PART 2 THE GREAT OCEAN ROAD

 

BEAUTIFUL PORT FAIRY 

 

TOWER HILL



THE GROTTO



THE 12 APOSTLES



THE BAY OF ISLANDS



LOCH ARD GORGE



PORT FAIRY HARBOUR



PORT FAIRY TO 12 APOSTLES

Tuesday 21st February   We left Anglesea at 8am.  Our next destination was Port Fairy Gardens Caravan Park, another 3 hours drive along The Great Ocean Road.  We had to call into Warrnambool to get a wheel alignment on the caravan wheels, which took longer than anticipated.  Whilst we were waiting for the wheel alignment we spent a few hours looking around the town.   We had lunch by the ocean and drove along the coastline coming to the Tourist Information Centre at Flagstaff Hill where the Maritime Village is located.   By the time we picked the caravan up again, hooked on and got to Port Fairy we were pretty tired as it had been a long drive having to wait around in Warrnambool.  The caravan park was located along the Moyne River and had a garden beside the footbridge into town.  It’s quite a large park but much of it is closed off now that it’s not peak period.  We set up, had some dinner then went over the footbridge into town.

PORT FAIRY   We instantly liked the little port town and thought it was just so pretty, with boats on either side of the harbour.  It’s an historic port town that has been kept pretty much intact.  It was originally known as Belfast but was renamed Port Fairy in 1887 by Captain James Wishart when his cutter named Fairy was caught there in a bad storm.  In the early 1800’s it was an attractive place for sealers and whalers.  A whaling station was established on the island.  Whaling was so successful that by 1840 there were no whales left to capture, so the whaling station closed.  It had very rich soil and was populated by famers and many Irish immigrants.

Wednesday 22^nd February  We drove back towards Warrnambool to explore Killarney and Killarney Beach and admire the little stone walls along the road that you find in Ireland.  Many of the roads have Irish names.  There was a large Irish community of potato farmers living there when the town was first settled.  Behind Killarney Beach there is a cheap camp where you can stay for $17 per night (unpowered) and $22 for a powered site.  It’s run by Jamie O’Brien.  It’s very popular there and was quite crowded with vans and motor homes.  We’ll definitely stay there if we’re back in the area.

 Further on is the historic Irish town of Koroit that holds a big Irish Festival every April. William Rutledge an important Irish landowner took up 5,120 acres of land in the 1840’s and imported fellow Irish labourers to work the land.  These poor fellows were suffering during the potato famine in Ireland and were eager to look for opportunities abroad.  Many Scots and Yorkshire folk also lived there, but the Irish dominated and set the lay of the land.  Koroit soon became known as a major potato producer.

Later that night we came back to Warrnambool for the Shipwrecked laser light show at the Maritime Village.  They hold this show nightly.  It’s so popular that they had to have a second show that night, starting at 9.50pm – a bit late but we really wanted to see it.  Entrance was $26 per adult.  We had a guided walk through the village by lantern and were taken to an auditorium set out like the inside of a ship.  We sat down and saw a re-enactment of people telling their story of how they were on the Loch Ard ship that sank in 1878 in Victoria.  One was the captain of the ship, one was Tom Pierce an 18 year old ship’s apprentice and the other 18 year old passenger Eva Carmichael.  The Loch Ard set sail from Greenwich in England on 1^st March 1878 with 81 passengers, 51 crew and valuable cargo.  During the 13 week voyage they did the great circle route through hot temperatures to the freezing cold arctic temperatures.  They had days of bad weather and fog and couldn’t plot their course accurately.  Consequently, they hit a reef off of Loch Ard Gorge and sank in 15 minutes because of the cargo of heavy lead they were carrying.  There were only 2 survivors – Tom Pierce and Eva Carmichael.  The captain who was only 6 weeks married perished with his ship.  The most famous piece salvaged was “The Peacock” which was going to an exhibition in Melbourne.  It’s current value is $4 million, but was purchased by the town of  Warrnambool for $4,000 at a salvage auction.  It is now proudly displayed in The Maritime Village for everyone to admire.  It was a fantastic show well worth looking at.  It gave us a great insight into the cramped conditions aboard the ship and the hopes and expectations of the immigrants wanting to start a new life or visit relatives already settled in Australia.  The laser show was projected over the water in the harbour and our seats rocked with the motion of the boat and we could really imagine what it felt like to be shipwrecked.  Afterwards, we walked up the cobblestone roads and hills to the top of the village and couldn’t help thinking about what we had just seen.

