(upbeat music) - [Eric] So I just arrived here in Melbourne, Australia.

It was a long flight to get here, 15 hours, but I'm just feeling all the energy, the enjoyment, the bustle of the city, it's super fun because tomorrow I'm heading off for the remote reaches of Southern Australia, for Victoria, Grampians National Park and beyond.

(upbeat music) I feel like I'm about to be torn apart by raptors or something.

That's my kind of hikin'.

- See how we go.

- All right.

All right, ready for me to hop?

- Yeah, you hop.

- All right, we got this.

Oh, I see his pretty little face.

Okay, we're going for this.

(upbeat music) (relaxed music) I am Eric Hanson.

When I see a trail, I see more than a path from point A to point B.

A good trail is the ultimate opportunity to explore, to discover new landscapes, and to challenge myself.

When I don't have a pack on my back, I'm thinking about my next big adventure, because my mission is simple, my mission is to discover the world's most epic trails.

Funding for Epic Trails is provided by Discover the World.

Collette offers small group explorations tours, destinations and local experiences designed especially for small groups.

Explorations by Collette guided travels since 1918.

The Alinker three wheeled walking bike.

Assisting people with an active mindset to regain mobility and access the outdoors.

Keeping users active and engaged in life.

More information at Alinker.com In4Adventure.com Inspiring, educating and encouraging outdoor adventure and by these additional sponsors.

(relaxed music) (upbeat music) - So I just arrived in Melbourne, Australia, and there's no better way to get acquainted and familiarized with a place than to dive into the local food.

I have octopus tentacles, I've got emu here, and I've got some radicchio salad, what a good way to introduce myself to Australia.

It's kind of amazing how the texture of these octopus tentacles even work.

Look at that.

(laughs) Mmm, like eating space aliens, but good.

(upbeat music) This one right here is emu.

That's some good emo, reminds me of my high school days.

That's what it is, right?

(upbeat music) Melbourne lies at the far south of the Australian continent.

It's a lively urban center with wonderful street art and incredible restaurants of all varieties.

It's the cultural epicenter of Victoria and is Australia's second most populous city.

But I must take in the bustling vibe of the city quickly because I'm setting off for Grampians National Park, one of Victoria's premier hiking areas.

So we've just arrived to Halls Gap in the heart of the Grampians.

And the first thing that we see is a whole field of kangaroo, and they're all just chillin', munchin' on the grass.

There's a mama here with a joey in her pouch and she's just scratchin' away havin' a good time.

It's pretty wild, this is pretty cool to see, like this iconic Australian thing just right here in essentially a soccer pitch.

The kangaroo don't seem to mind my presence.

They're too busy eating lunch and enjoying the cool weather.

But a day at the park won't stop a couple of the bigger males from participating in the time-honored tradition of seeing whose boss.

(cartoon punching sounds) (upbeat violin music) Oh, they're boxin' it out.

All the way back.

That's my grass, that's my grass.

(boxing bell dinging) (relaxed music) - It is always a really important part of any adventure is to get to know the guides and to see who you're gonna be havin' these experiences with, so.

Adrian has a ton of life experience.

He'll be tellin' stories and be like, "Oh yeah, I was leading a trip in Nepal," or "I was off in PNG."

So it's just a wonderful thing to be able to go with somebody as quality and talented as Adrian.

- It's that first car park we drove past is The Gar trailhead, so it's the official start point.

But Troopers Creek here, it just saves a little bit of walking through one of those sallow wattle forests.

- Yeah.

- So we basically pop through, in a couple hundred meters we'll join up with the Grandiens Peaks Trail and go up past this, yeah, awesome series of waterfalls, and then the trail continues up to Briggs Bluff, which is an amazing big lookout point up in the clouds.

- Yeah.

- And then around to the Gar Hiking Camp.

- Well, cool.

Well shall we start?

- We should.

- All right, let's do it.

(upbeat music) (peaceful music) - [Eric] This area doesn't look like the Australia that you know and think of with the red dirt outback landscape.

That's one of the things that I love is getting to see all of these new landscapes, that Australia's actually a hugely diverse place.

It's been raining for, like, all of last week, huge flooding, we've got a big storm today, so these waterfalls are probably pumping.

So this is the first one.

