Not a great sleep last night as the Bordertown Caravan Park is adjacent to the Dukes Highway, carrying all of the road traffic between Melbourne and Adelaide and also close to the railway line. We'd choose Keith or perhaps Cockatoo Downs Farmstay if our future travels required a stopover in this area.

It was hard to believe today would see this trip coming to an end . Apart from the flat tyre in the Flinders Ranges it has been incident free and we've seen some great sights to pack away in the memory bank.

In no time we had crossed the border back into Vicoria, losing half an hour! We detoured off the highway at Dimboola for morning tea and then took the Northern Grampians Road with the intention of lunching at Halls Gap. Even without the caravan I can't recall driving this road and when there was a sign at Zumsteins advising that the road "may not be suitable for caravans" we wondered what we might encounter. I'd have done a U-turn if it said "not suitable", but given the small size of our van and the good weather conditions, I decided to proceed on. It was a winding narrow two lane bitumen road which provided great views and so I'm pleased we did. There was still the signs of the fires that had gone through a couple of years ago and through the trees we could see Mackenzie Falls and Lake Wartook. 

Arriving at Halls Gap we were surprised how busy it was, but then realised unlike in South Australia where school holidays are yet to start, they had already started in Victoria . For lunch we had Chicken curry served with pearl barley at the Livefast Lifestyle Cafe, which was an interesting alternative to the usual rice.

Returning to where we'd parked the car and caravan we found several ducks grazing on the grass, but then a very colourful bird joined them. We've seen quite a few bird varieties during our travels, but it's been had to capture the most colourful ones with the camera. This one however seem oblivious to our presence as it grazed and Lucinda finally snapped one!

Unfortunately we could delay our departure for home no longer as we wanted to get home before dark. After a brief stop to visit Dad in Ballarat we continued down the Western Highway and with the city skyline in our sights, it felt like the trip was over. However this last leg of our trip was rather unpleasant as we crawled through bumper to bumper traffic over the Bolte Bridge, through Royal Park, past the cemetery and finally onto the Eastern Freeway - perhaps I've become unaccustomed to city traffic after so much driving in the "outback"!

So after 7:00pm and in darkness we arrived home after traveling 5225km, some 3950km of it towing the caravan. We've had a great time, seen some great sights and continued to whet the appetite for seeing more of this beautiful country.