Nelson to Robe - 21st August

That night, the wind that had been following us off and on since the Mornington Peninsula returned with a vengeance and quite a bit of rain. Given that we were in a little caravan park cabin, it probably sounded worse than it was, but it was enough to wake us both up. This did not bode well for the day ahead.
We woke up early that morning to take advantage of the hotplate and cook up a big breakfast of pancakes, bacon and maple syrup. The wind had eased, but the day was still uncertain about what it wanted to be. The only definite was 'windy' and the clouds streamed overhead changing the day from grey to blue every couple of minutes. Amazingly, we had a window of no rain in which we were able to pack the car in relative dryness. We thought we'd broken the curse. However, the wind and the rain started again almost immediately and I had to run through the rain to return the keys to the woman who ran the park.
The drive from Nelson to Mount Gambier was again the awful kilometers of pine plantation and it was a relief to reach the city's outskirts. By now the weather had fined up again and we decided that the aquifer tour of the famous blue lake would be a good idea. This is a walking tour of the old pumping station right next to the large crater lake Mt Gambier uses for its water. By the time we started, the weather had changed again and down at the lowest point they take you to, it actually began to hail. Just little tiny bits of ice, but enough to completely chill us and to ruin any photographs of the blue lake which looked decidedly grey. By the time we'd got back to the top however, it was fine again. Kooky.
After this, we'd had enough of touristy stuff and decided it would be nice just to head off to our hotel room in Robe, so we left Mt Gambier and got back on the Princes Highway. The area we were driving though is called The Limestone Coast by the tourist board of South Australia. Taking out the fact the Coonawarra is just north of Mt Gambier and the odd limestone cave here and there, the area and in particular the town of Milicent is overwhelming uninspiring. Especially after The Great Ocean Road. It wasn't 'til we got off the highway and headed towards the coast again to a tiny town called Beachport that the drive again became pleasant. We stopped at Beachport for a break and did the tourist drive outside and around the little town which has amazing views of the coastline. The wind however, made the sea more threatening than anything else and we didn't stop to take a closer look. I imagine in summer the place must be glorious. From there we drove on up to Robe beside what look to be lakes on the map (and indeed are called lakes - Lake St Clair, Lake Eliza) but are really just large, flat dry areas at the moment.
The town of Robe is tiny and you are in the main part before you realise. We'd booked in to a pub called The Caledonian which is an old pub with low ceilings. We'd booked in for two nights in the standard hotel rooms which are smallish rooms directly above the pub with shared bathrooms. After the drive of the last few days, we were pretty tired and Yvette took a nap while I had a bit of a look down the main street. Robe is obviously a tourist town and I would think in Summer becomes incredibly popular. The main street which isn't very long has a ridiculous number of overpriced, city-style restaurants, an exclusive menswear shop and a trendy homewares shop promising "beautiful objects for everyday living". I can't imagine any local wanting or needing these shops and yet there they are, lying in wait for the idiot fucking tourist who can't be satisfied with just going to a lovely country town and enjoying it for what it is. I don't know who's at fault - the people who set up these businesses exclusively for tourists at the expense of the feel of the town, or the small-minded, city-dwelling tourists themselves. Whoever it is, I wish they'd all just die in large, multiple pileups inside their city 4WDs.
I did a quick lap of the main street (which is only thing you can do in Robe) looking for somewhere that wasn't charging stupid money for dinner. Even the pub we were staying in had a 'chef' rather than a cook and were charging accordingly. I popped into the local pizzeria which doubled as the DVD rental shop for a coffee and after a quick look at the menu decided this would do nicely for dinner.
That night we had a couple of beers downstairs in the pub and then went across the road to the pizzeria for some surprisingly rather good pizza. I was still tired from the drive and didn't even stop for another beer on the way back to the room.

Port Fairy to Nelson - 20th of August

The glorious weather of yesterday had completely deserted us and we woke to grey, overcast skies. By the time we got around to packing the car, it had begun to rain. It seemed we hadn't escaped the packing in the rain curse we'd picked up in Sydney. If there's an old Gypsy woman out there I inadvertently offended, I'm sorry. Can we stop it now please? It's really getting quite tiresome.
We only had two things of interest to see today - Portland (and its cable tram) and Cape Bridgewater. Annoyingly enough, by the time we'd reached Portland, the weather had fined up. Which was just as well I guess as we were taking a ride on the Portland Cable Tram - an old Melbourne-style tram built in 1996 to attract tourists to Portland. The back carriage is actually an original old wooden Melbourne tram which was found in NSW being used as a chook pen. The trip around town is slow but the sun was out and Portland, even though it is a working port town, does have an element of charm. I couldn't for the life of me get a Redgum song out of my head the whole time though:

Said she came from Portland, where the ashen skies and leaden ocean, left her like the local boys - barren of emotion.