- [Adrian] So officially this is waterfall number zero.

- [Eric] Waterfall zero, not even one.

- [Adrian] Yeah, his one's not actually mapped on the map, so it's sort of like the sneaky first one.

- Okay.

- And mainly, so these are all seasonal, only really flow either during spring, late winter when there's consistent rain.

But usually this is just a little trickle on the side.

To see this much water over this fall means that the three big ones are gonna be.

- Real nice.

- Super nice.

- Oh, yeah.

(relaxed music) - [Eric] What's this?

- So is a boot cleaning station.

- [Eric] Okay.

- [Adrian] One of the biodiversity kind of issues we've got is a pathogen called cinnamon fungus or Phytophthora.

- It sounds delicious.

- Yeah, sounds nice.

(Eric laughs) - But it's not obviously not good.

And it gets spread through the soil and through spores like that.

So, yeah, a lot of the main access points of the trail, we got these boot cleaning stations so you can scrub all the dirt off, and a little hand pump here that sprays an antifungal sort of chemical just to make sure that we're not spreading things from one side to the other.

- [Eric] Yeah.

(relaxed music) Doin' my part.

Keep that cinnamon fungus outta this park.

The absolute benefit of all this rain is that these mountains are surging with water.

And there are waterfalls here that would normally be dry, and they are pumping.

So this is way more flow than normal?

- [Adrian] Yeah.

So nine months of the year, this is a sand pit.

- [Eric] So is this waterfall one?

- [Adrian] This is official number one.

- [Eric] Officially number one, wow.

(relaxed music) So as we're hiking here, you can see all the shelving that's going on in these landscape, and the waterfalls just keep poppin' up over all these sandstone shelves, and it's so beautiful, especially on a day like this when we've got this nice low cloud bank keeping everything feeling moody and cool, and yeah, it's just wild lookin' out here.

I'm lovin' it.

(relaxed music) The fire wiped it all out for a while, so this is relatively new?

- Exactly, so yeah, a lot of this stuff is, it's 2014 was the last big fire, so anywhere up to six to eight years old.

- That's actually a pretty remarkable comeback.

- [Adrian] And it does, it's part of the reason why, you know, the classic Australian vegetation, there's a lot of of understory and a lot of thick undergrowth.

So it makes it, depending on where you are in the world, or in the country, makes it quite difficult to be walking off paths and things like that.

There's a lot of vegetation to get through.

- Yeah.

- [Adrian] Particularly with some of the one, you know, this sort of stuff that's.

- It's very sharp.

- It's very sharp, yeah.

- Yeah, everything's on the defensive here.

- Yes.

And it's the sort of stuff, if you do need to, like if you're on a search team or something looking for people, you tend to take off your waterproof clothes and just sacrifice your skin.

Otherwise you'd just be replacing your jacket every.

- Oh no.

- [Adrian] Every time you go anywhere.

- Geez, brutal.

There's a big waterfall up there.

- [Adrian] There is, that's our last one.

- Should we go find it?

- We should.

- All right.

(relaxed music) (relaxed music) - [Eric] One of the things that truly stuck out to me is the uniqueness of the rock.

There is something really odd and curious and beautiful about the rock here, and most of it is because of the wind erosion.

Some of these rock formations feel like odd creatures, and it kind of gets your imagination going, and I've really loved that.

- [Adrian] This is another bigger example of that wind erosion in the sandstone we were talking about with the sand obviously forming in different density levels, in different layers.

- Yeah.

- It's super obvious through here, you can see the, obviously, the redder, harder layers compared to the white sand that just, as that wind circles through, it just sort of funnels in and brushes off the side, deposits on the ground here, and eventually just sweeps out and creates this big cavern.

- I think wind doesn't get enough credit as an erosionary force.

- It's pretty cool.

- Yeah.

(upbeat music) Is this the top?

- Well it's at the end of the official trail.

- No.

- You are here at the end of the walk, but we're not at the top.

- Yeah, I see more rock above us.

- Yeah, the defining point of being at the top is you run out of uphill.

(Eric laughs) - And there is some more uphill.

- So we should go all the way to the top.

- Yeah, but not this way.

- No?

- We go down to go up.

- What?

That makes no sense.

