Monday, December 7th, Driving the Great Ocean Road from Apollo Bay to Port Campbell
Bob: After breakfast we started driving the second section of the Great Ocean Road from Apollo Bay to Port Campbell. Our first stopoff was Mait's Rest, a car park that adjoined a kilometer or so long nature trail through the coastal rain forest. The dominant, old-growth trees in that rain forest were giant Myrtle Beech trees, and they really were huge. In fact, one of them had fallen parallel to the trail and we were amazed at the circumference of the thing. It was clearly a "nursery tree", however, as a bunch of new tree ferns and regular trees were already growing on the top side of the fallen log. We also walked through a truly dense thicket of huge ferns. The regular ferns were big enough to push branches across the trail, and the tree ferns branched out above us to keep the trail in perpetual shade. I enjoyed the graceful green tapestries made by the interlaced fronds overhead. Down in the depths of the rain forest we saw a couple of huge trees completely propped up in the air on their roots, looking for all the world like they were up on stilts. I had really never seen trees that big propped up in that fashion. The most likely explanation was that those trees had grown on a huge nursery tree log that had over the centuries rotted completely away, leaving them propped up only by their roots. Curious. |
Monika: This day we were going to drive another stretch of the Great Ocean Road, the section from Apollo Beach to Port Campbell. The distance was only 100 or so kilometers but there was a lot to do and see on the way. Our first stop was a last walk in the Otway National Park. This one was billed as a rainforest walk and it lived up to its billing: huge, old trees with every size of fern in the undergrowth. From a sign we learned that the huge trees were Myrtle Beeches, a species that came from Gwondanaland millions and millions of years ago and forms the climax forest here in this rainy climate as long as there are no fires, at which point the Eucalyptus trees will take over. It was fascinating walking through ferns and looking up and seeing those enormous trees above. Following a trunk to the top could give you a crick in the neck. The whole loop was about 1km with many explanatory signs, so it was a very satisfying walk. We even tried a "we were here" picture, placing the camera and tripod on the railing of a raised boardwalk. However, Bob did not tread lightly enough and the camera tumbled into the underbrush, luckily not into the water. Bob checked carefully for snakes and then jumped down, picked up the camera, and jumped back onto the boardwalk in record time. Of course, we don't give up that easily and the second time everything worked perfectly. |
Bob: Our next detour was a drive out along the Otway Peninsula through that section of Otway National Park to Cape Otway and the light station (American: lighthouse) at the end of it. We saw people stopped along the way and so naturally we stopped also and were rewarded by seeing a whole bunch (flock? pod? mob?) of koalas hanging around (literally) in the trees on either side of the road. Most of them were asleep, as you might expect from an animal that sleeps for 20 out of every 24 hours, but a couple were awake enough to eat some eucalyptus leaves and one even jumped from one branch to another! Whoa! But most were just quietly and profoundly asleep as I found out when we stopped to take pictures of one that was only 5 feet up in the lowest fork of a tree and just 10 feet from the side of the road. He was one deep sleeper! |
Monika: Our second planned stop was the lighthouse at the tip of Otway peninsula. A 10 km road led down to the lighthouse. When we saw a guy had stopped and was pointing a camera at a tree, our immediate thought was to stop too. After all there must be something interesting and indeed there were several koalas in trees next to the road. How this guy had seen the first one and stopped, I don't know. I have a hard time spotting these small brown lumps high up in a tree when I am standing still and find it impossible when we are driving. But here we were, enchanted again by these furry creatures. One was even active and jumped from one branch to another. But that was enough, he curled back up for another nap. A little down the road was another colony. One koala was asleep in the crook of a tree right next to the road. We could have touched him, but refrained. However, we did have our picture taken with him as did several other people. But nothing could disturb this little guy. |
Bob: Continuing on to the end of the peninsula we found out that the lighthouse itself was closed for renovations but we could wander around the other buildings in the complex for a reduced admission fee of $13. The first section of the little loop trail circled from the ticket office over to the old telegraph station, an old, whitewashed rambler of a house with a tall antenna complex beside it. Already from the telegraph station we could get good views of the stately, white lighthouse on the furthermost tip of the peninsula, and we have even better views as we walked around to it. It was a shame we could not climb to the top for some no doubt beautiful panoramic views of the coastline, but it was overcast and somewhat misty so I did not feel as badly as if it had been a beautiful day for photography. As we started back toward the ticket office, I glanced inside a plain, whitewashed rectangular building and found out it contained several rooms of artifacts. The first room contained artifacts from the aboriginal occupation of the peninsula going back thousands of years, most likely. I was particularly fascinated by some carved wood artifacts in general and by a small collection of boomerangs in particular. I'm pretty sure that although some of those boomerangs were the "just for fun" returning kind, some of the larger