Today was originally planned out as a day to visit Horsham and try and see quite a few silo art sites. But I’d been uneasy with that idea for a few days – it was a lot of driving just to see some silo art, and it was also following a similar path to what we might take tomorrow for a Gariwerd (Grampians) drive. So last night we did a bit of replanning…
Today we spent time exploring the western side of Gariwerd! (And tomorrow will be a trip up to the eastern side.) We headed for a couple of walks to visit some incredible sandstone shelters that were used for thousands of years by the Jardwadjali people, and that contain their artwork and stories. As I understand it, as we headed into this part of Gariwerd, we moved into the lands of the Jardwadjali people, who lived from the western side of Gariwerd across to almost the Vic/SA border.
The first stop was Billimina Shelter. But before we headed up the hill to the shelter site, we stopped at Jardwajali Falls, which is just off the track on the the way up. It was beautiful small waterfall, small enough to clamber across and get up close with. There were a few nervous moments of the kids potentially taking a wrong step and ending up ankle deep in the water, but it was all fine. The kids had a heap of fun climbing, and then also racing leaves down the waterfall.
After enjoying the falls, we headed up the hill to Billimina Shelter. It was about 600m further on, but quite a climb. The weather today was perfect, but that also meant that once you got walking up a hill, it started (finally) getting a bit warm! Once we reached the top, we were greeted by an incredible sandstone shelter. The art on the shelter included drawings of people, and then heaps of what look liked tally marks. But the interesting thing was that some of the drawings of people were over the top of the tally marks, which could imply that it was several generations between the art. We read that, when the site was discovered, there was animal and plant foods discovered, along with stone tools – and it was amazing to pause and think about the people and families that spent thousands of years coming up to this site.
Just a short trip down the road (all dirt roads around here!) was the Manja Shelter. This was a bit more of a gradual hill to get up to the shelter than it had been for Billimina. It was fun to talk with the kids about the completely different bush surrounding us as well (because we were now well away from a river or creek) – the plants in this area were quite amazing. It was about half an hour to get to the top, and while the shelter itself wasn’t quite as imposing as Billimina, the art in it was just as spectacular. Throughout two different shelters were so many hand prints, and some of them so tiny! And as we looked at these, we talked with the kids about families coming up to put their handprints on the wall, and why they might be doing it. There wasn’t as much info at Manja Shelter as there was at Billimina about the drawings – but on this page, it explains that they “were used to record a visit to a site, and to renew the ties a person had to a particular place.“
After looking at the shelter, the kids walked along a bit further, and just around past the shelter the rocky outcrop really opened up and there was quite an incredible view out west. You could see for a long way. We sat up on the rocks and had a drink and ate some fruit – it was a great view.
By the time we headed back to the car and got on the road, it was about 1pm. We had planned to do these couple of walks and then head home for lunch. But about halfway home was Cavendish, and a lovely little cafe called Bridge Cafe. We dropped in there and decided to have some lunch. It was your fairly normal take away shop / simple cafe food – but the servings were huge. Schnitzel burgers for Debbie and I (that were so huge we barely finished them), and beautiful home made sausage rolls for the boys, and nuggets for Eliza. And so cheap. One of those really wonderful country eating experiences!
The kids enjoyed playing in the backyard for a while after we got home, but as the sun started to set, we walked down the road to the Dunkeld Arboretum. A few people locally had mentioned how beautiful it was to walk around, and it really was. It’s a fairly huge piece of land down at the back of Dunkeld that’s looked after by volunteers, with a huge variety of trees from all over the world. In the centre is a dam / reservoir that is fed from one of the nearby creeks, and the track essentially loops that. It made for a really nice relaxing end to the day.
