My cousins promised me we would see Emus up close and personal at Tower Hill.  Indeed they greeted me in the parking lot, eyeing me right in the car.

When I got out of the car I was amazed to find a bird almost a large as myself:

The amazing creature walked along the path with us.

Thousands of years ago there were numerous volcanoes that exploded leaving layers and layers of ashes that are revealed in the cliffs at Tower Hill.

After that we turned inland and drove to the Grampian mountains, the road was flat but I could see them in the distance.

We saw a sign for Mount Sturgeon and we had to stop.  We joked that maybe there was a worm hole leading Sturgeon Bay (my home) on the other side.

As we rounded the corner I looked for the wormhole,  but there was only more fascinating scenery.  Finally we arrived at Hall’s Gap and found our cabin for the night.  We were greeted at the cabin door my a yellow crested cockatoo.

After dropping off our luggage we hurried out again hoping to get to see some waterfalls before dark when the kangaroos would start hopping out onto the road making driving dangerous.  We managed to catch a quick glimpse of Ribbon Falls and we were able to slow down and watch the kangaroos hop across the driveway on our return to the cabin.

We returned safely to our cabin as night descended on this lovely little mountain town:

If you look closely at the night sky you will see the neck and head of an emu in the milky way galaxy, for the aborigines called this the emu season.

I woke up early hoping the see the kangaroos again, or perhaps the cockatoo, but I didn’t see anything I just heard the Kookaburros laughing in the trees.  My friend says their saying its time to go to work in the bush.

We got up and started our adventure in the mountains.  We went to an Aboriginal museum and then to Wonderland Range.  This is a majestic sandstone ridge over 430 million years old.  Years of weathering has created a fantastic area to explore with stones arranged in the rocks so even an oldster like me could navigate them.

 

 

We drove to a view and then onwards to Mackenzie Falls.

I was amazed to see how the gum trees had regrown after the 2014 bush fire.  Instead of growing leaves at the tips of their white branches the trees spouted limbs and leaves out from their fire blackened trunks.

Mackenzie Falls were a long walk or a steep climb, but they were majestic.

The photo only shows part of the falls.  There is a path to the base of the falls but I did not attempt it.  The Grampian mountains are only a couple of hours from Melbourne so we made our way back that night after too short of a visit.  A lovely sunset greeted us as we approached Melbourne.