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