Thursday 23^rd February   We set off at 9am eager to see the rest of The Great Ocean Road.  It took us over an hour to get to the first stop The Bay of Islands.  It was just breathtaking and we were in awe of what we were looking at.  Every lookout we stopped at was magnificent with deep turquoise clear water and changing colours of  the cliff faces.  We stopped at The Bay of Martyrs, The Grotto, Port Campbell and many more along the way. Loch Ard Gorge was quite a poignant stop, having just learnt its history first hand the previous night.  We saw the actual cave where Eva and Tom sheltered on that fateful night. It was almost impossible to imagine how Tom had clambered up the cliffs barefoot to get help.  We had lots of steps to help us up and down the steep cliffs.  Each lookout just got better and better as we went up and down steps and pathways to the viewing platforms.  There were lots of 15 minute helicopter rides over the area from different starting points.  The 12 Apostles was the biggest stop with a visitor’s centre, helicopter rides, huge car park and café.   The views were superb and magnificent and it was hard to absorb just how phenomenal it all was.  I would say it should be a must on everyone’s bucket list of things to do.  It would probably rate as our number one destination so far in our travels.

To cap it off we stopped at Cheeseworld at Allensford on the way back.  They have free tastings every hour and a café famous for its milkshakes and ploughman’s lunches.  Entry is free and the museum there was full of interesting artifacts from the past, machinery, woodworking tools, china and photographs.  We really enjoyed the cheeses that were made in the factory across the road.  We had a yummy Devonshire tea and bought some of our favourite cheeses for future happy hours.

Friday 24^th February   We went on a half hour Bay Cruise that left from the harbour at 10.30, costing $10.  We were greeted by “Captain Jane” and her border collie Molly (a 5 year old rescue dog).   Captain Jane was a fascinating local character who had been sailing in various boats for many years (she had previously been on cray fishing boats).  She has been operating the tour boat for the past 17 years and informed us we were on her 10,897^th trip over that period. We knew her trip was going to be different to what we had expected when she informed us she had to “fill up with fuel” if no-one objected or was in a hurry.  Well that turned out to be quite an episode of bowsers not working, cards not being valid to operate the bowser and a longstanding battle with port officials being unhelpful towards her.  Just as we were heading off up the river, without having refueled, there was a miraculous recovery with the bowser operating. We had to back around into position again and got 2 tanks filled with diesel (thankfully).  We learnt as much of Captain Jane’s history as we did of our surrounds and our 30 minute trip stretched out to 1 hour and 10 minutes.  She was having fun and was enjoying our company as much as we were enjoying listening to her tales.  We thought it was the best $10 of entertainment we’d spent.  Molly balanced on the gunnels through the waves and was steady as a rock the whole time.  She’s never once yet fallen off the boat.  She was as entertaining as her owner, running up and down and barking when she saw fit.

After lunch and a good laugh talking about our boat trip, we drove to Tower Hill an inactive volcano with a crater lake.  It is part of the State Park system and was used for pasture for stock, crop growing fields, a stone quarry and an unofficial motorcycle racing venue.  The area has been reforested with over 300,000 native trees.  Koalas, kangaroos magpies, geese, echidnas, possums and waterbirds can be found there.  Small quantities of gold were found from time to time and it soon developed into a town and tourist destination.

There are lots of walks you can do of varying lengths.  It’s a very quiet, restful place where you feel so peaceful.  We saw wild emus walking past.

