It was so gratifying to be on a road trip over the Easter weekend. David and I went to the Southern Grampians, a rural area four hours’ west of Melbourne. I’ll share a post about the trip soon, but tonight I just wanted to share some of my favourite photos from this beautiful region.

I purposefully didn’t do too much in-depth research before the trip because I missed the thrill of surprise that is guaranteed in international travel (and living overseas) but can harder to find close to home. I visited the most popular part of The Grampians in 2017, but this region near the southern edge of the national park was new to me, and totally different to busy Halls Gap. You won’t find this unassuming corner of Victoria starring in a tourism campaign, but it was full of gentle surprises and quiet delights that reward visitors in its own special way.

After living in New York City, it was so heart warming to see the green and gold landscapes and red dirt that feel so quintessentially Australian.

My first photo stop of the trip was by the side of the road, on a quiet road cutting through paddocks on the way to Wannon Falls & Nigretta Falls. The canopy of gum trees shading the long, straight road fringed with bright red dirt reminded me of how far I was from the long, straight avenues shadowed by skyscrapers in Midtown Manhattan, and of how happy I was to be home. The waterfalls were barely a trickle, which wasn’t surprising given the state of the parched paddock grass we’d been driving past all weekend, but the waterfall basins were still dramatic and beautiful in their own way. It did make me wish that we’d made it to more reliable (and arguably, impressive) waterfalls while we lived in the US, like Niagara Falls in upstate New York or the waterfalls of the Pacific Northwest.

For now though, I am just very happy to be able to spend a weekend exploring somewhere new without much fuss, and happy to be home.