One of the things I like to do for a holiday is a few nights camping here and there. Back in the 90s when I was studying botany as an undergraduate, we got taken up to the mallee for a week and that is where I first began my love of the arid, dry, north bit of the state.
It takes a lot of work to be able to survive in areas with such low rainfall, soils leached of nutrients, and such baking sun, but the types of flora up there in remnant state or national parks show how to do it.
There is a grace and a beauty and a wonder in these places, also a sense of peace you just don’t get anywhere else.
I like to go to obscure parks that do not provide any facilities other than pit toilets; those are the places that are usually devoid of any other humans. Last year I went to Buangor Park, which had very few people there and was utterly magnificent, this year was Terrick Terrick national park.
See how utterly awesomely pretty it is? We went the week before xmas, there was no one around. We delayed going for a day because the weather was foul and 43C on the day we were planning to be there the longest – urgh!
This was about 3 hours drive straight north, through Bendigo on the way. The cool change started coming over as we got closer and closer, and in fact we got the tent up with only ten minutes to spare before the (light) rain came. Then it cleared a bit and check out the glorious sunset we got!
We intended to stay a full night in this campsite but the air mattress would not stay up, so we decided to pack up and go to a town where we could get another one, and went onto another park from there.
There was a large granite outcrop we climbed to watch the sunset. Full of wallabies too, which is always pretty awesome, though they all bounced off before I could get good photos of them.
I love the twisty turny knarnedness of the trees you get in places like this.
and just LOOK at that sunset.
Beautiful colours in the dusk. Or as Jane Eyre would call it, ‘the gloaming’.
I take a lot of photos as references to paint later.
Expect a series of terrick terrick paintings. Ugly name, great park.
How pretty are these pictures, honestly!
I am so glad I got a good camera.
The next day after packing up we went for a walk in a bit of the park not accessible from the camp ground. It was nice there too. There were bull ants everywhere, so I had to look down every time I stopped to take a photo.
Bizzare waves and ripples on the ground. I am at a loss to explain why it was so undulating.
There was another granite ‘hill’/knoll to climb here too, the shots above show the granite poking up.
So looking forward to this set of paintings. The sky was fantastic, and there is lots of detail in every section. These will be a challenge to get down well, looking forward to it.
So that is Terrick Terrick. The rest of the trip I will load at some point too, other very pretty scenery coming your way!
