Halls Gap

The ranges are Gariwerd, the country of the Jardwadjali and Djab Wurrung peoples, who have lived among them for tens of thousands of years. Their shelters hold one of the richest bodies of rock art in south-eastern Australia — hand stencils and figures painted in ochre — and about 90 per cent of the rock art recorded in Victoria is in these ranges. Seasonal camps, stone-tool quarries and fish and eel traps in the surrounding wetlands recorded a settled way of life across the district.

Major Thomas Mitchell reached the ranges in 1836, climbed the highest peak and named the whole group after the Grampian Mountains of Scotland. Squatters and their sheep followed within a few years; in 1841 the stockman Charles Browning Hall came through the gap in the ranges that took his name, and the settlement in the valley below became Halls Gap. Sawmilling, grazing and a little gold followed, along with water: reservoirs in the ranges carry Grampians water out to the dry Wimmera, and Lake Bellfield flooded the original village site south of the present one.

Tourism arrived early. Coach parties came from the railway at Stawell in the 19th century for the Wonderland walks and waterfalls, and guesthouses opened in the village. The Grampians became a national park in 1984, Brambuk — Australia's longest-running Aboriginal cultural centre, run by traditional owner communities — stands in the village, and the Grampians Peaks Trail was completed in 2021. A lightning fire burned almost half the park in January 2006, and the 2024–25 bushfires burned about 136,000 hectares of the park and nearby farmland.

Halls Gap is a walkers' village, and its culture follows the tracks: early breakfasts, boots outside cabin doors, talk of which lookouts have reopened after rain or fire, and a rhythm set by the seasons rather than the week. Spring, when the wildflowers are out, and Easter are the high points of the year; midwinter belongs to the locals.

Aboriginal culture is unusually visible for a small Victorian town. The Grampians hold the state's richest concentration of rock art, traditional owner groups are partners in managing the park, guided cultural walks operate from the village, and the dual name Gariwerd is in everyday use on signs and maps. The protocols around the shelters — looking without touching, keeping behind the screens — are taken seriously by residents and rangers.

Rock climbing and abseiling have long been part of the local identity, and the negotiation of access between climbers, park managers and traditional owners has been a live local issue. Wildlife is a shared civic subject too: kangaroos grazing on the recreation reserve, cockatoos on the power lines, deer damaging gardens. Fire shapes everything — every household knows its plan, the volunteer brigade is central to the community, and residents talk about past fire seasons the way coastal towns talk about storms.

Only a few hundred people live in Halls Gap permanently, while on a busy holiday weekend the number of people in the valley can be twenty or thirty times that. Tourism is the whole economy: caravan parks, motels, cafés, tour and shuttle operators, the zoo, the cultural centre and Parks Victoria. Much of the work is seasonal, and staff housing is scarce enough that some workers commute from Stawell and Ararat.

The village has a small school, a general store, a post office, a bakery and a community hall, but anything larger — a supermarket shop, a doctor, a hardware store, a secondary school — means a drive of half an hour or more to Stawell or Ararat, or an hour to Horsham. Mobile coverage is patchy once the road enters the ranges, and power failures in storms are routine.

The year turns on the fire season. From about November residents watch the forecasts, clear gutters and gardens, and the district practises its warnings; in a bad summer the village empties on official advice. Recovery after the fires of recent summers has been a long process for businesses that depend on the park being open. Water, kept in the reservoirs for Wimmera towns as well as for the valley, and the balance between visitor numbers and a fragile landscape are the other steady preoccupations.

Eating in Halls Gap is straightforward: a bakery turning out pies, sausage rolls and vanilla slices, cafés doing big breakfasts and coffee for walkers, a takeaway or two, a hotel dining room with parma, steak and fish, and one small supermarket that everyone in the valley uses. Free barbecues in the reserves see constant use, and picnic food is bought in the village and carried into the park.

The surrounding district supplies rather more. The Grampians is a recognised wine region, with Great Western to the east known since the 19th century for sparkling wine kept in tunnels cut by gold miners, and for peppery shiraz; the Pyrenees ranges beyond it make reds as well. The Wimmera plains to the north grow wheat, canola, lentils and chickpeas — Australia's pulse country — while lamb, beef and wool come off the paddocks closer in. Olive groves, honey from box and ironbark blossom, and roadside stalls selling eggs, fruit and jam fill out the local list, and there are a few small breweries and distilleries in the district.

Aboriginal-run tourism and the cultural centre have brought native ingredients onto local menus — kangaroo, emu, wattleseed, bush tomato, lemon myrtle and the yam daisy, a staple food of the region before European settlement. South of the ranges, the hotel at Dunkeld has built a national reputation on its kitchen garden and on produce from the same country.