic shows, sword fights, horsemanship challenges, jousting with shattered lances, and comedic public displays of a hanging and the ever popular whipping of the wicked wench. The whipping was even more hilarious when a member of the audience decided to show how easy it was to use a stock whip with his wife on the post. At the cost of his pride and probably a few choice words from his wife later on, he demonstrated that it isn’t quite as easy as ‘Mr. Whippy’ made it look. Aiden’s favourite bits were the magic show when the lady had parts of her body moved over out of line and the playground with Josh and Anthony. Ruth was a bit smitten by the handsome rogue who did the magic show, and was handily defeated in the sword fight and ended up at the end of the rope at the hanging. Sean was quite taken with the seven chambered box that people were put into with hungry rats at their feet. As the rats got hungrier they would eat their way through into the next chamber working their way up the body. He also thought the horsemanship was impressive.

Well we should get this posted at long last. Thanks to everyone for their comments, questions and ideas. We are working on larger topic blogs relating to the drought; bush fire fighting; the people who have lived in this area for the last 20,000 years; and what Sean’s up to at work;. Hopefully we will have them up sooner than later, and keep the ideas coming. We are missing family, friends and winter, but we are enjoying this adventure more than we expected.