Warburton to Upper Yarra Reservoir

Warburton to Upper Yarra Reservoir = 23km
Cummulative total = 70km

We woke this morning to a wet (but not cold) tent and bikes. All my washing had been rewashed with the rain from last night! There were pools of water everywhere around the tent but luckily everything inside the tent was dry, however I think a few of Dads things inside the tent became a bit damp but I think that is more from the condensation or from where the fly touches the poles and in heavy rain it just seeps through and since his inner tent is nearly all mesh the droplets just drop down on the things inside the tent ... his tent is good for summer minus rain!

Since it was going to be a small ride we started out a little later ... in fact it took dad his customary 3 hours to pack everything up so Neil, Kouta and I just hung around waiting ... waiting ... and waiting!
We started out at around 11am and I had covered Koutas basket with a rubbish bag to protect it from the wetness on the road and had placed another rubbish bag between his sunshade netting in case it poured with rain as we cycled along ... luckily it did not rain at all maybe just a few 'spits' here and there.
The road to Upper Yarra Reservoir was undulating but the climbs were easy, at least it was for Neil and I since we are alot stronger now, but I think Dad struggled a bit. The traffic was alot more than what we expected and at least 20 BMW convertibles passed us over the course of the ride ... we are assuming it was maybe something to do with the Grand Prix team as the cars were all of the same model. Despite the traffic which were very good to us on the winding road it was a pleasant ride up to the Dam and at least it was warm when riding despite the threatening grey skies.
We got to the Reservoir and it is a huge park and the DSE had been camping there for the past week (hence why we couldn't get in over the weekend) as they were doing controlled burning in the area and Upper Yarra Reservoir was their base camp. They were in the process of packing up so there were extra toilets and showers around the normal abolutions block and tents dotted here and there. But they had overtaken the kitchen and wet room so we had pretty limited access to that area for the good part of the day so it was around a 1 and 1/2 km walk to get hot water from the urn!
We did find a nice camp spot (at least we thought it would be!) and it was Dads' choice so we can blame him as there was 2 very noisy families that turned up just after we had set up camp and since we are in a valley the echoing was phenomenal so a normal tone of voice was exceptionally loud!

It was a nice campsite though and probably one of the only flat areas available! the noisy family camped just below us and one of the women spoke like "Prue" out of the Kath and Kim comedy series and like I said the voice definitely carried and the noise from the children was really loud as well but at least they were relatively quiet after 8pm!
In the evening before we had dinner we went for a walk up to the dam. We stopped of along the way to have a look at the outlay pipe, we think they were releasing water to the O'shanessy river, as the noise of crashing water could be heard where we were camping.

What sounded like it was going to be a tremendous site to see water cascading turned out to be a bit disappointing as all it was was like the photo above ... all noise and no action!
We continued up to the damn via a long winding road but Kouta didn't mind as he got to follow his nose!
The view up there is lovely and as the sun was going down the bush and hills looked very quiet and surreal.

Not too sure what Neil is thinking or smirking about here ... I do remember that Dad was 'gabbling' about something ... I have seen that look on Neil before ... he does that alot around my family!!!

A nice photo of the damn and I tried a closer one but lost the atmosphere of it.

It was a longer walk than we thought and so we got back and had to rush to get dinner made before it got too dark and we weren't sure if it was going to be a really cold night up here.

As you can see Dad is still 'gabbling' on about something while dinner was being made!

Lucklily it wasn't as cold as what we thought it was going to be at night and they campground was soooooooo quiet that it was eeeeeery!

On Tuesday it was a rest day and by now the kitchen was available so we didn't have to walk 1 and 1/2kms to get hot water.

We went for a walk this morning and didn't really have any maps of the walks and we couldn't find any boards detailing the walking tracks so we just followed anything that came along.

There was a car track that lead to the picnic area so we took that one and we were very surprised that we hadn't seen any wildlife so far, we saw their droppings and Kouta could definitely smell them but we didn't see any so that was disappointing.

Throughout the walk Kouta had his nose very close to the ground and he was loving it and I think he would have walked the whole day as long as there was a scent!

We found one walking track called the Doctors Creek track and took that - it was flat and followed a creek.

It was a bit like walking in NZ - due to the rain a few days ago the track was damp and there were alot of ferns and moss everywhere!
Once the track started to go away from the creek we decided to turn around and come back as we really didn't know where it went too and we didn't really want to get lost!

On our way back we came across McVeighs Wheel which was used back in the "olden days" (cannot remember the date so I will just call it the "oldend days"!!!) to generate power.

We got back late in the morning and come lunch time the DSE people where still packing up but they did give us a loaf of bread and everyone else was taking the excess bags of ice (we had no use for that!) but we did love the loaf of bread which we demolished over lunch (albeit a little stale but nothing that jam and nutella couldn't cover up!). I was thankful for the bread as we had to carry most of our food from Bayswater and we really had to budget the bread we were carrying so an extra loaf went down well!
For the rest of the afternoon we just lounged around reading. We did manage to watch some King parrots (they have a brigh orange head and chest) that were hanging around a tree that was near us so I got out the camera to take photos and there were at least 7 of them (mainly females) but there was this one male (as it is more colourful) that did stop and pose for us. Unfortunately the sun and strong light was behind him so the photos didn't quite come out as good as what I would have like them to.

Below is a close up of the same bird in a different pose!

Dinner that evening was the same as the night before only with a different sauce - veges and cous cous with some provencial sauce! It was nice though!

And even dad didn't mind the cous cous - I think it was because it is so easy to prepare!

During the day more people began to set up camp in preparation for Easter - there was a group of people set up in a huge circle that really blocked our path to the kitchen so we sometimes had no choice but to walk through their camp!

We know that us here at Upper Yarra Reservoir the campground is booked out this Easter ... not too sure how many people they allow here as the facilities are only 2 showers with 6 toilets (for the women) and so they have to restrict the amount of people camping so although they have the space they don't really have the facilities, in saying that most of the campers there bought up there own chemical toilets. And I would hate to be anywhere in any campground this Easter as it will be crowded and noisy ... this place is best during the week day and out of school holidays!