No visit to Victoria State is complete without an iconic road trip along the Great Ocean Road. Our day began punishingly early at 4:15am and Martin drove us across the peninsula to Port Fairy in time for a hearty breakfast. What a delightful name. It is a river port but I don’t know where the ‘fairy’ part comes from. It used to be called Belfast so this is a great improvement.

The dawn part of the journey was when there was a high risk of collision with kangaroos as that is the time of day when they are most active. I slept but Kevin was on ‘kangaroo watch’. Like cats’ eyes in the road you just see the reflection in their eyes before you impact. Fortunately we didn’t!

Then it was off along the coast, hugging the shoreline and cliff tops, our trip punctuated with stops at scenic view point or places of cultural interest.

The views were stunning…

With many natural features formed by coastal erosion. Such as these stacks.

THEN the Australian summer arrived today in force. We were walking in 35 degree heat and in the foreground of the picture above you can see some vegetation in gorgeous green hues. This was beautiful to the eye, vast swathes of it but it is also home to a multitude of extremely annoying flies who were clearly in peak season. I understand now why Australians have corks hanging from their hats!! Very sensible. These critters were persistent and very attracted to human faces and if you weren’t careful they ended up in your mouth or nose. Not nice.

When the winter winds stir up the ocean the sound of the water rushing through this hole is like thunder (hence the name)

This feature below is called London Bridge and it really does resemble some of the bridges spanning The Thames. In keeping with the nursery rhyme this London Bridge actually fell down in 1990

The coast here is also know as the ‘Shipwreck’ coast. Most famous is the clipper the Loch Ard. It left Gravesend on 2nd March 1878 with a crew of 36, 18 passengers and a mixed cargo. On 31st May as they were nearing Port Philip the passengers and crew were having a celebratory party when the ship ran aground. All but 2 were drowned. One was a well to do young girl Eva who had been traveling with her parents and 4 siblings. The other was a cabin boy named Tom. Tom found Eva clinging to a spar from the mast and dragged her ashore.

At the end of this beach you can see a cave. Tom dragged her there and made sure she was safe. Then risking all he braved the water pounding up the cliffs as he climbed out of the gorge. After an hour he managed to get to the top. He searched for help and found two stockmen who immediately fetched help and rescued Eva from the cave. It would have been nice if this story had a romantic ending but it didn’t. Eva got the next boat back to England.

The only other thing to survive the shipwreck was this piece of glass.

Quite incredible that a piece of glass this delicate survived that catastrophic devastation.

But the highlight of the whole trip was the sighting of the 12 Apostles. Once a peninsula and now eroded from blowholes and arches to be standing stacks. Also once 12 there are now only 9, erosion having washed away 3 of them. Even so they are still pretty impressive.

The colours of the sea and sky against the shoreline were beautiful.

Australian flora and fauna is also fascinating.

We came across this koala just chillin’ in a tree. Apparently they have favourite tress that they return to. I also learned that they are very noisy at night making a loud grunting kind of noise so you just have to hope that a koala doesn’t make one of the trees in your garden its favourite.

This is a gum tree. It has extremely sticky sap. When the bushfires happen the stringy outer bark is burned leaving a smooth flame resistant inner bark. Isn’t nature amazing!

We finished day with a typical Aussie bbq. These are public gas barbies which are found in picnic areas all over. The amazing thing is how clean everyone keeps these shared facilities.

We had a stunning view but once again spent our time eating with one hand and waving away flies with the other.

Many thanks to Martin and his son for taking the time to drive us around

The Ba Gua is a pattern of trigrams comprising yang (or solid lines) and yin (broken line) surrounding a Taiji ball. The symbolic ball and the trigrams were both developed over 5000 years ago in the Henan Province by the mythical FuXi.

Fuxi is allegedly responsible for starting the first society by regulating family group with names, creating agriculture and farming techniques as well as observing nature to be able to come up with the polar opposites that we know as Yin and Yang. This system has become the foundation of all Chinese culture and philosophy.

Today we visited the place where his community flourished and developed into the Chinese nation. It is now a national monument and contains the place venerated as his tomb.

The tomb is underneath a circular mound with a square which represents earth and heaven.

We lit some insence sticks

The park contained many notable features such as this tree with a prominent knot which looks like an ear. Fuxi is said to have ‘heard’ the secrets of the universe.

These two trees are growing together. They are a Cypress and a Sandalwood which are notoriously hard to combine but which have come together here naturally showing tha humans should not always intervene. We should let nature do its own thing.

Around the park are many trigrams

The BaGua contains a wealth of philosophical concerns which take years to study and the I Ching or Book of Changes is the most well known place to learn them. But in addition the Chinese also use this for fortune telling. As I am learning the I Ching I decided to have a go. Most fortune telling is complex and involves mathematical calculations to result in a hexagram (double the trigrams) and then knowledge to interpret the meaning but here the guy just asked me to select a stick and then a thin card.

Apparently I am a good person who is respected by many (but not all) for the work that I do. The card I selected was the dragon which is the top animal in their heirarchy and represents these abilities to a high level!

Apparently FuXi came up with the concept of a dragon because many different people wanted to join his group from Tibet and Mongolia and the South. Each group brought with them their own sacred animal eg snake, turtle or tiger so FuXi combined all their characteristics into one mythical animal encapturing all strengths.

Dragon had 9 sons and this is the 9th

Around the park were topiary gates and walls.

My favorite was this gate. Called the Taiji Gate. This is the only time that I have seen a gate in China with this name.

And finally these five statues of 800 year old traitors who betrayed their Emperor in the Song Dynasty. People are allowed to slap the faces of the four men and one woman as eternal punishment. We saw one elderly lady wheel herself up them heave herself onto her feet so that she could viciously slap the statues. It is supposed to be a message that you should behave yourself but honestly after 800 years perhaps its time to forgive and forget…

Lao zi which literally means ‘Old Master’ is one of China’s 4 great philosophers. He is attributed with writing the book Tao de Ching which means the changing virtues of the Tao.

Born Li, Er in the 6th century BCE he was a royal librarian and archivist. When he retired to the Henan Province he dedicated his time to composing his book which would ultimately become one of the founding texts of Taoism.

Here is the library or study where he did his writing. It is symbolicly raised high to be closer to heaven.

Below the library is a temple to Laozi and also a Taiji ball.

Around the ball were pictures carved in the stone representing symbols that are important in Taoism and Taiji.

Everywhere we could see the Tao.

Even in old style script

Interestingly the Japanese bombed the site in 1938. They sent 13 bombs over the wall but not a single one exploded !

The Japanese were so shocked that they ran away! Locals think the site is now even more auspicious.

Many people come here to drink for the healing spring waters.

There is even a column with his writing on which people rubbed themselves against to get healing from joint pains

Many signs gave deep philosophical messages such as this

While I was busy immersing myself in this deep cultural experience Kevin was proving to be quite a celebrity. I lost count of the number of times local ladies asked for photos with him or just wanted to shake his hand!!! We were so far off the tourist track that they don’t see many foreigners here at all.

After lunch it was off to the tomb of Mulan and her parents.

Close by though was an impressive temple dedicated to her

And outside…

Apparently they are farmers and as it was a Saturday they weren’t at work so this was a place for them to hang out.

We finished the day walking the streets of Shengqiu old city and treating ourselves to hawthorn apple treats