That night we went to “Wishart’s” fish restaurant by the harbour and had “Catch of The Day” blue grenadier.  It was a huge serve of 2 pieces of fish, chips and salad for $25 each.  We were going to have an entrée until we saw the size of the serves coming out to other customers.  It was very nice and we had a window seat alongside the harbour, despite the fact that I asked for grilled fish but got fried, the waiter ignored my request for extra lemon and when I ordered a bottle of wine he brought me a glass – he later came back with a bottle and said I may as well have the extra glass as he’d poured it out and couldn’t do anything with it!!!

The rest of our stay at Port Fairy was very enjoyable.  There’s a beautiful beach 5 minutes walk from the caravan park with really soft sand and we walked there every day.

Next Week:  We’ll be going to Portland (an hour from Port Fairy) for a few days as we both want to do a boat trip out to the seal colonies.  We’ll then be heading to Mount Gambier to see The Blue Lakes.

Don't forget to log on the blog for another exciting episode.  Thanks for your company so far.  Take care Love Marian, Richard and Sally.

ON THE ROAD AGAIN OFF TO THE GREAT OCEAN ROAD

T

TheMemorial Arch and Diggers Statue



Stunning coastal views



Evolution of the surf board design

TORQUAY TO APOLLO BAY

Monday 13^th February  It was very sad saying goodbye to our wonderful friends that have given up their driveway so that we could park our caravan there. The two months we’ve been based there have just flown and we’ve had lots of laughs and fun along the way with them.  We’re going to miss them all so much, but it’s time for us to be off on our travels once more.

We left at 10am to avoid the rush hour traffic to Sydney.  We intended to free camp overnight at Gundagai with an estimated travel time of 7 hours including stops.  We got to Gundagai about 4pm and decided to drive further on to lessen the travel time the following day.  We free camped just before Albury and were the only caravan at that spot that night. It was very quiet and dark.

Tuesday 14^th February  We left our overnight stop at 8am.  Our destination was Anglesea.  We drove through Goulburn and reached the Victorian border at Wodonga at 1pm, then drove around the outskirts of Melbourne on the freeways and ring roads and came into Anglesea at 3pm.  It had been 2 very long days of driving doing over 1,000 kilometres and we were both very tired.  We set up quickly and went for a walk along the beach.  We stayed at Anglesea Beachfront Caravan Park.  It’s a huge family park with gym, swimming pool, movie room, camp kitchen and is right by the beach.  We were at the back in “D” section  (dog section).  It was actually pretty good and very quiet and we met some lovely people there also travelling with their dogs. This is the biggest caravan park we’ve stayed at yet.

Wednesday 15^th February  We drove 20 minutes back along the coastline to Torquay the official start of  The Great Ocean Road.  It’s a lively tourist town full of cafes and restaurants.  We found a newly opened beachfront café and had a lovely lunch watching the ocean.  We stopped at Bell’s Beach where the surfing culture began.  It is internationally recognised as the surfing capital and hosts the Rip Curl Pro Competition each year.  It’s the birth place of surfing brands Rip Curl, Quicksilver, Globe and Billabong.  The car park was full of camper vans and surfers and had stunning beach views down the hill.  We forgot to take the camera with us (how stupid) so we had to come back another day to visit the Surf Museum and take photos of Bells Beach (it’s like going to Sydney and having to visit Bondi Beach).

Anglesea is quite a small town with a fairly new boardwalk around the beach estuary and into town.  There are some beautiful coastal walks through the back of the caravan park.  The town is famous for it’s plant species - wildflowers and orchids and a quarter of Victoria’s plants grow there.  There are at least 100 varieties of orchids.  They host the annual spring Wildflower Show.  Amongst the peace of the park you can hear a range of birds chirping away happily.

