The Wheel Australia

30/06/2019

It's been a long time since posting to this page, but thought this hike along one of Victoria's iconic walks qualifies. The walk stretches 100k between Apollo Bay and the Twelve Apostles in the Otway National Park and Port Campbell National Park in Victoria's South West. The standard walk is supposed to take 8 days (7 nights), however I was able to shorten this by 2 days by combining a couple of stages. This hike was completed solo last week, which being in the middle of winter, all nights but 1 I was the only campsite occupant. Weather was great for the first 5 days, and dismal on the last, which led me to combine the last 2 days into a 29 k surge to the finish line.

26/01/2018

We were going to wait a couple of days after our last post to post this, but what the heck, it's Australia Day. Although I don't agree on the date, what better way to celebrate some of its natural beauty. Oh, and it was so hard to decide on just 10, we've added a couple of bonus extras.

26/01/2018

TOP 10 - Travel Tips

In no particular order, see the ‘comments’ section below for our top 10 tips for anyone planning the trip of a lifetime. If you have any to add, please do !!

23/01/2018

There are so many subjective factors that influence a campground experience, I wouldn't recommend taking our top 10 list as gospel. Even among the 4 of us there are different views on which ones make the cut and where they rank. After all, we stayed at over 140 different campgrounds during our travels. Even though freecamps and cheap camps take our top 3 places, our experience is that these types of campsite can be very hit & miss. They're often in great locations and obviously save you money, but can have less hygienic loos and you never know who will turn up on your doorstep in the middle up of the night. Caravan Parks at the other end of the scale have all the bells & whistles, but you pay for the privilege (particularly if you have kids). Our favourite stops generally were National Parks, Farms or Station stays, and Showgrounds, which provided the best of both worlds. Wikicamps was our bible for shortlisting campgrounds in areas we wanted to stop, and heavily relied on recent comments to make a final selection. At Cam's suggestion, we have now listed our top 10 in reverse order to build the suspense.

21/01/2018

Now that we have completed our lap, we thought we could share a couple of 'Top 10s', starting with Top 10 Experiences. This was a hard list to narrow down to just 10 with a couple of close misses such as Uluru, Kings Canyon and the Devil's Marbles.

12/01/2018

EPISODE 19 - Nothing like a rainy day to be able to put the finishing touches on the final episode of our video blog. And if you like the drone footage I have been capturing along the way, you will love this episode.

In this episode of The Wheel Australia we explore Eastern Victoria and visit places such as Mallacoota, Lakes Entrance, and Phillip Island.

13/12/2017

What better way to pass the time away on this hot summer’s day than at our secret little rock pool. Lots of fun in the sun, until we discovered we weren’t the only ones there. It turns out that a very large octopus (1m +) calls this place home, that we saw for a few moments as it crawled along the wall to a more secluded part of the pool. What fascinating creatures these are. Had heard about it years ago, but today was the first time we actually saw it for ourselves. Must be very timid as we have swum here many times in the past without a second thought. This may not be the case when we return in future and I’m sure will be front of mind 🐙😳

11/12/2017

Back home for just over a week now, and still adjusting to the space, and not needing to grab the torch to hike to the loo in the middle of the night. It’s awesome 😀 Here’s one of those hidden treasures on Phillip Island we promised. Walking distance from our place on Cape Woolamai, these are the Pinnacles. Taken this morning, I had been hoping for better sunrise light, but even in these overcast conditions it looks pretty special. There is a ~2hr walk right around the cape which passes a variety of spectacular coastline, and winds its way up to the highest point on the island (about 109m) and 360 views back down the cape and out over Bass Strait.

06/12/2017

One of the best things about doing the big lap are the friends you make along the way. And thrilled to welcome a family we first met in the far south of WA and introducing them to our little part of this amazing land as part of their continuing adventure.

30/11/2017

Guess where we are ? For all of you it starts with ‘PI’, but for us it starts with ‘H’. A real mix of emotions at the moment, but overwhelmingly content. Although we’re home, we still have another episode of our video blog to produce for East Victoria, and we will update a couple of pics from Phillip Island too, this place we call home, which we reckon has hidden beauty up there with some of the best we have seen on our epic trip. Oh, and we also plan to produce a final video blog covering the full lap, so stay tuned. So no, you haven’t seen the back of us quite yet. But still, thanks so much for your interest in our travels, and the tips many of you have offered along the way, it’s really egged us on. I hope some of the sites we have shared has inspired you to undertake your own travel adventures where we will have a chance to follow you and relive some of this amazing country through your eyes. You won’t regret it.

29/11/2017

The calm before the storm ⛈