Victorian excursion

Our Kiwi friend Dave, who lives in Melbourne, kindly took us out into the Victorian countryside (remarkably scruff looking grass they have here, I pity those cows and sheep that have to chomp on that) to Mount Macedon on the way to Bendigo. The mountain, about 1,000 metres high, has a war shrine and cross on the top but also a great view over the countryside all the way, on sunny days, to Melbourne. It was, helas, a semi-cloudy, windy and chilly day on the top which had us shivering and sheltering soon. The upside, of course, was that no snake was to be seen.
We soon legged it down to another landmark, Hanging Rock, a massive volcanic outcrop in an otherwise quite featureless landscape. The place is famous for being the setting of Australian novel and film "Picnic at Hanging Rock". It's a steep climb up and it's easy to get disorientated in the crags and boulders at the top plateau. It's an eerie place and you can see why it would make such a good setting for a mystery novel.
On the way back to town we dropped in on Daylesford, a charming country spa town reminiscent of Martinborough, and it even boasts its own gay festival called Chill Out.