The town however decided not to be poetic and the skies were perfect blue and as such the ocean was far from leaden. The long pier that leads out to where the tugboats are moored is accessible by car, so we drove right out the end and had a good close look at the port, the large pile of woodchips and the giant vacuum cleaner thingy which they use to load and unload ships. I was expecting very little from Portland (especially after having known the Redgum song for 20 years) and was very pleasantly surprised. A lot of the original buildings remain and the volunteers who run the tram are wonderful. After a little drive around town, we headed down to Cape Bridgewater to look at The Petrified Forest. Not true petrified wood in the traditional sense, it is a large area of forest (now just stumps) preserved in sandstone-like remains. It is actually quite otherworldly as once you leave the carpark and get into the forest proper, there is no vegetation save for some grey-coloured clumps and just sand like lumps and circles everywhere. There is a large windfarm in the fields behind it and looking back with only orange sand and rock with large white monoliths behind them, it feels like another planet. Add to this the sun had come out and the wind had dropped which meant it had become unseasonably warm and we both felt more than a little odd.
This was the last bit of coastal scenery we'd see for the day as the road to Nelson heads inland. The Great Ocean Road well behind us now, the drive had become much more pedestrian. Just outside of Portland there are massive pine plantations which stretch for kilometres in all directions. Driving along beside these large areas of monoculture is quite dehumanising as the ordered repetitiveness seems more like an industrial wasteland than a forest. It was truly unpleasant, as were the acres and acres of plantation recently felled which looked like the remnants of a nuclear blast. Given the beautiful drives we had done in the last few days, this was truly depressing. As it was, it was a relief to finally reach Nelson and book in to a little ensuite cabin in a caravan park.
We have been trying to keep accommodation costs to an average of $100 a night or less if possible and so now and then we've been going the budget option of which this cabin was. It wasn't awful by any means but compared to our cute little cottage with alpacas the night before, it wasn't much. Still, it was clean and warm (and most importantly, dry) and there was more than enough room to spread all our crap out, cook dinner (stovetop - yay!) and write blogs and diaries and postcards. The best thing was that there was virtually no-one besides us booked into the park that night so it felt like we had the place to ourselves. It also bordered the forest, so it was like camping only with warmth and indoor plumbing. It was made even more special by the appearance of a wallaby who turned up just after we'd unloaded the car. We fed it a couple of pieces of bread which it quickly devoured and then I thought I'd try it on some Weet-Bix Crunch biscuits. It ate two of them before doing this weird little stand-up, scratch tummy thing followed by coughing and hacking. Yvette was filming it but unfortunately stopped before it eventually threw up. Wallaby barf. It would have been a huge hit on YouTube or Funniest Home Videos. I'm not sure if it was the Weet-Bix but Yvette gave it some water which it drank before wolfing (or is that wallabying?) down the rest of the biscuits I'd thrown out.
We managed to cook the food we'd originally planned on making in Port Fairy and it was delicious. Steak sarnies for me, tofu sarnies for Yvette. Our little, moderately-priced cabin was quite homely with the smell of cooking and the warmth from the rather noisy reverse cycle air conditioner in the wall. Life was good.