Thursday 16^th February We were keen to drive further along the Airey’s Inlet, Lorne and Apollo Bay.  It was a 30 minute drive from Anglesea to Aireys Inlet to see the 34 metre high Split Point Lighthouse that featured in the tv series “Round The Twist” that we used to love watching with the kids when they were younger.  It’s affectionately known as “The White Lady”.  There’s the usual tearoom and holiday cottages and coastal walks around the lighthouse. You can also book tours to look inside. 

Great Ocean Roadand planned to drive to

From Airey’s Inlet we drove through the winding roads up and down the coastline passing through the Memorial Arch and Diggers Sculpture, built by returned World War 1 soldiers as a memorial to their fallen mates. Around each bend there were more and more magnificent mediterranean–like views of crystal clear turquoise water and rock faces. There are lots of turnout bays along the way to stop and take photos and admire the view.  You’re also supposed to pull in there if you’re holding up the traffic behind you.  It took us another 45 minutes to come into Lorne.

Lorne is a beautiful big beach town with a backdrop to the Great Otway National Park.  We drove to the end of the town and parked by the pier and busy fisherman’s coop and restaurants.  We walked along the pier that stretches about 200 metres.  It was full of fishermen and their equipment.   Looking over the pier the water is transparent and aqua and looking back to the town you can see The Grand Hotel still quite majestically standing proud on the corner with it’s iron lace verandas.  We were both quite taken with Lorne and said we’d stop off on the way back for a further look.  We drove further on from Lorne passing Cumberland River, Separation Creek, Wye and Kennett Rivers and Wongarra and after an hour’s drive came into Apollo Bay.  We had a picnic lunch overlooking the main beach.  It’s a very busy town and very touristy.  We weren’t as taken with it as Lorne.  We meandered through the shops and headed back to Lorne for a longer walk and look around there.

The Great Ocean road stretches for approximately 250 kilometres of road from Torquay through to Warrnambool. Parts of it are known as the Shipwreck Coast as many ships have met their doom there through the ages.

Friday 17^th February  We went back to Torquay to visit the Surf Museum.  It was a very interesting place with photos and the actual surfboards of the early champions.  It also hosts the “Hall of Fame” for all the surfing legends like Mark Richards, Tom Carroll, Tom Curren, Mark Occhilupo, 10 times World Champion/4 times Bells Champion Kelly Slater, Andy Irons and Mick Fanning.

On entering the museum we saw a photo of Duke Kahanamoku from Hawaii and his original long wooden surf board.  Duke is responsible for first bringing surfing to the World’s attention. Richard commented they looked like ironing boards. 

There’s a wall of the various boards displayed from the first long heavy redwood board, a 1920’s balsa ½ length when innovations in design began to modify the length, material used and weight of the boards.  In 1935 a fin was added, 1940 they were made of lightweight fibreglass.  In 1960 Aussie surfer Mark Richards decided he needed 2 fins for added stability.  In 1981 another Aussie surfer Simon Anderson designed a 3 fin board known as ‘The Thruster” for greater stability and manoeuvrability and the surfing style we know  and enjoy today was launched.

We enjoyed looking at the older style bathers for men and several surfing history documentaries running non-stop throughout the museum.

Although we’re not into surfing that much we still found it fascinating and stayed looking around much longer than we thought.  It’s certainly worth a visit if you’re in the area.  Outside the museum are all the factory outlets for the surf brands.

We’ve had a fascinating week at Anglesea, the scenery is stunning and the weather has been gorgeous.

Next Week:  We’ll be moving 3 hours along the coast to Port Fairy at the other end of The Great Ocean Road to see the rest of the coastline.  We’re looking forward to seeing the 70 minute Laser Light Show at Flagstaff Hill Maritime Village in Warrnambool.  It’s a re-created 1800’s village.

Thanks for joining us once more and don’t forget to log in again next week. Love Marian, Richard and Sally xxx 

FIRST BLOG FOR 2012

  

Glenbawn Dam

     

Tyson the cross doberman/mastiff nicknamed "big bear" 



One of the spectcular sunsets

Camp Cox top  campsite 5 star rating

Our hilltop view over glenbawn

Tyson going home with Mitchell and  Reece

Welcome back to our blog.  As this is the first one for this year, I’d like to wish you a belated Very Happy New Year and hope you had a wonderful Christmas with your families.

