Sunday 6 January 2013

ELLENBOROUGH FALLS

I love waterfalls and I get even more excited when I can swim in the plunge pool that the falls creates! This happened a lot when we traveled the Northern Territory but here in Victoria I haven't come across a waterfall I can swim at (please let me know if you know of anywhere in Victoria I can do this!) Ellenborough falls is the 2nd longest single drop waterfall in the Southern hemisphere at 200 meters long. When you're at the bottom looking up it is a magnificent sight! It is a full neck crane to look at this beauty! The walk to reach the falls was a steep down hill trek via narrow steps (641 to be exact) and I found this harder than the way up. Mainly because we had to carry a 2 year old and for some reason I just hate walking down stairs. At the end of the stairs you have to either climb over or duck under a steel fence (it's a single horizontal pole) and then scramble over large boulders. If you are not adventurous or a little scared I wouldn't recommend you do this with your little ones but we we're confident in doing this. Then you come to a lovely and cool plunge pool. The rocks are slippery so be careful! It was hard to swim with a young one without proper flotations devices so hubby sat on a submerged rock with the little one as the water is very deep. Back up the walk is not as bad as it sounds, much steeper than the 1000 stair which is close to home. But if my 2.5 year old can walk the whole way up without stopping in about 30 minutes you can too (especially when the recommend 45 minutes for the return trip), so don't let the climb put you off!

This is taken at the start of the walk, so you can imagine how steep the walk is, especially to be just over half a kilometer long. 

The plunge pool to reward hard efforts at the bottom.

The size of this waterfall is astounding! I struggled to take a picture that captured the whole fall.

The sound down there is amazing!

The plunge pool and large boulders that need to be scrambles across

This is the best I could do to capture the whole fall and some of the plunge pool from down the bottom of the falls. 

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