The Grampians: Mafeking & The Piccaninny

First up I just want to say that today marks the last day of my 21-day sugar detox.  Can we all have a WOOT!

I look forward to eating cheese. Yep still miss cheese. And I want a coffee, with milk, cause with coconut milk or almond milk, it’s just not the same. I will recap my 21dsd later on in the week.

When I started this Blog every day in Jan, I created a list of table topics.  Let me tell you without creating this list I would have been in utter chaos and very organised, and things just all over the place.

Today’s topic wasn’t one.  Yep, I knew somewhere along the line I would have a day where I would write what I wanted.  Sure some of my blog posts have differed from what I had initially intended (here, here & here).  However, that’s what blogging is all about, some days you just gotta go with the flow.

And today was a go-with-the-flow type of day.

If you asked me this morning what I was going to blog about, I would have told you “no idea”.  Of course, it’s now the end of the day, and I have a tale to tell.

It was a cool summer’s day, so we decided it would be a good day to pack up a picnic and explore some places in the Southern Grampians.

We decided on Mafeking & The Piccaninny.

Our travels took us through Moyston and we got to witness the devastation the recent bushfires created.  It’s going to take a while for it to regenerate and not look so cooked.

Once we arrived at the Mafeking picnic area, we decided to do the walk before lunch.

The place of Victoria’s last gold rush was Mafeking, so it holds a lot of history.
We took the Brownings Loop walk.  It’s a self-guided (mostly single-lane) track, that takes you around the historic features of the mining era. It’s an easy walk that is 2km long. It took us about 30mins with lots of stops along the way to investigate all the shafts.

After our picnic, we all hopped back into the car and took Jimmy Creek Road to take us over to Grampians Road so we could then visit the Piccaninny (which means child).

I have never been to the Piccaninny before.  I’ve been past it many times, but never took the time to do the hike.

The hike to the Piccaninny is 1.2km (2.4km return), and is of an easy-medium grade.  It’s a gradual climb through an open forest with an array of grass trees (aka black boys).  During the spring I’m sure there would be flourished wildflowers. Once at the top you are greeted with views of Mt Abrupt and Dunkeld and to the plains beyond.

Overall we had a great family day out.  So much so that the kids had to have a nap in the car on the way home.