ones were probably true hunting boomerangs. Unlike the boomerangs sold to tourists like us, none of those historic boomerangs had any kind of decoration at all, which made sense as they were no doubt looked at simply as tools by the aborigines. The second room was furnished as if it were still occupied by the lighthouse keeper. The bed looked old enough to be original although there was no provenance given for it, or any of the other artifacts, for that matter. The third and largest room looked like it may have held a stable for the horses or the carriage, but at the time of our visit it had a miscellaneous collection of artifacts connected with the lighthouse. Flotsam and jetsam from different shipwrecks along the coast nearby were display in a higgeldy-piggeldy fashion, but I must say what caught my eye was an old, single cylinder kerosene/diesel engine. It was bright red and the brand name "Lister" was clearly embossed on it, and it was apparently used as a jack-of-all-work for various power chores around the lighthouse. |
Monika: The lighthouse after this was somewhat anticlimactic, especially since we could not go in because it was being renovated. But it is one of the oldest lighthouses in the country, so it was a Must See. In addition, they had the lighthouse keepers house, an old telegraph station and some other buildings. One building was a museum with half of it showing Aboriginal items and the other items from the lighthouse. The whole complex was interesting but I am not sure it was worth the price of admission. |
Bob: We had a relaxed lunch at a nice cafe in Lavers Hill where the Great Ocean Road turned sharply left. I had a chicken + leek pot pie and Monika had a beef pot pie. Both came with salads and both were delicious. While we ate we were entertained by the birds feeding at a feeder on the back porch of the restaurant, including one brilliantly colored one that the diner next to us said was called a Crimson Rosella. After lunch we continued along the section of the Great Ocean Road that is famous for its off shore rock formations. We stopped Gib's Steps to see the first of these, a big monster of a rock tower a short distance off the beach with surf crashing all around it. |
Monika: Back to the main road we drove, waving to the koalas. When the Great Ocean Road came back to the coast we stopped at Castle Cove Lookout. We could see the coast to almost Apollo Beach on the East and more coastline to the West. Well, West we went. After all this stopping, it was lunch time when we hit Lavers Hill, a point inland where the Great Ocean Road is joined by the road from Beech Forest where we had been yesterday. There were two cafes and the one to our left was conveniently placed. So we stopped for a quick bite. They had, of course, meat pies, I opted for the traditional beef pie while Bob tried the chicken and leek one. The restaurant itself overlooked the valley and the owner had placed two bird feeders outside the window. To our delight, a red parrot came for lunch. The lady at the next table told us it was a Crimson Rosella. It sure was pretty and Bob took some great pictures. On we went. Our next goal were the limestone formations known as the twelve apostles. Around Port Campbell, the coast consists of limestone cliffs. Water seeping through cracks after a rain and constant pounding from the ocean have created some fantastic limestone columns out in the water. Our first stop was just a small overlook where we saw the first two of these columns. |
Bob: The main set of off shore pinnacles of rock is called the 12 Apostles, apparently because originally there were 12 of them. There still were quiet a few "Apostles", at least 8-10 by my count, but a couple pinnacles had apparently tumbled into just a heap of boulders after collapsing due to the erosion of their bases. The surf was pounding quite furiously and unrelentingly at the remaining pinnacles, and I could clearly see where other pinnacles would probably collapse in the next 10-20 years. |
Monika: Then came the major stop for the Twelve Apostles. This is THE tourist stop with a large parking area on the north side of the road. There was only one bus while we were there, but I can imagine that on a weekend and during holiday season there would be several more. A tunnel led under the road to several overlooks. The first one were the famous Apostles, although from our vantage point we saw only six of them, the others were supposedly on the other side of the headland. But even this was a rather interesting sight with the waves crashing around them. |
Bob: The constant wind and water erosion had also produced some other, slightly bizarre, rock structures. We stopped at the next turnoff to see some more of these structures and found one in particular called the "Razorback" that was just astonishingly tall and thin. The basic wedge shape and narrow base were no doubt carved by the crashing surf coming up from the Southern Ocean, but the fanciful scrollwork on the top appeared to have been carved mostly by the wind and rain. Very unique! We also walked down to a nearby beach (strong cautionary signs: "Not a swimming beach!") to get a look at these off shore stone monoliths from sea level, so to speak. The surf was astonishingly heavy at that beach with the huge rolling combers cresting just off shore and then crashing onto the rocks and the sandy beach in a foaming crescendo. The waves looked like those huge things that you see surfers riding on their surfboards, but not a single surfer was there, which I suspect had something to do with the rocks and the dangerous currents that no doubt were also present. |
