A road trip through the Grampian mountains

By WILLY TROLOVE

The best thing about a road trip is that you never know what you are going to see next.

The Grampians are famous in Australia. Three-and-a-half hours' drive from Melbourne in western Victoria, they are, our hosts say, the country's most beautiful mountains. So we flee the crowds of Sydney and head south in search of beauty.

It's not until you drive somewhere that you realise just how big Australia is. No wonder those hapless explorers, Burke and Wills, became lost. Measuring distance on a large flat lump of land is an unforgiving task.

We don't have to battle starvation and thirst but our trek has its hazards. We have to survive the crazy Australian left-turn rule, kangaroos in our campsite, and a roundabout in Canberra so big that once you get on it you can never get off again.

Our stout little campervan ambles along the Wollongong coastline, climbs the highlands of the Australian Capital Territory and negotiates the rolling shires of rural New South Wales, before freewheeling through Victoria down the Hume Highway, a four-lane motorway where 20-axle juggernauts barrel their way across the Australian hinterland.

Wherever we go the locals rave about the Grampians. If they have never been there themselves, they have a mate who has.

As we drive west through Ballarat, green gives way to an endless yellow cloak of rapeseed.

Our windscreen is a painting by Jackson Pollock. For five days now bugs and moths have hurled themselves like rebel fanatics at our campervan, smothering our windscreen in a layer of coloured smudges.

Through the smudges we glimpse the Grampians in the evening sun, rising out of the plain like the stern of the Titanic, thrust upward just moments before sinking into the Atlantic. We skirt the edge of the mountains and camp in the nearby town of Hamilton. During the night the weather gods thrum their fingers on the campervan roof.

For the first time on our trip, the day dawns without the sun arching its way across an electric-blue sky. Everything is blurred with grey. An hour later, in the heart of the Grampians National Park, we collect some tourist literature at the Halls Gap Information Centre.

The park, renowned for its beautifully rugged mountain ranges, is one of the state's most popular holiday destinations. The distinctive rock formations include a Grand Canyon, heavily eroded outcrops known as the Balconies, gentle slopes on the western side of the mountains and dramatically steep cliffs on the eastern side. We search for the distinctive rock formations, the heavily eroded outcrops and the dramatically steep cliffs, but they are buried in fog.

A striking feature of the park is its rich and colourful spring wildflower display but today it is drowning in the rain.

We climb to Reeds Lookout to view the Balconies. There is a brass plate here that names the magnificent peaks and valleys of one of the most stunning views that you will see in your lifetime. But right now we can see only about 4m in front of our faces.

It doesn't seem fair. We have come all this way and the Grampians have eluded us.

We now have time to kill so we decide to drive to Melbourne via the Great Ocean Highway. We head south, and two hours later arrive at Port Campbell National Park on Victoria's southern coast.

In a country this big there is room for different weather. In the land to the north the great mass of the continent governs the climate. But on Australia's southern extremity the relentless westerly winds that chase the earth around its 40th parallel run the show. Down here, the thick fog that choked the Grampians doesn't stand a chance.

The sky is clear but the wind is too strong for the sun to warm our skin. The ocean charges at the limestone cliffs, 70m high. This charge is repelled with an explosion of froth and noise. But the sea knows it will win in the end. It has already carved monstrous caverns in the battlements and hacked away great stacks of rock.

It is no surprise that more than 50 ships have been wrecked along this shore. A moment of indecision, a wrong tack, a torn sail and your ship would be on the rocks like crystal against marble.

One wreck could have come straight from a Barbara Cartland novel. In June of 1858 the iron-hulled clipper Loch Ard smashed onto these cliffs after a voyage from Britain.

All hands were lost but for Tom, the ship's apprentice, and Eva, travelling to Australia with her family. Both were 18.

Tom struggled ashore, and then, seeing Eva clinging to a broken spar in the merciless surf, battled the sea to carry her to safety.Together they spent the night huddled in a cave. The next day Tom went for help and they were rescued.

Everyone who hears this story longs for a happy ending. But sometimes life is as cruel as the sea. The young couple never saw each other again.

We meander along the clifftops, passing cleverly named rock formations: the Bay of Islands, London Bridge, the Arch, the Blowhole and Muttonbird Island.

Most spectacular are the Twelve Apostles. These huge stacks of rock, 60m high, stand as witness to the unresolved battle between land and ocean.

We make it into Melbourne late that night. We haven't seen much of Australia's most beautiful mountains, but at least we saw - by accident - some of her greatest coastline.

CASENOTES

COSTS: Campervans start from about $NZ130 a day (including insurance and unlimited travel) for a 2-berth model. They are comfortable and have a gas cooker, water supply, kitchenware, pillows and sleepingbags. Allow for a tank of petrol a day at, say, $70. There is usually a fee of $200 if your journey does not end in the city where you started.

CAMPSITES: The beauty of a campervan is that you can park free on a roadside. But formal national park campsites are good value at $20 to $25 a night and often have electric barbeques and showers and lavatories.