Port Fairy and Surrounds - 19th of August

Ah - sleeping with no alarm is a truly wonderful thing. Having arrived in the dark last night, we got up and had a good look at our surrounds. The little cottages seem to be original buildings on the edge of the farm. In the paddock right next to us were alpacas who gave us the bored, superior and slightly idiotic look perfected by creatures such as llamas, alpacas, camels and certain upper-class toffs. Our plan today was to check out the Budj Bim National Heritage park. This is an area between Port Fairy and Portland which was a large aboriginal community which were permanently settled. The used the shallow rivers of the area to trap eels which they would smoke and trade with the other aboriginal countries. Evidence of smoked eels from this area has been found as far north as Queensland. There are remains of eel traps at Tyrendarra which is where we went to have a look. After parking the car at the carpark, we crossed a little bridge and looked at the path which meanders through what is an area of low water strewn with smallish basalt rocks. Luckily little wooden bridges have been built enabling a mud-free walk. The path is a large circle, however at one end, a neighbouring farmer's bull had somehow gotten into the area and was sitting on the path. As we approached, it stood up and didn't seem at all interested in moving. In fact, it seemed rather intent on protecting its little dry patch where it was sitting. If the neighbouring paddock was anything like this land, I don't really blame it. In deference to the large quadruped, we headed the other way around. It was easy to imagine people working in the fast flowing water, channelling the eels into a narrow area where they were caught in traps made from reeds. By the time we had walked around the whole path, the bull had not moved. Indeed it showed even less inclination towards moving and it could have been my imagination but he seemed quite prepared to defend his little patch of dryness with violence. As such, we decided to walk back the way we had come even though it meant walking all the way around again. I considered attempting a rock throw at the bull from the safety of the carpark but settled for the thought of just having a big steak for dinner instead. Stupid bull. On the way back to Port Fairy we stopped in at another little lookout place on the coast called The Crags. Similar to the outcrops we had seen the day before on a much smaller scale they were still impressive enough for photos. Back in PF we had a drive around the town for the first time. The town has preserved quite a great deal of the original buildings somehow which makes it a rather eclectic and attractive little village. After grabbing some pies from what seemed to be the best baker in town, we headed to a little spot on the other side of the river for some lunch and a bit of a rest. A cheeky magpie with very little fear started eating the crumbs under our table and I couldn't resist giving him some gingernut biscuit which he ate with glee (and a lot of crunching with his beak). Who knew maggies were fond of sweet biscuits? The next tourist destination was the Tower Hill Reserve which is a massive volcanic crater which has water in it an island in the middle. Okay, the island is still connected to the land, but you get the idea. You can drive down into it and park in the centre. The area was cleared by settlers but has been slowly been turned back in to what it originally was and is now a haven for wildlife. We saw what I thought was a wallaby but what turned out to be a very young kangaroo, still all fluffy and looking like it had been made especially for Japanese tourists. This was before the wildlife walk we did on which we saw no animals. On the way back we saw the same kangaroo again but this time with its whole family - two adults, one with a joey in her pouch and an older sibling. In the car park itself we saw a tree with three koalas in it - a young one having a feed of gum leaves and two adults, one with a little baby koala in her arms. As we drove out of the park, taking it very slow, I pulled over to let yet another impatient Victorian drive past only to see a small flock (a herd?) of emus on the plain beside the road. I was chased by an emu in a park when I was a small child and still have a minor dislike of them so I was glad they were a reasonable distance away. I must admit it was pretty impressive to see five of them all just doing their thing in their natural habitat. We drove back to Port Fairy and bought the obligatory postcards and fridge magnets and had a bit of look around for somewhere cheap to eat that night. Unfortunately PF has the same problem as Apollo Bay and a lot of the menus are city prices. The Stump (now called the Caledonian) is apparently the oldest continuously licensed pub in Victoria (although another pub in Portland also likes to claim the same honour) and we had to have a look. They had Fat Yak on tap which I heartily recommend if you ever see it around so we grabbed a couple of those and looked at the menu. The bartender must have had us pegged as she pointed out there was a bar menu available at the front bar where the meals were only $8. We decided this was a much better option than microwave meals and after heading back to the cottage for a short break, we came back for some food and some more Fat Yak before trundling back to the alpacas and our cute little cottage for a spot of blog-writing, diary-writing and Spicks and Specks.

Comments Please

It has been brought to my attention that it is not easy to comment on this blog. I didn't realise, but I needed to change some of the settings in order to make it easy to leave comments on the posts. I have done that now, so please feel free to let me know what you think. Or just say hello. Or 'well done you've managed to update your blog at last you lazy bastard'.

Apollo Bay to Port Fairy - 18th August

Our still-eager host, Brian knocked on our door at 8.30 with our breakfast - cereal, fruit, toast with homemade jams and orange juice. Having breakfast delivered is a truly magnificent thing. I think someone should start a home delivery breakfast service. Think about it - you wake up slightly hungover with no real desire or ability to fix some food so you'd just call the local café and order bacon and eggs or pancakes or whatever and they'd be 'round in less than 30 minutes. They could even offer asprin and Berocca for those in need. After a leisurely stuff-around, we packed the car and were about to leave when Brian told us about a whale which was supposedly in the bay. Now Yvette and I have had incredibly bad luck with sea mammal spotting. We've been to Merimbula (the supposed whale-watching capital of Australia) and saw zip, we've been to Hawks Nest where dolphins are rumoured to be in abundance and not seen squat, so we were a little sceptical. Especially when we stood on the verandah looking at bugger all while Brian gesticulated earnestly saying, "There! There!". Dubious, we jumped in the car and headed down to the beach for a closer look. Needless to say we couldn't see a thing. After a while searching with binoculars Yvette spotted something that looked like a large log in the water. It turned out to be the whale. Now, I've watched a lot of creatures, from Tawny Frogmouths sitting dead still to Koalas sleeping in the forks of trees and nothing was as boring as this whale. It did nothing. There was no breaching, no leaping, not even the promised frolicking. It couldn't even be arsed to put its tail out of the water. It was just like looking at one of the large dead logs (albeit with barnacles) that you see in Tinaroo Dam. It truly was a fail whale. After a quick double-back to take a final look at Apollo Bay, we headed off on the next section of the Great Ocean Road. Now, the most spectacular road part of TGOR is the bit we'd just done. From Apollo Bay to Port Fairy, the road heads inland through the beautiful forest of the Great Otway National Park which is lovely, but can't compare to the winding road cut into the cliffs. It does however have the most famous parts of the road - the 12 Apostles and the other sandstone juttings along the shoreline. Here's a piece of tortured English about the road from the Tourism Victoria brochure:

Bold words aren't enough to capture the overwhelming scale and spectacle that epitomises the Great Ocean Road around Port Campbell. Vast sea-canyons, gorges, blowholes and battalions of cliffs; simply being close to such leviathans is invigorating.

Perhaps the copywriter should have worried less about being bold and more about pulling their head out of their buttbutt. Before we reached the "invigorating leviathans" of the apostles, we decided to visit the Cape Otway lighthouse right at the end of Cape Otway (natch). Self-described as "the most significant lighthouse in Australia" they do charge you to visit the area but it is well worth it as there are some original buildings still there and a little museum of sorts. Plus you can climb to the top of the lighthouse. What makes it "most significant" is never really explained. I would say the lighthouse that stops you running aground would be the most significant. The lighthouse itself is not very tall but even still, once you are on the top, looking over the cliff tops to the crashing sea below, a little bit of vertigo can set in. They have a guide at the top in case you have any questions and ours told us about the UFOs he regularly sees (but apparently doesn't tell anyone about anymore). I shouldn't be too rude as he did give me a free souvenir magnet back at the giftshop afterwards. After a climb, and a short wander around the grounds, we headed back to TGOR and on to the famous apostles. On the track back to the main road we stopped and watched a koala eating gumleaves in tree branches above us. This is actually more unusual than it sounds. Given that koalas spend 20 hours of the day sleeping, the chances of seeing one of the actually doing something is remote. From here, the road heads north back into the hills before back south again. Avoiding turning down the the mysteriously named towns of Blue Johanna and Red Johanna (warrior princesses perhaps?) we powered on through Princetown, eating leftover pizza in the car in order to get to the 12 apostles. Now I knew this was a popular location but I was not prepared for the sheer amount of goddamn f*cking tourists that were there. There is a huge carpark built on the northern side of the road and an underpass to get to the various viewing platforms. When we saw the numerous cars and tourist coaches I was dismayed. Traveling in Winter has been brilliant so far - very few people on the roads, accommodation is easy to find and most places you have to yourself. Not the 12 apostles though. Still, it wasn't too crowded and there was room enough to take photos. I'd hate to think what the place is like in peak season though... For all my bitching, the rocks truly are spectacular. The scale and the beauty of the sandstone means you can stare at them for ages. Which we did. Although some of that time was waiting for the sun to come out from behind the clouds. The weather had been fine at the lighthouse, but had clouded over just before we reached the parking lot. After finally exhausting the majesty of the view (and my patience with idiot tour groups), we headed off north this time to try and locate a local cheesemaker we had seen advertised in the aforementioned Tourism Vic brochure. After a little diversion courtesy of the TomTom, we popped in at the Whey Apostle Cheese Factory, a small, privately owned business that not only make their own cheese, but run their own dairy farm to provide the milk needed. We did the obligatory tasting of all their cheeses and settled on some herb and garlic fetta, some brie and some stinky blue (for me). Yum. Our cheese urge sated, we headed back down to TGOR and on to the Loch Ard Gorge which is where in 1878 the ship Loch Ard on its way from London to Melbourne struck a reef and the crew of 54 all perished save two, Tom Pearce and Eva Carmichael, who washed ashore on a beach at the bottom of the cliffs. Tom proceeded to climb the cliffs and walk about 6km until he found some passing stockmen who helped to organise the rescue of Eva. Eva never saw Tom again and went straight back to Ireland where she promptly married and settled down. The cliffs here are quite spectacular and the sun had now come out and we managed to get some of the picture postcard golden afternoon light on the sandstone. Unfortunately the cattletruck tour buses were going the same way as us and there were just as many people as before. As such, we decided to completely skip the London Bridge viewing station and continued on until we saw a little turnoff to something called The Arch which was much better as it only had a tiny carpark completely unsuitable for the hulking behemoths packed with slack-jawed gawkalots which had plagued us today. For a full ten minutes we had the little area and viewing platform to ourself and although it wasn't as grandiose as the apostles, it was a lot more special. By this stage we were getting a little bit of sensory overload from looking at gorgeous, orange-lit cliffs and besides the sun was getting quite low and I had to drive directly into it. We did make one more stop at the Bay of Martyrs however for that one last photo opportunity. The last part of the drive was a bit of a struggle driving directly west into the setting sun. At times I couldn't see the road properly and just hope that everyone else obeyed the rules of the road (not something one should automatically assume in Victoria). We had booked in for two nights at Clonmara which has a couple of little old cottages on a working Alpaca farm. I had assumed they'd have a cooktop and we stopped in at the Coles in Warrnambool to get some supplies. Unfortunately the cottage only had a microwave. Luckily the cottage was incredibly cute and was quickly forgiven. We heated up some microwave meals we'd had with us in case of emergencies and ate a very ordinary dinner before an early night after almost 9 hours of travelling and sightseeing. It was nice to go to sleep knowing we didn't have to get up and pack up and be out by 10 the next morning.