Monika: A little farther on was a long thin limestone formation called the Razorback since it looked like the back of a hog. Beyond it were two upright standing columns, no names given. It had started raining while were driving, and stopped while we were walking to the formations. But now it started drizzling again and we hurried back to the car. We did stop at another overlook for several formations: the blowhole, the gorge, and the mouth of river where you could see how the waves crashed against the cliff on the side of the mouth. One path led down to a pretty beach, but swimming was strongly discouraged. |
Bob: We fetched up for the night at Port Campbell and, after looking around town a bit, settled for a seaside motel overlooking the bay called the Loch Ard Motel. There was only one gas station and one grocery store in town, and as you might expect from the complete lack of competition, the prices were correspondingly very high. So we compensated by purchasing $10 worth of gasoline, just sufficient to reach the next major town, and just enough milk and orange juice to make a breakfast for the next morning plus a can of stew for dinner. Fortunately I had brought a can opener along and our motel room boasted a microwave for heating the stew. With our view over the bay we had a very pleasant dinner although we were watched very intently by a daddy or mommy magpie with a youngster in tow. For our part, we watched the parent feed the fledgling, which was quite entertaining, but they finally gave up begging and took off for greener pastures. We continued reading and working on the computer for the evening until it was time to drive out to "London Bridge" and maybe see Fairy Penguins in their natural environment. Our first stop was a huge stone arch just off shore about 3 kilometers West of Port Campbell. The viewing platform was just a short walk from the car park, and the arch itself was fascinating. It was composed of a beautifully ochre-coloured limestone, and the waves were crashing around it and through it. It reminded me of the stone arches carved by the wind in Arches National Park in the U.S., but this one was located in the ocean and had been carved by water. Very pretty. Our second stop was London Bridge, which turned out to be a huge, flat-topped arch of stone just off the coast. Apparently in the past there had been another arch linking the mainland to the formation, but that arch had fallen in, leaving the remaining arch isolated in the sea. Curiously I could not see any sign of rubble or rock fragments from that collapse, but given the strength of the wave action on the coast I assume that any stones along the shoreline are ground to pieces rather quickly. The London Bridge formation is where we thought we might find Fairy Penguins, but after carefully looking over the terrain we decided that there just wasn't any way a foot-high, waddling bird could possibly work its way up the escarpments surrounding the beach, and there wasn't any sign of a nesting complex anywhere above the high water mark on the beach either. I concluded we had misunderstood the location from which one could watch the Fairy Penguins. |
Monika: We finally reached Port Campbell. It was a lot smaller than Apollo Bay but did have several motels. We stopped at one that looked rather nice and procured a double for the night. It had the usual amenities one can find in an Australian motel room: refrigerator, water heater, instant coffee and tea. In addition this one had a microwave. So we went over to the one local grocery store and picked up some Irish stew in a can besides the milk for the morning. Otherwise, we were just trying to eat up what we still had. But having the stew heated in the microwave together with the two day old rolls made a nice change from meat and cheese. There were three more formations on the western side of Port Campbell, and we had been told that at one of them, London Bridge, the Fairy Penguins would come out of the water in the evening. So we did not set out until about 7PM. It was still cloudy and cold but did not rain. The first stop, the arch, was an impressive formation with, as you would have guessed, an arch through which the water swirled. It was fun watching the waves come and when a particularly large one came the foam would swirl under the arch. The second formation was the London Bridge. There used to be two arches and a connection to the mainland. But that connection broke down in the past, after it had been named, so that it is no longer a bridge, but just an arch. Still, it was very impressive. We looked carefully at the beach, but for the life of us, we could not imagine how the Little Penguins with their little legs could climb up the cliff. |
Bob: Not seeing the penguins was disappointing, but we decided to push on and see the final formation on that part of the Great Ocean Road, "The Grotto", before calling it a night. The Grotto was a really carved-out complex of caves on the shoreline just a half a kilometer or so further West from London Bridge. Apparently there had once been a sinkhole on top of a limestone cave that had finally collapsed downward and formed the innermost part of the complex. Intruding erosion from the wave action at the shoreline had carved additional pockets at the sides and in front of the central hole, which finally resulted in The Grotto. It was intriguing to see how all that weathering would create such a complex and beautiful result. By that time it was getting dark and I was certainly tired of driving for the day, so we turned tail and drove back to our hotel room for the night. |
Monika: So we decided to go on to the last formation, "The Grotto". This was different than the others in that it was a bowl-like formation rather than a column. By now it was only 8PM. Sundown, the time the penguins would come out of the sea, was another hour. It was cold and we were not sure wether they would really come. So we decided to just go back to the motel and get a good night's sleep before we had to head back to Melbourne tomorrow. |
| Index |
| Prolog | Map of Cruise around New Zealand | Map of Drive through Victoria | Epilog |
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