Easter Camping 2011, Green Hill Lake, Ararat

We were supposed to be camping at Wilsons Prom for Easter, but the Prom was hit with a major weather event which created devastating floods.  Most of the campground was out of commission.  We did get a booking in the reduced ballot, but with no store for 50km and all the walks closed, we decided to go elsewhere.
It's really hard to get Easter bookings, most places are booked out months in advance.  Gill came up with Green Hill Lake in Ararat as a possible location, and we figured for a whole $5 a night and no bookings required, we'd give it a go.
Green Hill Lake camping area is a massive reserve around the shores of abotu 1/4 of the lake. The lake is used for fishing, swimming and boating.  You could camp whereever you wanted, and there was heaps of space to spread out.  This was the view from the tent, not bad huh!

We could have actually got a better site right on the lake a bit further around, but we arrived late at night, so we were here.   Normal camping pastimes were indulged in; fire, cards and food.

It was even warm enough to swim on the last day, which is pretty impressive for late April, so impressive we didn't actually have togs and Mia had to wear some of Connors shorts.

One day we drove up to Halls Gap to do a hike. Much of the Grampians had devastating floods not long before Wilsons Prom was hit, so the choices were limited as 80% of the park is closed. We went up to Boronia Peak, about 5km in each direction and up about 300m in elevation. 

 On the way we saw Kangaroos and Emus.  It's the first time we have seen Emus.

We had a picnic at the top, it was on a rocky outcrop, so fairly rugged.

That's Halls Gap in the background.  The young lady with us is Jordan's girlfriend, she joined us for a few nights.

On the way down.

A spot of rockclimbing.

A face in the rock!

Two of the days we were there, there were ballooning spiders flying overhead all day, thousands of them. There were webs everywhere, all over cars, tents, trees, between blades of grass, EVERYWHERE.  It was an amazing sight to see!  Richard went out early one morning and took some photos, in some of them you can see the webs.