Today we took a very hilly ride about 17 kms out of Woodend, past the famous Hanging Rock to Candlebark school. The school was set up 3 years ago by famous young adult fiction author John Marsden, and has students from Prep to Year 9, set on a beautiful property. We were impressed by the amazing sense of community that pervades the school, with students mixing between year levels, no uniforms, no class bells, child-directed learning, students being responsible for cleaning up their space after the days learning, and amazing, home cooked food provided by the school for students every day.  They have a garden, a trampoline (I can confirm the prescence of the trampoline quite thoroughly), a communal kitchen and even a space where they have WWOOFers (Willing Workers on Organic Farms) where volunteers come and stay on the property and help in the garden, cook and even help in class! (Many of the team are itching to sign up for this when they return!)
We gave a performance and were then given a tour of the campus by some energetic kids.
John Marsden watched our performance! I later snuck into the library to see if any of his titles were stocked... I could only find the first book from the "tomorrow" series!
Anna (she is back on the tour! Sporting some excellent war wounds. A cheer squad met her at the station yesterday) and I rode past Hanging Rock on the way home and walked to the base of the granite pillars to absorb the eerie energy. 
At Woodend we are staying at the local Neighbourhood house, which has some amazing solar passive design elements and energy saving features, and a fanatsic chook run and permaculture garden set up by a Greencorps team. We enjoyed seeing locals come to give the chooks their scraps, and pick fresh onions, spinach, lettuce, leeks, eggplant, garlic and jerusalem artichoke from the garden for our dinner.
Tomorrow we rise early to ride the final leg of the trip back to Mentone in Melbourne, which should be around 80 kms. - Julia