So we continue on, and we actually down climb a little bit, and then go around, kind of, the backside of the summit.

And it requires some climbing, it requires a little bit of four points of contact, actually climbing up this little chute in the rock, And that was definitely my favorite part, 'cause anytime you can get kind of scrambling, touch the rock, and get to a place where it feels like it's just a little bit more challenging, and at the top, it's just beautiful views of the Grampians and beyond.

(upbeat music) This is it.

- The top.

- Let's see, which one?

'cause I'm not coming up to the summit and not bein' at the top.

Come on.

- Seems we're here.

- Nice work.

This is such a fascinating landscape.

It's unlike anything I've ever seen.

It is wild to see.

Okay, I'm drinkin' this in, this is beautiful, but we gotta go.

(peaceful music) So we had a nice little break this afternoon with some rain, and we have made it to camp, which is not a typical traditional camp.

I'm not setting up a tent tonight, have a big beautiful hut to stay in, we're gonna be cookin' some food.

We've got a communal space, sharing the trail with some other hikers here.

So, just as this little passing cell comes through, I think we're gonna have a spectacular sunset and a lovely evening here in the mountains.

(upbeat music) So we're getting ready to hit the trail today and it's been a little bit of a disappointment with the weather, because the rain and the clouds mean no sunrise, no sunset.

But on the trail today, we are going to be hitting one of the big mountains, so we're gonna try to make it up.

Hopefully there's somethin' to see, but not looking too promising, but it doesn't matter 'cause we're gonna have a good time, and anytime you can get on top of one of these high points, it's worth it.

All right, hittin' the trail.

(upbeat music) Yeah, it's interesting how the rock, all this moss and lichen comes out and it's kind of slippery up here.

- Yeah, the different colors are.

- Yeah, it's beautiful.

- It must give you different amounts of traction.

- Yeah.

Whew, oh, here we are, almost.

- Almost.

(upbeat music) - Whoo, nice.

Oh, the view up here, it's amazing.

So this is Gar?

- [Adrian] This is Gar, the pointed mountain.

- Yeah, so that's what that means?

- It does, yeah.

So this is the main high point for this northern section of the trail.

- Yeah.

- There's another day's walk, or day-and-a-half's walk down into Halls Gap.

- Yeah.

- And then there's, yeah, a few more big exciting peaks along the way.

- Oh, this is awesome.

Well, good work.

- Yeah.

- [Eric] Nicely done, to the summit.

- [Adrian] To the top, and now to get back down.

- [Eric] That's the trick.

(laughs) All right.

(upbeat music) - [Eric] So we just left behind the Grampians area, and now we're on the coast, and it is much more tropical, kind of rainforesty feel.

I'm meeting up with the guys from Twelve Apostles Lodge Walk to go on a coastal trek here along one of the really famous stunning routes along the coast.

(upbeat music) - So Finn and I have just met up at the starting point, we're about to set off, and boy is it some wild, rough weather out here.

We're gonna see some amazing coastline, and I'm really excited for it, but luckily at the end of the day, we might also have a nice warm place to dry off and warm up.

So one of the things that I'm really hoping to spot is a koala.

I mean, they're about as cute as can be.

You know, you've got these pictures of these little teddy bear kinda lookin' things, and hopefully we're gonna spot some today.

Supposedly they are along our route, so if all things go well, and they're not all just hiding and sleeping in the tops of these trees, we're gonna spot one or two, and I'm gonna give 'em a wrestle.

Except that's illegal, I can't do that.

(peaceful music) I didn't really know what to expect with this walk, in my mind, I was thinking that it's literally just a hundred kilometers of beach hiking, but it's not, you're constantly going in and out of the different terrains and different zones.

(relaxed music) Here koala, koala, koala, koala.

We're lookin' for the trail koala that supposedly lives here in this gully.

I'd be very excited to see one.

- [Finn] Ah, yes, found it.

- [Eric] What?

You I found it?

- Okay, you can see it, it's just hella hidden.

- Hella hidden.

Just a few feet off the trail, lo and behold, is just this poor koala, sitting in the rain, holdin' on for dear life as the tree's just whippin' around in the wind.

Well, I see a spray little face.

(upbeat music) We're on this, say, maybe the first kilometer or two.

It's wild and wet out here.

But the big highlight, the koalas.

