4 June: Great Ocean Road

It was mostly cloudy and raining at sunrise, but we made the most of it. It was still another breathtaking experience.


Then we slept at a petrol station until it opened and then got petrol, slept some more and went inside to have coffee and some meat pies to warm ourselves up. The sun came out so we went to the Otway treetop walk. You walk in the rainforest among the trees, it's high up. There are only three like it in the world, all in Australia--this is the highest. It was great, but a little scary.


We decided to head back, since the Otway Fly was actually backtracking. We set out for the 12 Apostles again. It was raining again after a brief reprieve. But I took heaps of photographs (this one...doesn't do my OCD justice). Then we drove on.

We stopped at the Loch Ard gorge, named for the wreck of the ship the Loch Ard, which killed all but two of the about 84 or so on board there.

It looks a lot better from the beach than it would from the water. There is a reason it is called the 'Shipwreck Coast.' It's a dangerous coastline, where hundreds of ships met their end. Many of them I read about or scan photos of for work.


There was a graveyard for the victims of the wreck as well (at least for those who had bodies recovered) and one for everyone. It was really sad and eerie, yet peaceful among the wind and tall grass. It was strange how quiet and empty it felt out there on the coast. So much of it is a national park that it seems virtually untouched at times.


The entrance to Thunder Cave that leads to the blowhole. So loud and it rumbled as we walked down close to it. In the rain and wind, the water was so rough, it make the landscape even more wild and un-tameable. And slightly slippery and terrifying. Absolutely perfect.

The blowhole, from up above. More examples of limestone erosion. It's over a 100 metres to the cave entrance and the ocean, but if you fell in, you would die.

The Bay of Islands. You can find these formations almost anywhere along the coast, but you can only scream "stop the car!" so many times. And we had to get to Portland before dark to get a motel room somewhere inexpensive.


But, sometimes cattle crossing the road cause delays. Oh well. We got to Portland, got a room, got really bad fish fry and went to bed early. One more day and then it's on to Adelaide!