The Roaming 5: Day 27 - Inverleigh to Enfield National Park and Ballarat

Thursday 27 February

Today we headed off for Enfield State Forest where there looked to be a reasonable free camp. Some reviews suggested it was a bit hard to find but others said it was a lovely spot.

So we made our way from Inverleigh down to Winchelsea again first up to start with to refill the van's water tanks. Stopped here for some morning tea in a nice looking bakery, although the young girl serving us seemed very grumpy and so did some of the customers. Maybe we got unlucky, or maybe it's just the town? It looked a lovely spot apart from that, but Greg tried to blend in with the locals anyway... :)

We're happy to be, in Winchelsea

From Winchelsea we headed up to Enfield State Forest. The roads were quite bumpy and windy but a pleasant enough trip. Some of the countryside reminded us very much of England with a few stone walls here and there and the rolling hills.We made our way through some back streets which would take us onto a dirt road in the national park from here we could see on Wiki camps where we were aiming for, but couldn't find any way in. It seemed the pin was dropped right in the middle of some dense forest. We made our way most of the way through the forest, and just before getting to the road on the other side we found a lovely spot with a bit of a clearing and seemed nice and quiet amongst the ferns and trees.

We made good time getting here so we quickly set up and left for the go-kart place in Ballarat.
The boys (particularly Matt) were quite excited and couldn't quite believe they were old enough now to be driving around on their own! I assured them it was the case and that it would be lots of fun.

We made our way inside and set up our race names and then got fitted with helmets.
Greg had gone on the horse ride for Bek's birthday back in Perth so said that it was my turn to do go-karting with the boys. We got set up in our go-karts then off we went. I was first off the ranks but wanted the boys to at least have a chance of getting ahead and learn how fast they could go before I put my foot down to make a bit of a race for it. Well Matt took up the challenge and even overtook me one time.

After our first 10 laps Greg and Bek decided it looked too much fun not to join in, so paid up to join in the second 10 laps. The boys were getting faster, particularly Matt, and while Greg ended up winning Matt was only 0.1 seconds behind me! Great for a 12 year old!

From here we drove back to Colac, which was a bit of a backtrack. The idea here was to go to the Austral Hotel for dinner, which is where Ashleigh and Dhruv worked (the couple we met back at Inverleigh). They said they would be working tonight and the food was very good so we headed down. On the way down we checked with Ashleigh and unfortunately she wasn't going to be there because she had to attend to a sick horse in Apollo Bay, but we still went and had a lovely dinner and a delicious dessert - thanks Dhruv!