Home in Two Places: Tuesday March 7th & Wednesday March 8th, 2017

I have fond memories of the Grampians, which I visited as a child. It is a mountain range about three hours west of Melbourne. Here we used to camp with other families, took day walks through the interesting formations and sang songs heartily around the camp fire at night.

Hall's Gap from near the Pinnacle.

Being so close, I decided to check it out again. I was also interested in visiting the Brambuk Aboriginal Cultural Center to learn more about the 40,000 year old culture that was here before the arrival of Europeans 200 or so years ago.

And talk about funky rocks! I was fascinated to see the curious erosion patterns and it gave me a very busy brain task trying to figure out how the sedimentary layers had formed.

At first, the rocks looked to me like the volcanic flows that I had seen at the Craters of the Moon in Idaho - it looked as if they were ropy flows.

So I was surprised to learn that it is primarily sandstone. The sedimentary layers were pushed up by tectonic forces to form the hard ridges that go on for miles and miles. But the layers were clearly made of different sediments that eroded at different rates. It seemed to me that there must have been variations in the amount of silt and mud, along with the sand.

One could see mud cracks that had formed when muddy rocks had been baking under the sun.

And cross stratificaction shows that wind or water had been laying down micro-layers within the horizontal beds. Pretty heady stuff for this geology major!

You can see the cross stratification at the top of this formation - it's the diagonal bands within the horizontal layer. It shows that wind or water was laying down the sediments in a flow from the side, rather than it all just settling down from the top - being dumped horizontally in still water.

So - back to the fun stuff. One task was to find a feature called the 'Nerve Test' which Dad had enticed us to participate in as kids. Here I am sitting on the end of it in 1963 .........

...........and here I am sitting at the beginning of it in 2017! I don't want to think I lost my nerve - rather that I gained wisdom!

The views were fantastic.

All these photos were taken near The Pinnacle.

Some other visitors found their own 'Nerve Test'!

The highlight of the aborigine cultural tour that I took, was to see a rock painting of Bunjil, who is a creator being in an aboriginal dream-time story from this area. It was through the Brambuk Cultural Center in Hall's Gap - one of the earliest to be developed. They told me it was the first, but I couldn't confirm that online.

The Brambuk Cultural Center in Hall's Gap is a collaboration among five different tribes of this region. The building has a roof shaped like a cockatoo, which is what Brambuk means. There are five circular areas within the building, representing the five tribes.

The visit to the Bunjil painting was nicely facilitated by our young guide Jidah. He introduced us with a traditional 'smoking' using native vegetation and sap that produced a pleasant smelling smoke. Using feathers, he waved the the smoke around us to help us open our hearts and mind to new perceptions. This is traditionally used before any significant meeting, he told us.

Then he played the didgeridoo - very nicely in my opinion - and sang a song telling us of the place were were at. As he did this, we were sitting in a rock shelter which he said would have been kept for the old people.

Finally, as we approached Bunjil's shelter, he called out and let the spirits know we were coming so that they would not be shocked at our arrival and make us sick. Finally, painting ourselves up with ochre, we felt immersed!

This significant painting has survived being covered in smoke from people cooking in the shelter, has been whitewashed over and even some of it covered in red paint!

Researching the date of it only says that it was painted in traditional ochre, and confirms that it is authentic, but scientific dating has not provided reliable information about its age. It has been surrounded by a wire cage to protect it from further indignities.

One hopes that these events really did have some connection to authentic traditional practices, but if they didn't it nevertheless created a very holistic experience of the place.

Following this visit, we had a 'wild tucker' lunch of kangaroo, emu, crocodile, with chutneys made from wild tomatoes and condongs. It was all very tasty.

I visited some lovely waterfalls........