Day 30-31 - Enfield State Forest to Mount Franklin Reserve

Sunday 1 March

Phew! After all the walking around Friday and Saturday we definitely needed today to be a day of rest! We finally had time to do a nice hot breakfast of bacon and eggs on muffins.

We then had our own meeting. We've been reading through Ezra and Nehemiah so looked at Nehemiah 2. Quite a chapter on prayer and reliance on God. Jude played the recorder to help us get the tune for the first hymn (Hymn 1), then Bek played her flute for the following hymns. She has been our 'accompaniest' on our other trips!



Sometime over the last couple of days we realised that Matt had lost his jumper (we had only just bought it on this trip in Warnnambool!) and thought it had probably been left at Sovereign Hill. Thank goodness for taking lots of photos! We'd looked back through what we'd taken and based on what Matt was wearing had narrowed things down to about a 30 minute window in which we knew we'd only visited a couple of spots. We rang Sovereign Hill to see if it had been taken to lost property but nothing had been found at that stage.

The rest of the afternoon we were busy getting up-to-date with the blog. We made a good start on the Sovereign Hill video posted on yesterday's blog post (it probably took about 12 hours in total to prepare that video!) and the kids have been enjoying working on a video they made back in Adelaide editing it and adding in sound effects etc.

The only other feature of today is that it's the first day where the day numbers of our trip don't line up with the days of the month! Writing this blog has been easy so far in the sense of keeping track of things - day 25 is 25th of Feb (since we left on Feb 1). From now on we will need to pay a bit more attention! :)

Monday 2 March

Well today we moved on from Enfield State Forest as we weren't getting quite enough sun to keep the charge up on the batteries. It was a lovely quiet secluded spot in amongst the trees but the lovely trees were blocking the sun.

We planned on going up towards Bendigo which would mean we would need to go through Ballarat again so we decided to head in to Sovereign Hill and ask again and possibly have a look. They let us in to have a look around where we thought it may be but unfortunately no jumper to be found.😢

By this time it was lunch time so we set off to the shops but spotted a NQR store (stands for: Not Quite Right) which we had heard about from a friendly man at the gold digging spot at Sovereign Hill. It's a store with cheapish products that have either slightly passed their best-before date or not sold very well in supermarkets. They also carry promotional items where the promotion has finished - dull and boring things like Limited Edition Tim Tams, Pringles and muesli bars! Yum - happy to have those promotions finished! 😄

Then we found the real food shops to get some extra supplies for lunch and headed for Eureka Stockade gardens. I think we mentioned having been there while we were at Ballarat, it's the location of the Eureka Stockade (if the name doesn't give that away... hmmm...!). These days it's a really beautifully kept park with plenty of space, a little lake and great play ground right next to an public outdoor swimming pool. It had bbq's which is just what I needed to be able to cook our toasties. Greg did some business work while I made lunch and the kids raced off and played on the amazing playground.

We enjoyed the scenery there for a while and then set off for Daylesford where we needed to fill up on water and get rid of some waste. Thankfully most towns have facilities to do this otherwise we would be a bit stuck. Then we had an interesting drive up to Daylesford. The countryside up this way is just beautiful. So green and lush and foresty. Quite often it has reminded us of parts of England. Even the skinny windy roads.

Upon arriving in Daylesford we went to the information centre to work out what the best bits to see and do are while we are here. As Daylesford is quite touristy there aren't any free camps unless you drive a little further out of town, so we made our way out to Mount Franklin Reserve which had very good reports.


Well what a refreshing spot. We are surrounded by pine and gum trees. It's a scenic site of a volcanic crater with sprawling open areas & woods offering picnics & camping sites.

I love the quiet whirr that comes from pine trees. It's so relaxing. 

After setting up camp we enjoyed a cuppa and the boys played a bit of cricket. I started making beds and then remembered that the structure under our bed where there is a storage tunnel had been creaking a bit more than usual. Upon investigation Greg saw that there seemed to be nothing supporting one end! It seemed when they put it together they put two screws up one end but just silicon sealer up the other!

So off he set to work as he does and fixed it up. Now we don't have any more creaky each time we turn over in bed. Yay thanks Greg. We then had dinner and headed for bed. Towards the evening it got quite cold, so much so our hands and toes were getting numb. I even wore my jumper to bed! I guess it gets that way up in the mountains!

-- Mim