Day 2 of driving the Great Ocean Road, this time from the starting point of Apollo Bay to our second one-nighter at Port Fairy. We had a look at Apollo Beach in the day and I really like the little town, it has character.
Todays drive was a little longer than yesterdays at 116 miles (187kms) but took us nearly 9 hours. We started with a walk through Maits Rest rainforest. This was a circular walk through ancient rainforest with giant ferns and eucalyptus trees. It was not a long wak but very impressive on raised boardwalks and it was quite chilly as the trees are so tall they prevent the heat of the sun reaching the floor of the forest.
We continued our way detouring to see the lighthouse at Cape Otway. This turned out to be quite time consuming and quit expensive as I felt we couldn’t refuse the entrance fee after driving a slow 18kms to get there. On route we had been told to look out for koala bears and soon we saw a crowd of people who had found a lone koala in a tree. I felt quite sorry for it as they whistled and tried to attract its attention so after a quick grab shot I left them to it. When we eventually got to it, the lighthouse was impressive and we took time to stop for a good coffee and a biscuit shaped like a lighthouse!
The road bends inland at this area to the highest point in the national park at Lavers Hill where we stopped for brief lunch break and met the owners very friendly staffie on the way out.
The main sight along this stretch of the Great Ocean Road is the ‘Twelve Apostles’ or rather the ‘Eight Apostles’ as four have since eroded and fallen down. This has to have been the most touristy place we have been to so far during our tour of Australia. I am not sure what I expected and I have seen pictures of the rock stacks before but nothing had prepared us for the hoards of people taking selfies and crowding against the railing with their backs to the actual view! The sight of the stacks was pretty impressive but with the light pretty much overhead so not that definition to the rock and the constant loud noise of the permanent helicopter flights above, it was far removed from the peace we have enjoyed in so many other places. This is a view of the stacks in the opposite direction which shows how impressive they are but does not convey the chaos we were in... we dove off quickly...
The so called London Bridge rock formation was also impressive with not quite so many people there. Apparently in the 1990's a couple crossed the very narrow rock joining the stack to the mainland and just after they crossed, it collapsed leaving them trapped. They were safely rescued by helicopter but unfortunately they had been conducting an illicit affair and had to try and avoid the waiting press on their return - made me laugh!
We next reached Port Campbell which was to have been our original stop rather than Apollo Bay but based on the time we took driving yesterday and today we made the right decision to stay at Apollo Bay. Port Campbell is a lot smaller and less lively - they did have very good ice cream though - especially the fig, walnut and orange flavour.
I’ll admit I was feeling rather tired now as Colin had driven all of yesterday, it was my turn to be behind the wheel. We almost reluctantly made a final detour to Logan’s Beach whale watching platform with the promise that the bay would be crammed full of whales... there were sadly no whales to be seen but instead we saw a pod of at least 5-6 dolphins surfing the waves chasing fish and then through my excellent new binoculars I actually watched two of them surfing within a wave - brilliant and well worth the detour. We had reached the end of the Great Ocean Road - listed as one of the worlds great drives and I really think it is.
Last stop for the night at Port Fairy - the lady that runs the holiday apartments we are staying overnight at suggested a nice walk for us but to be honest I was almost incoherently tired and so we could only manage to collect fish and chips from the place opposite before collapsing into bed.
