The World’s Greatest Blog

A couple of little gems we have found on our way round are Chris’s Restaurant on Skenes Creek Road (clearly sign-posted off the Great Ocean Road) and Madigans Tea Room on the way to the Grampians.

Chris’s Restaurant is set on stilts in the Otway hills, over-looking the Atlantic Ocean. There is a beautiful vista and the staff are immaculately trained. The menu is upmarket and based on local fresh ingredients.

Madigans Tea Room incorporates an antiques shop into a tea room and plays old 1930’s music -which I love! Multi-award winning for its business, Madigans is located at 29 Martin Street, Penshurst -between Warrnambool and Dunkeld. They serve a light menu of sandwiches and cakes.

One helpful hint for those heading into the Grampians is to stock up in Stawell (pronounced stall) before heading into the hills as Halls Gap, Dunkeld and surrounding areas have some overpriced stores and some of the more remote petrol stations are tantamount to robbery!

As an aside, we found that the Visitor Information services at Dunkeld and Stawell were woefully inadequate. They had limited knowledge of the local area, fire ban details, closure of parts of the national park (since last January 2006!) or campsites within 5 miles. We advise all visitors to drop in at the Hall’s Gap Visitor Information Centre before camping out in the Grampians. They will tell you which campsites have reopened since last year’s fire, the latest weather reports and fire ban information. You can also access the internet at their cafe -though it is painfully slow.

One hint for outdoors enthusiasts is to climb Mount Difficult and Camp on the summit to complete the walk to Rose Gap next day. The view from the summit is stunning and the route is not so spoon-fed and crowded as many of the lookouts in the National Park. However, it lives up to its namesake and plenty of rests, water and food should be taken. It is a “strenuous walk” as all the signs indicate - they are not wrong!

Australian signs and posts should always be heeded as they are always accurate. We were driving along what we thought was the bumpiest road in the world when we saw an almost laughable sign saying “Rough Surface Ahead”. Sure enough, we went from bone rattling to bone shattering.