The End of Our Driving Trip

This is my final post on our rather epic driving trip from Melbourne to Perth and back. We arrived home around lunch time on Saturday after driving a total of 11,252 kilometres (about 7,000 miles). The average fuel consumption in our little BMW X1 was 6.6 litres per hundred kilometres and we used around 730 litres of petrol over the entire driving trip.

The cheapest price that we paid for fuel (Horsham) was $2.09 and the most expensive at Balladonia was $3.04 per litre. The average price was $2.43. Petrol prices increased considerably while we were away.  For example, in Ceduna and at the same pump, the price had risen 16% between our outbound journey and our return trip (four weeks later).

We spent the first part of our last day in Stawell revisiting some of the sights that Jill remembered as a young girl. She was two years old when her father was transferred there as a banker. She attended the Stawell Primary School for five years.

JIll’s father was the manager of the Stawell Branch of the English, Scottish and Australian (ES&A) Bank for seven years. The family lived in a residence above the bank in the Main Street of town. This photo from the Stawell Historical Society shows the main street in 1875 at the height of Victoria’s gold rush (https://victoriancollections.net.au/items/6052a342c9704ed38a6f67e70)

This is how the main street looks today. The bank was in the white, two story building with four windows

The ES&A Bank had a deep connection to Victoria’s history, but it no longer exists as an independent financial entity. In 1970, it merged with the Australia and New Zealand Bank to form the ANZ Banking Group

At the top of the hill above the town is a lookout with an historical rotunda. We had some good views over the town from there.

We spent most of the day driving to the Grampian Ranges – a long mountain range to the west of Stawell. This drive took us through Roses Gap and along the back of the Mt Difficult Range to Zumsteins and Halls Gap.

We stopped briefly at Troopers Creek Campsite which was the last place that I camped with my old friend Bob Neal a few years ago. It was pretty crowded with kids from a school who were packing up to leave after completing a part of their outdoor program.

As the name suggests, Troopers Creek served as a station for police troopers during the major Victorian gold rushes, Their job was to monitor travelers, maintain order, and collect taxes or escort gold shipments moving toward the major goldfields of Stawell, Ararat, and Ballarat. In those days, the area sat along early transport and coaching routes connecting early Melbourne with Adelaide.

Halls Gap was crowded with tourists and sight-seekers so we didn’t stay there for long – just enough to grab some lunch and head off. The Boroka Lookout was the best place that we visited and it gave us some great views over the ranges and the valley.

From there, we returned to Stawell ansd started to do a little packing to prepare for our journey home on the next morning.

I hope that those of you who followed our journey enjoyed these posts and updates. Thanks for your interest.