It's so amazing to see them right along the side of the trail, chillin' out up in the trees.

So, my day's already made.

So whatever else happens from here, it's just bonus.

We're having a good time.

(upbeat music) (relaxed music) (upbeat music) - [Eric] As Finn and I are hiking along, we finally emerge from this canopy of trees, and before me, in front of me, is the ocean.

- All righty, so this is the first click we gotta get through, and then we've got another one that's created a little track down the end there.

- Okay, this looks fairly manageable.

- This one, yeah, it's all right.

I am happy to carry you over, or hold your hand, if need be, absolutely no shame.

- Can I just koala on your back?

- Yeah, absolutely, I do piggybacks, I can do fireman carry, I can do baby carry, Whatever works for you.

(upbeat music) This is our second creek.

- I don't think we can jump this one.

- No.

- All right, so if you take your boots off.

- And carry you, I see where this is going.

- I saw how the koala worked.

- Yeah?

- So it's the same thing.

I'm just gonna, hop on up.

- I'm open to that.

- [Eric] Now we're kind of joking together about, like, Oh, you know, take our boots off.

"Oh, why don't we koala bear?"

And then all of a sudden the joke becomes real.

It's like, "Oh, we're really doin' it this way."

All right, ready for me to hop?

- Yeah, you hop.

(both laughing) - That works perfectly, all right, we got this.

- [Finn] Okay.

- [Eric] Okay, oh, don't tip over!

I didn't really factor in how soft the sand is.

Whoo!

Or I guess how soft Finn is.

Crossin' the river, oh no!

No!

You did that on purpose!

- I'm so adorable.

- Oh, no!

Oh, come on, man!

To be fair, Finn's punishment was walking the rest of the day with bare feet.

My punishment was walking the rest of the day with buckets full of water in my shoes.

(upbeat music) - Welcome to the lodge.

Had a great day today.

- This is a sweet spot.

- [Finn] It is a super sweet spot.

And the day only gets better.

So, follow me this way.

- Yeah?

- We've got some canapes, some local wines.

- Oh, wow.

- And some foot baths.

- That sounds like my style.

Foot baths?

- Foot baths.

- I've never had a foot bath at the end of a trek.

(relaxed music) Ah, the serenity.

Mmm.

Cheers.

- Cheers.

- Oh, yeah.

- To a beautiful day.

(birds chirping) - We've had a rough time finding clear weather windows.

And as Finn was looking at his weather reports for our final day on the trail, which is the big reveal, a big important day here on the Great Ocean walk, because you get the grand reveal of The Twelve Apostles, this truly iconic Australian landscape here.

There is showing a weather window of opportunity for a sunrise, so we wake up well before dawn in order to hit the trail, to get our hiking in to position us in time for viewing The Twelve Apostles at sunrise.

(relaxed music) - [Finn] Man, how do you feel?

What emotions does it bring up?

Is that a tear I see?

(Eric laughs) - It might be, no, it feels really surreal, honestly, because this is one of those landscapes that has felt super iconic to me.

And you kind of grow up with a sense of wonder and why you even set off to travel and explore these places.

And then to come here with special people and to see it at amazing light after a long journey through mud and slop, it's honestly, like, that's like my type of adventure.

So this trek has had its fair share of struggle.

Of rough nature, of wild weather, of rainy, long days with muddy trails, and then this morning getting up at 4:30 in the morning to try to come here, you know, feeling just really groggy and tired after all these days on the trail.

But there's nothing better than actually getting out here and seeing it at special lighting.

To see it at sunrise, it is absolutely worth it.

Every time, it is always worth it to get up, to make the effort, to push yourself, and to go see these amazing landscapes, to go see it with wonderful people.

And so today is a morning unlike any other, and I am feeling truly blessed.

(upbeat music) (relaxed music) Funding for Epic Trails is provided by Discover the World.

Collette offers small group explorations tours, destinations and local experiences designed especially for small groups.

Explorations by Collette guided travels since 1918.

The Alinker three wheeled walking bike.

Assisting people with an active mindset to regain mobility and access the outdoors.

Keeping users active and engaged in life.

More information at Alinker.com In4Adventure.com Inspiring, educating and encouraging outdoor adventure and by these additional sponsors.