It’s been two months since my last blog.  As I mentioned at the end of last year’s blog, we’ve been based in our friend’s driveway at Warnervale, Central Coast.  They’ve very kindly opened their home for us and made us feel very welcome, wanted and loved.  We’ve been up and down to Sydney over Christmas and New Year staying with our children in Holsworthy, Sydney.  

Our eldest son Daniel left Sydney 6^th January to move to Perth.  He did a road trip with his friend and started a new job on 6^th January. He’s now in a house share in North Perth with a cousin of mine, enjoying his new lifestyle.  Unfortunately his job didn’t work out to be quite what he was led to think prior to leaving and he’s no longer there.  He says there’s plenty of work opportunities and is hoping to have a better job fairly soon. 

Our youngest son Adam moved in with his 2 sisters whilst we were there, so we were kept fully occupied helping them both relocate.  It was fortunate that the girls had to move to a bigger 3 bedroom house in November and had a spare room for Adam. 

Whilst we were at Warnervale we were also kept very busy helping Kate and Jeff with jobs around the house, sharing child minding during the school holidays and cooking when Kate was at work.  I felt like I was back at East Hills and running around all the time.   It was great to be able to help theut.

Our dogs Sally and Tyson got on extremely well.  Sally was a bit scared of Tyson at first as he's so big but he's just a big sooky teddy bear and loves us to death.  We always give him a big bone when we get there and he knows when we've arrived and howls under the side gate till we say hello to him and give him a bone.

Back to our travels:

Wednesday 24^th January – Lake Glenbawn Holiday Park (near Scone, Hunter Valley)  We spent 5 days there and were amazed at the amount of wild kangaroos jumping around so close to us.  There was also an incredible display of huge butterflies fluttering everywhere.  I don’t think we’ve ever seen so many wild ones at one spot before. The place was also abundant with birds.  It was an incredibly beautiful, peaceful spot.  The actual caravan park was 4km away from the water.  As we wanted to be closer to the water we bought a generator – a Kipor 2.6KVA .  Richard couldn’t wait to get there and try it out -  a big kid with a new toy!!!  It worked extremely well and we mainly used  it for cooking at night and charging the computer.   We found a lovely spot at the top of a hill overlooking the lake.  Our friends Kate and Jeff and their 2 boys Mitchell and Reece took their tent and we had a lovely time together once the heavy rain from our trip up there and the first day passed over.  It was amazing to see how fast the ground dried out from sopping wet mud when we arrived to totally dry by midday the following day.  Mitchell and Reece were keen to try out their kayak and spent many enjoyable hours in the water swimming and fishing.  There were some lovely walks around the area and a kiosk/coffee shop for basic supplies.  The trip took us 2 ½ hours from Warnervale.

Glenbawn Dam holds 1 ½ times as much water as Sydney Harbour and is a popular weekend spot for water skiing and boating.

Our friends left on Sunday 29^th and we were alone on the hilltop.  Unfortunately later that night we had a severe windstorm and the caravan was rocking, so we didn’t get much sleep.  Richard had rolled the awning in thankfully as we were leaving the following morning, otherwise it would have ripped to shreds.

