After a long hiatus we finally got the camper out again and headed off to the Grampians for the first week of the school holidays. We took off just after lunch on Friday afternoon after picking the kids up from school and arrived just after 5pm. Instead of staying at Parkgate Resort as we always did in the Swan, we headed out to Plantation Campground, which is about 8 or 9 kilometres north on the Mt. Zero Road.
The campground at Plantation is great, plenty of grassy areas to park the camper, clean pit toilets which are maintained by Parks and Wildlife staff, fire pits and even a shower set up where you pour your water into a suspended bucket with it's own shower fitting. Cost $15 per night payable at either the Information Centre or Visitor Centre. It's first in best dressed and there are sunny open positions (perfect for Mandrakes Solar Panels) or heavily shaded areas. There is plenty of local firewood by the side of the road which is easily collected.
We didn't leave the campsite all day Saturday as we waited for some friends to arrive from Berwick.
We did a number of the regular tourist walks over the next five days, including some of the Mt. Difficult track from the campground, The Pinnacle, The Balconies, MacKenzie Falls, Heatherlea Quarry and the Fyans Creek Loop. Evidence of the floods that occurred a year or so ago are still evident throughout the park and The Zumsteins are still closed. There were heaps of wildflowers in bloom all over the tracks.
View on Mt.Difficult Track
Heatherlea Quarry
Kids keeping cool on The Pinnacle walk
View over Lake Wartook
A lot of time was spent relaxing at camp with the kids, kicking the footy, playing cricket and sitting around the fire. Our friends left on Wednesday morning and we made the decision to leave late Thursday afternoon to avoid the pending rain and thunderstorms. (Good decision) Overall the weather was very good, with only a little bit of patchy drizzle on one of the days.
My new 120 watt solar kit from Mandrake was superb, I left camp after 6 full days with the same amount of power I arrived with. That was using the 60 Litre Engel, Led Lights, 12 volt pump, 12 volt shower and charging phones, iPods, the iPad and I used my soldering iron, utilizing my newly installed 300 watt Pure Sine Invertor.
The 12 volt shower crapped itself on the first night and after a bit of research on this site I headed into Stawell and purchased a bilge pump, which I wired up - perfect. Many thanks to jeeps for his detailed thread on the conversion.
A few pics of some wildflowers to leave you with.
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