Melbourne to Apollo Bay - 17th August

Surprisingly, the day was fine (but very windy) when we woke up. So far, most of packing and leaving has been done in the rain. Hopefully this was going to be the change in fortune that would stick.
We'd decided to wait until after peak hour to leave as we were heading west along a busy road, over the Westgate Bridge and then on to Geelong. The TomTom mostly behaved itself (it seems to get confused on straight highways of more than one lane) and we were out of Melbourne in very little time at all. Leaving Melbourne felt good. Even though we both loved the city, big cities are no longer our thing - especially after all the time we'd spent in the country beforehand. For all its good points, Melbourne does nothing to impress those leaving (or arriving I guess) from the west. It is a concrete and steel mess of roadworks, construction and industrial clutter. In a lot of ways, reaching Geelong is a visual improvement.
Our first stop was the Wathaurong glass and arts factory on the outskirts of town. A wholly Indigenous -run operation, they make beautiful glassworks for construction, awards and decoration. Although we loved the pieces, we decided against trying to ferry one around the country. They do have a website and apparently there is a business in Port Douglas that sells their works (although I imagine their markup would be huge).
It was time to begin The Great Ocean Road which really was the impetus for this whole trip. Originally the plan was to nip down to Victoria, drive along here and then head back up. Everything else from Adelaide on was added later. So it was with great expectations we headed down to Torquay which is where the road officially begins. Torquay is a beautiful, as-yet-unspoiled seaside town (which is odd, being so close to Melbourne) with a large parkland in front of some lovely beaches. It is pretty much nothing like its namesake in the UK and I think someone is missing a great opportunity by not opening a Fawlty Towers there.
After a quick lunch in the park, spoilt only by the wind (which would become a constant, annoying companion on our trip across) we began. Much has been written about The Great Ocean Road. It is an amazing engineering accomplishment that provides an almost constant, breathtaking view from Torquay to Apollo Bay. Winding and climbing, you hug seaside cliffs and scoot across little bridges over seemingly pristine bays trying to keep one eye on the road, and the other on the view. Occasionally we'd stop at laybys and lookouts to take in the splendor and to marvel at what we were doing. Making only one tourist stop at the Split Point Lighthouse (a fairly ordinary and unimpressive lighthouse) most of the day was spent driving slowly along the road, allowing people behind us to pass as much as possible. There was no way I was going to be hurried along. Even still, we made Apollo Bay in reasonable time and arrived while it was still light. We checked in at the Harley Reef B&B, a B&B in the style of a quality motel. I gathered that the regular owners were away and the place was being looked after by a friend. A rather eager seventysomething called Brian. He was friendly enough and seemed to take delight from pointing out all the various things inside the room. After unpacking and a wee rest, we headed down into town to see what Apollo Bay was all about and to possibly find some dinner and drinks. One thing I have noticed about the towns we have visited that are 'tourist towns' is that the price of meals matches those in big cities. Even the pubs are doing food for between $22 and $44 which seems a little ridiculous. After a slow walk down the main drag, we managed to find a pizza place that seemed reasonable and headed back to one of the pubs to work up more of an appetite with a couple of beers. The second pub on the strip had two local beers on tap and we just had to sample a pint or two each to get a proper feel of what they were like. They tasted and felt good. After a quick meal of some quite delicious (and reasonably priced!) pizzas, we wandered back to our funny little B&B and very quickly fell asleep. The next part of the Great Ocean Road lay ahead...

Another Week In Melbourne

Also yet to come. Sorry about the delay.