Monday 30^th January  -  It was still very windy as we packed up to leave.  Our destination was Soldier’s Point in Nelson Bay.  We passed through the town of Aberdeen where they hold highland games every month.  We were going to the Bay to catch up with our friends Margaret and Colin that are based there until the end of March.  It took us 3 hours to get there.  The weather was glorious by the time we arrived.  It’s a medium sized park with lots of cabins, grassed area for camping and 2 areas for caravans.  It’s beside the Marina and a lovely spot, far from the madness of Nelson Bay itself.  There was a gorgeous large salt water swimming pool/spa and I was keen to have a swim as soon as I’d caught up with the washing.  It’s an expensive area and low peak rates were $40 per night (yikes).  Luckily we weren’t staying too long.   We’ve been to Nelson Bay many times when the kids were younger, but hadn’t been to Soldier’s Point.  We had a few drives around Lemon Tree Passage and Tanilba -  beautiful little coastal towns that haven’t been spoilt by new mansions and tourism.   We spent the evenings with our friends and enjoyed their company once again chatting and making plans to meet up again in either South Australia or Western Australia.  On our last night we had dinner at Soldier’s Point Bowling Club and were surprised to see Pauline Hanson and her boyfriend sitting 2 tables behind us. 

Friday 3^rd February  -  We headed back to “Base Camp Cox” at  Warnervale and hurriedly packed and repacked for our last trip to Sydney to see the children before we take off on the next part of our Trip Round Oz.

It’s lovely to see the family again and catch up with as many friends as we’re able to in a few days.  Apologies to those we didn’t manage to see.

Wednesday 8^th February – We headed back to “Base Camp Cox” to spend the next few days doing a complete spring clean/overhaul of the interior and exterior of the van and car in preparation for the “big  off” on 13^th February.

Saturday 11^th February  -  Rod Stewart Concert at Hope Winery, Hunter Valley.  Richard bought tickets for Rod’s concert for me for Christmas and this was the reason we were at Warnervale for longer than we’d planned.  Well we’ve had lots of heavy storms all week and it wasn’t looking too good for an outdoor concert.  Even as we were leaving it was pouring down and got heavier as we got to Cessnock.  The sky ahead looked very grim.  Luckily by the time we got there the skies had cleared and it turned out to be  a beautifully mild night. We’d packed big umbrellas, raincoats and a tarpaulin just in case.   Walking through the car park we were amazed at how many RV vehicles were parked there overnight.  There were at least 20 plus a few caravans, tents and people sleeping overnight in the backs of their cars.  It looked like the car park at Melbourne Cup with everyone sitting around drinking wine and chatting. 

We were in general admission and brought a rug to sit on.  We found a good spot behind the barricade to the left of the stage.  The evening was just perfect, very mild weather, no rain in sight and everyone sitting around drinking and chatting and having a lovely time.  Diesel was the support act.  We hadn’t heard him play before and were very surprised at just how good he was.  I must say the whole event was so well organised with plenty of toilets and a good food court set up in tents to cater for all tastes.  Wine was $35 a bottle which is to be expected at an event like that.  We had a lovely massaman beef and Singapore noodles.  They were $15 each and were delicious.

We had a good chuckle when we saw a “Rod lookalike” roaming around. He was posing for photos with groups of girls and plonking himself down uninvited on peoples’ rugs.  He was pretty drunk by this stage and thought he was just wonderful.  The first time I saw him I had to do a double take as he was very convincing.  He was definitely “working the crowd”.

When Rod came on we raced down to the barricade just under the stage to the left and were so close.  We had a fantastic view of the whole concert.  It was brilliant with 2 drummers, 2 guitarists, 3 female singers, a female saxophone/trumpet player, female violinist and another male sax player.  The stage was pure white with big R O D letters and flashing lights around them.  He is a superb performer and came out dressed in black pants and  shirt with bright pink jacket and tie and pink suede shoes.  Despite being 67 he’s got incredible energy, looks really fit and can still hit the high notes.  We danced for the whole 2 hours he was on and thought the Hope Winery was a fantastic venue as we hadn’t seen a concert there before.\

The night was topped off by a great firework display that lasted about 20 minutes.  We walked back to the carpark with everyone cranking up “Maggie May” on their car stereos on the way out.  Those that were staying went back to their RV’s and carried on drinking outside.  It was a wonderful night.

In our next blog we'll be heading off for The Great Ocean Road so don't forget to look on our blog again soon.  Love for now Marian,  Richard and Sally