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Australia - 2005-04-09 - 4 - Mount Eccles National Park - Crater Rim Walk & Park
Mount Eccles National Park was our first stop after departing from the
Great Ocean Road. We had to go to New South Wales to get the car registered
so we decided to do it by going via here & the Grampians. Mount Eccles
had lava flowing up to about 6500 years ago. Since then vegetation & animals
have taken over the park. We did the full crater rim walk which took about
3 hours. The first stop was the lava cave, although we had forgotten our
flashlight ("torch" for everyone not from the US). So we got to the limit
of the cave by using the flash from my camera. Although it made some of
the pictures worthless a few turned out to show the cave decently, so
I included them here. Next we moved on to the actual crater rim. The walk
included lots of points of interest about nature which made it an interesting
walk. The next cool to see item was Lake Surprise. It is the deep green
color because of the stirring of sediments during rain & because of the
algae in the lake. The walk was very up & down which added to the difficulty
a little, but was overall pretty easy. The next point of interest was
the summit, although it didn't provide much of a view. Random spots along
the trail had been better. One thing we did notice from there was the
smoke in the distance & we never did find out what it was from. After
that we finished the last leg of the walk & checked out the last lookout
before getting back on the road headed North.
Pictures
