Bush Wacked

We've visited quite a few National Parks in the past few months. Each and every one of them impressive in their own way. So when it came to tossing up whether to take a 100km detour from our coastal trip down the Great Ocean Road to see Victoria's Grampian National Park, we thought nothing of it. It was easily the best decision we've made since deciding to buy our own 2 ply toilet paper because caravan parks are more interested in saving money than customer comfort...

Anyway, after a bit over an hour in the van, we saw the giant peaks of the Grampians jutting up out of the earth. Amazing. It's hard to believe that almost one million visitors come to the Grampians every year (most coming from Victoria - I guess it's only a couple of hours out of Melbourne and a good alternative if you've already travelled the Great Ocean Road). And with a massive bushfire wiping out most of the 170,000 hectares in 2006, seeing this rugged and rocky landscape rejuvenate is pretty magical.

Like most NP's, there's plenty of bushwalks to keep even the most urban dwellers among us inspired but for true inspiration, head to the Brambuk Aboriginal Cultural Centre.

Information centres are always worth a bit of a visit to make sure you cover what's cool in the area that you're visiting but the Brambuk Centre is really something else. Ownership of Brambuk is shared between five Aboriginal communities, all with deep historic links to the Gariwerd-Grampians ranges and the surrounding plains. Inside this architecturally beautiful building, you can paint your own boomerang, watch a memorable multimedia presentation in the purpose built Dreaming Theatre or most importantly, learn about the rich Aboriginal culture that's imbedded into the Grampian National Park.

After spending over an hour at the centre, I came away feeling educated about the significance of the indigenous people to the land we were visiting, inspired by the way they lived and managed their land all those years ago, but also pretty fired up and impassioned at how this land, and so many other important sites had been taken away from its original owners. It moved me to tears actually (just ask Luke - he thought I was losing my mind!) and made me look at the area in a completely new way. But as this beautiful center explains, since their dispossession, Aboriginal people have moved through two phases - resistance and persistence - and have now entered a third phase, renewal. And this is what the centre represents. It really is a place everyone should visit if they're planning a trip to the Grampians.

Yours in the great outdoors,

Odette