We spent our last evening in Broken Hill star gazing. 10 km from the town there is a small observatory, over which there is a sky not polluted by any light, because there is only desert around. Damn, we've had a night! Not a single cloud, a light breeze from the south, which quickly chased away the mosquitoes and chilled us pleasantly. We arrived just before dusk. The observatory was lit only with small lamps pointing the way to the demonstration site. There were sunbeds, headphones with receivers, two telescopes for the guests, and if someone ordered ealier, also a small, romantic snack, wine or hot chocolate. The sky was darkening quickly and the first distant stars were beginning to twinkle above us. After an hour, the Milky Way showed us in all its glory.
What a sight it was. If only I could give you at least a substitute of it!
Our galaxy is wonderful.
After a short introduction and explaining what and how, the leading lady started showing us around this magical trail. She used her laser to indicate constellations or individual stars and told a lot of interesting facts about them. Lots of!
I already know everything about our galaxy, the Milky Way, Sirius, Orion, Andromeda, which star, when ends its life, will make the earth be bright as day for a whole year (do you understand that?! It can happen in our lifetime, at any moment!), and which star will just quietly fade away and cease to exist. And we saw where the next supernova is likely to explode, which is already 200 years late, and how to identify young galaxies and where to look for them.
Finally, I also learned where to look for the Southern Cross - a constellation so important for many cultures and sailors. At the time of Christ, the Southern Cross was seen from Jerusalem. The four stars symbolize the four moral virtues known as cardinal (prudence, justice, bravery and temperance), which only Adam and Eve were supposed to have before committing original sin.
Europeans have rediscovered the Southern Cross at an age of great geographical discoveries. The Portuguese circled Africa marked it on maps and discovered its usefulness for navigation. It is shown on a sky map drawn in 1516, by the Italian navigator and spy Andrea Corsala. He was on his way to India as part of a secret Portuguese expedition. Also Amerigo Vespucci in 1501 marked the stars of the Southern Cross on the maps next to the stars Alfa and Beta Centauri.
The inhabitants of the southern hemisphere associated all sorts of myths and stories with the constellation. To New Zealand Maori it represents the anchor, and the outer stars are the rope. Some Aboriginal tribes saw a stingray there, and the outer stars are two sharks chasing it, some Aboriginal peoples saw within today's Southern Cross a constellation composed not of stars but of dark emu-shaped clouds, while in central Australia this star system was called "Eagle's Foot" ".
It is not easy to find among other stars, and it looks like this:
Look around when you have the opportunity - right now this part of the sky is above you (in Europe), so you can see it. I can give you a hint that it is usually just above the horizon, very low and literally on the other side of the sky in opposition to Orion, where you can see these three very distinctive stars side by side (it's actually Oriono's belt).
Have you heard about the theory that according to the arrangement of these three stars in the Orion belt, the Cheops pyramids are arranged with an accuracy and scale down to a millimeter?
Cosmos!
It was a wonderful evening - I will never forget it!
In the morning we moved on. Last farewell breakfast in a local restaurant and off we go.
Marcin was complaining all day, so he didn't get enough sleep, he didn't like anything, everything annoyed him and he was Grumpy Marcin at all. His mood improved around noon, after forth coffee, I think. We were just crossing the state border between New South Wales and Victoria. This was our first visit to this state and we were very curious about it, because many people told us that Victoria, although much smaller than NSW, is much prettier, more diverse and with a cooler law. For example, here you can buy alcohol at a gas station, which amazed us!
We drove 600 km that day and we had to look for a campground. On the map I spotted one of the famous pink lakes in Murray-Sunset National Park along the way, and right next to it a camping site and the Salt Museum.
Unfortunately, it turned out that the park and museum were closed and the lake was dry. But we took some photos there anyway, because the whole area looked like a different planet. It must be beautiful there, especially at sunset reflected in the pink surface of the lake. Well, next time.
This is my sad face, because there is no lake.
It was necessary to continue looking for pleace for night. So we went back to the main road in search of some interesting campground, but in Victoria there is no problem with that. As for the tourist base, this state beats NSW. Every inn, every rest area or camping is clean, well-prepared, well-equipped, marked and available. And so, a bit at random, we found a lovely camping site in the tiny Timberoo Reserve on the artificial lake Walpeup. All camping for us, no one was there. Only a few kangaroos came to use the watering in the evening.
