Forest Feast Festivities

Erin didn't fancy an elaborate birthday dinner.  She really just wanted a camp oven dinner in the forest - specifically our adaptation of butter chicken, which is actually butter pork (first made during our Kwiambal trip).

There's a pic of a thermal cooked version cheffed when we visited Ironfest in 2012. You can see the added butter and cannellini beans, plus extra vegies.

The weather was amazingly variable throughout the day. There was blue sky, rain, wind and even hail!  We decided to keep preparing and packed a gazebo to set up on-site over one of the existing picnic tables.

Once at the reserve, Erin and Vaughan set up Elmer's awning.  When it was last used, one of the side poles was bent but is still functional (though hopefully will be replaced soon).  You can see Nick lighting our latest acquisition, a new Coleman Northstar Dual Fuel Lantern bought at the most terrific bargain price, due to it being used as a demonstration model. Our original dual fuel lantern was purchased in 2009 for our first camping trip and has served us very well since.  It hasn't been functioning to it's usual high standard though (and neither has our original dual fuel stove, also from 2009) but in chatting to the salesman, he offered the solution - and service kits for both items are to be purchased in the near future when stock becomes available.

What of Erin's camp oven feast?  The fact that there are no photos of the finished dish prove how great it was - and how hungry we were!  (I'd cooked rice in the thermal cooker before leaving and it was pretty good too).  The cake was lovely and the birthday song was sung with great gusto, particularly by Bandit! Erin declared the night wonderful - and it was.  There was even a wombat sighting as we chatted by the fire.  It doesn't get much better than that!

Lake Learmonth

We'd visited Lake Learmonth in March, at the end of a very full day of exploring.

I was surprised at the lake's dryness on that occasion but my research later indicated there had been very little water since 1996!

Given all the recent rain (and flooding) I roused the troops for an after-school visit to see the lake again - with water.  Wow!

I took a series of compare/contrast shots, to show the difference between our two visits.

I turned down a different road to get to the lake-side, so we made a quick stop to admire these bird sculptures.

I particularly liked the balancing ibis. How neat are they?!

Nick set up our small dual fuel stove to boil the kettle for afternoon tea. (The rest of our picnic was set up on a different table and we sat there, just to be safe)!

First-aid ...

At some stage since our move to caravan living, we decided it was easier to take our dual fuel stove with us to boil a kettle/billy, rather than filling our thermoses before departure.

In more recent times our original dual fuel stove hasn't been working as well as it used to.  (It was purchased in very early 2009, so has done good work over the years).

I wasn't prepared to retire the original but thought we could use a small version for our day-trips, while we decided how to re-tune the larger stove.

Although Nick and Erin had tested the new stove while Vaughan and I were in WA, I was keen to see it in action once home again.

We found ourselves at Mount Franklin the day after Vaughan and I returned to Victoria.  We had a picnic lunch followed by a round of hot beverages, before setting off for a walk up the crater.  Tanya rang when we were at the top, to announce that she and Brett had eloped!  We chatted for a while before heading back down to Elmer - and decided another round of drinks was in order.

I'm not quite sure what went wrong but the billy slipped off the stove and spilled boiling water across the table.  Some splashed on Erin but as Vaughan was closest, it wet his leg.  He stripped off his track-pants and Nick applied some cold water but Vaughan then said he was ok and pulled his pants back up.  There was a bit of drama before his pants were removed and more water was applied - due to Vaughan being anti even semi-nakedness anywhere, let alone a public space!

We probably tipped 12-plus litres of very cold water over the knee, with many trips back to the tank to refill our bottles.  The local hospital was 15 mins away so after ringing, we drove there.  They checked Vaughan's leg and said we'd done the right thing.  (They advised water should be tepid not cold but we used what was on-site). A gel infused pad was applied and held in place with a bandage - which did very good work overnight (and the skin healed fully after a few days).

The Pinnacles!

Vaughan and I had some wonderful adventures with Nissa - and visiting The Pinnacles was a definite highlight!

We stayed in Freemantle, so the drive up to The Pinnacles was just under 250 km.

Nissa drove a lot of the way, which meant I could take pics and watch for wildflowers.  I was really impressed by the huge areas of grass trees - and of course, driving along the Indian Ocean.  Stunning!

The Pinnacles were awesome! I'm so glad we saw them - just magic!

Nissa and I spent some time in the Discovery Centre before re-joining Vaughan (who had wandered off to a viewing platform).

It is possible to go bush walking in the area but we chose to drive the one-way track, stopping off at various bays to walk short distances and view the formations more closely (some of which are close to five metres high)!  We would have stayed longer but had packed a sausage sizzle lunch, so needed to head further afield to find a BBQ as we were all very much in need of sustenance!

Lal Lal Falls (with water)!

We visited Lal Lal Falls in March but there was no water.

Given all the recent rain and flooding, I wanted to see the falls in action, so we headed over for a quick visit en route to the airport (where Vaughan and I were taking a WA flight to visit Nissa)!

Wow!  So much water - and so many people there to see it!  The carpark was over-flowing and more cars arrived as we strolled around.  There were lots of visitors enjoying the wonderful sight - and I'm very glad we made a detour to join them!  You can view some drone footage (not ours!) of the falls here, taken about a month prior to our visit.

Nimmons Bridge

I'd seen photos of Nimmons Bridge and really wanted to see it for myself, so scheduled a picnic stop on my pre-birthday itinerary. I'm good, eh?!

Nimmons Bridge is a very impressive hand-built wooden trestle bridge, built in the 1850s for the rail service during the gold rush.

It is one of the largest bridges of it's kind in Victoria and remains in use as part of the Ballarat-Skipton rail trail, a 53 kilometre cycleway.

Fortunately we didn't have to exert ourselves too much to view the bridge - and there was a picnic table very close to it.

We stopped for lunch - and were greeted warmly by a three-legged dog that lived in one of the nearby houses!

After lunch we strolled across the bridge and then walked along the bottom track to admire the structure from below.  Wow!

Devil's Kitchen

I'd read about Devil's Kitchen a while ago and decided to put it on the itinerary for my birthday prelude picnic outing.

The information I read was on a rock-climbing site, so most of the notes were concerned with climbing - whereas we just wanted to see the rocks.

Well, most of us were happy to view the formations from ground level.  As usual, Vaughan was keen to scale higher!

No-one else was climbing when we visited. There were a couple of other small groups wandering about.  Some were walking their dogs and others were collecting rocks.

There are no facilities at the kitchen, so we headed further along to seek a loo and picnic spot.