Description: Theoretically speaking, we have almost three days for the Great Ocean Road: we are doing a relocation of a motor home, and we are picking it up on Saturday morning in Melbourne to deliver it in Adelaide by three pm on Monday.
"Morning" is a relative term, though, and by the time the vehicle is actually ready for us (we are getting it for 5 bucks a day, so we can't really complain) and we are on our way, it's well past mid-day. Driving this Thing feels like driving a gigantic wardrobe on wheels, with the stuff inside rattling and rolling, and (at least at the beginning) constant fear that it needs more space that there is on the road. It's big, by far the biggest thing I (or even DH) have ever driven. It's longer than a long-bed Transit van, and certainly wider. The upshot is, of course, the amount of space inside: this is not a camper van, but truly a motor home, with a double bed at the back, another double bed in the high top; toilet and shower room, fridge, microwave, cooker and four extra seats in addition to the two in the front.
We set off gingerly, and of course manage to get lost within the first fifteen minutes trying to drive out of Melbourne. Getting lost is perhaps not quite right: we take a wrong turning and realise immediately, so not quite get lost, but get off track which requires quite a bit of doubling back. Eventually we are on the way, though, driving towards the ocean, though all we initially see is rather industrial coastline of Port Philips Bay.
We stop at Geelong for lunch – or rather early tea, as it's getting on for four. Fish and chips, it has to be, as we are in a town that in this wintery time has an air of a British working-class seaside resort, a slightly cleaner Blackpool minus the Pleasure Beach. We want to get going, so apart from the food, we limit ourselves to a quick stroll along the seafront promenade, graced by rather charming Baywalk Bollards - painted wooden sculptures by a local artist Jan Mitchell, reflecting, apparently, local identities (and thus we have Bathers and Immigrants for example). The children have a quick run around the piers and jetties and off we go towards the ocean.
By the time we reach Torquay the dusk is falling, and we pass Anglesea (where only a quirk of spelling saves us from feeling even more disconcerted than we are with all those Brit-place-names) in deep, purple-blue twilight. This stretch of the road is unpopulated and with dunes on one and bush on the other side, it feels wild in the falling darkness. We pull over at the parking space to the side of the road and make it over the dunes (it's not really wild: there is a boardwalk across the dunes, and an information board letting us know that we are at The Gulch (Gap), warning that the beach is unpatrolled and camping not allowed. But the beach is empty, and before we even see anything, we can hear it: the deep, rumbling roar of the ocean pounding the shore. We have been in Australia for something like six weeks now, but this is the first real surf beach we see here, and what a time and place it is to have this first glimpse. The Great Southern Ocean, like a huge grey animal growling at our feet, glistening silvery in the moonlight.
It's windy and late, and we go back to the vehicle (I tend to think of it as The Thing, but children are besides themselves with excitement at the prospect of sleeping on the upper bunk). We contemplate roadside camping for a while, but decide to find a caravan park after all, and one is found soon in the village of Lorne, few miles down the road.
The next day we wake up to a sunny, blustery day and we set off early to make the best of it.
The road between Lorne and Apollo Bay is lovely indeed: truly ocean-side, it hugs the hillside on our right in tight bends, with low sandy cliffs (or high dunes, depending on how you look at it), covered with silvery tussocks of tufty grass) and beaches pounded with the huge, beautiful surf to the left.
In Apollo Bay the road veers inland, to cross the Otway Peninsula, a good vacation country, and apparently great for walking – but we have no time for even medium detours on narrow roads (especially in The Thing) and thus we go on, through a stretch of green and pleasant, pastoral land that looks very much like rural British Isles, with rolling hills and livestock in the fields: only when the road crosses the woodland, we are instantly reminded we are in Australia by the pale, silky bark and silvery, shimmery leaves of the gum trees.
Past Otway the lay of the land changes, and so does the shoreline: the low, duney coast with a road built into the hillside gives way to precipitous limestone cliffs, off-shore islets, sea stacks, sink-holes, caves and arches. This is the Port Campbell National Park, the Picturesque of the Picturesques, with the holy grail of the Twelve Apostles (renamed thus from the Sow and the Piglets despite there ever having been only nine), visited by two million people every year by car, tour bus and helicopter.
Before The Apostles come the Gibson Steps, though, leading, quite logically, to the Gibson Beach. And despite your author being coastal-vista jaded and tourist-marketing disillusioned, the Gibson Beach is proves to be rather wonderful, a perfect, wind-swept, fine-sanded beach surrounded by sheer cliffs, the waves still here, and in the distance, a tall, golden sea-stack, a sentinel wearing down gracefully under the onslaught of the water and wind.
The Twelve Apostles are very pretty too, and look quite like the pictures would make you expect them to look: not disappointing, and still quite a view, of course, but not that hugely better than the preceding one at Gibson's Beach or the following ones at London Bridge or the Arch. This is where all the tours come, though, and thus there has been a lot of effort put into building infrastructure, one suspects as much to protect the fragile cliff-top ecosystems as to provide public access. The latter is all from boardwalks and platforms with railings, and although the views are good, and at least now in the winter it's quite possible to see the rocks without getting a Japanese (or any other) tourist in the field of view for at least few minutes, it's a very busy place with all the disadvantages of very busy places.
Beyond the Apostles there are several other lookouts giving access to similar limestone formations in the sea. The Arch is rather good, and so is the London Bridge, called that due to its uncanny similarity to the UK namesake. Nomen omen, though, in this case, and the London Bridge has now fallen down, having lost one of its spans. It has been officially renamed London Arch, but anybody familiar with the old song will know that makes the OLD name even more apt! We sing London Bridge (or at least two verses of it) on the viewing platform, to great amusement of onlookers, and move on. As usual, the time is getting short with all these stops, and we need to get going if we are to have any chance of delivering The Thing on time.
Last stop in the Port Campbell National Park is The Loch Ard Gorge, maybe a little bit less pretty but interesting as another example of the erosive action of wind and water. The gorge (a sea inlet, really) is marked by tragedy, as a lot of locations on this stretch known as Shipwreck Coast. The inlet was named after the clipper Loch Ard, which ran aground here in 1878 . Only two of the fifty one souls on board have survived the wreck.
We refrain from stopping for a while, although can't resist another lovely stretch called Bay of Islands just past Peterborough, glittering in the lowering sun.
From then on it's an easier (as less scenic) stretch to Warrnambool, where we have a go at whale spotting from a platform on Logan's Beach: Warrnambool is on a migration route of the Southern Rights, and they can be frequently spotted around here in the winter. We don't have much time, though, and in the half an hours or so all we see is a few surfers trying to catch Logan's shore breaks.
The Great Ocean Road journey is technically finished, but we planned to overnight in Kingston SE, so we have a lot of driving in The Thing still to do today: and most of it will be in the dark.
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