In the evening, we lit a fire in one of the prepared fireplaces, but a terrible wind blew, and everything around was dried as shavings. I had to yell at Marcin for half an hour to put fire down, because these are no jokes! And we did the right thing, because as soon as we had phone range again, we found out that there was a total fire ban in this area. And at night we were visited by Rangers to check if everything was okay and if we were not having fire. It was so late (or was it in the morning?!) that we were already asleep and only the engine of their car woke me up when they were driving away.
After a quick breakfast, we hit the road again. The plan for today was intense. The first surprise was the grafitti on the huge grain silos. I completely forgot about this attraction and I am very glad that we managed to find at least two murals - Brim Silos (2015) - Guido Van Helton, showing four farmers and Rosebery (2017) - Kaff-eine, which probably shows a father and a daughter with horses. There is a whole trail of painted silos and concrete water tanks in Australia.
Some of the works are really impressive. Local artists can make a living on huge area and they do it great. I recommend you to browse through this gallery - awesome! If only man had time and money.
After this short break, we headed towards The Grampians mountain range, which is about 80 km long and 50 km wide. It is divided into smaller bands: Mount William Range, Serra Range, Wonderland Range and Mount Difficult Range. The highest peak is Mount William (1167 m). Other more important peaks include Mount Victory and Mount Rosea. But that's not what we came here for. Our goal was Gulgurn Manja Shelter, a place where clans of two neighboring language groups, Djab wurrung and Jardwadjali, lived 30,000 years ago. Their descendants live in these areas to this day. Unfortunately, not much is known about this place. Some knowledge of the symbols and drawings in Gariwerd remains with the Aboriginal community, but much information has been lost due to the influence of European settlement. Gariwerd, the richest area of Aboriginal rock art in Victoria, has over 100 sites with Aboriginal rock art. Only five of these sites can be visited. We could probably see the handprints of many generations of young people, aged 8 to 12. It's like "Here I was, Jack." :)
Damn, how hot was there. The heat was unmerciful, but the views of the entire valley compensated for all the inconvenience.
We jumped in the car again and after literally 20 km we found ourselves in completely different circumstances. After breaking through to the other side of the mountain range, the weather changed immediately and the temperature dropped by a good 10 degrees. The forest took a dark green color and thickened significantly, huge, almost tropical ferns appeared, and the air was smelled of damp earth. We are changing the climate zone again. Our destination was the largest waterfall in the state of Victoria - MacKenzie Falls. After a short walk along the path in the middle of a beautiful forest, we heard the roar of water falling from a height of 35 meters. The waterfall was beautiful. See for yourself!
We would love to stay there longer, but it was almost 4pm. It was still necessary to leave this mountain range and look for another camp. To leave this park we had to drive down a narrow and winding one-way road. Sometimes it rained and it was slippery, but also very beautiful. And it was on this road that we had one and only dangerous situation in our entire journey. Imagine our surprise when a car suddenly jumped around the bend in front of us! At the last moment, Marcin braked, because car was not visible at all. And it shouldn't be there. We were on a ONE-WAY road, goddamn it! And then we were going down, between some slopes. If someone got scared and suddenly bounced avoiding a collision with the car, he would bounce straight into the abyss. Behind the wheel of a red car sat an Asian girl. Marcin opened the window and said to her - "Woman, this is one-way!!!! You found your driving license in bag of chips? Or rice?!".
Well, hmm no... He acctually said: "Hey, this is one-way road!" But the lady just shrugged and ... drove on. Up, against the one-way direction. For another 60 km.
And what would you do?! Well?! Crazy.
Fortunately, we were just about at the end of this road. To comfort, at its end it showed us beautiful Bellfield Lake.
It was also a retention reservoir around which there was a quiet zone and we couldn't stay here for the night. However, after another 60 km, we came to a small village, where the inhabitants offered tourists a kind of recreational area for free, which at the same time was a pasture for a huge herd of sheep.
So we spent that night completely alone with 50 sheep, among the greenery and sheep droppings. A huge amount of sheep droppings. And it was terribly, terribly cold. I put on all the warm clothes I had with me. To think that a few hours earlier, sweat was pouring out of us on the Aboriginal Flat Rock. Oh, that's Australia.
And that's it for today. In the next - probably the last - episode we reach the ocean, and there again I will show you the wonders of nature!
And to confirm the above story - the film: