Great Ocean Road

Today I drove the Great Ocean Road for the second time. Last time was together with my then wife, about 10 years ago, when we drove it east to west. Today I drove it in the reverse direction, which actually does matter. Let me explain: 

The drive can be broken up into three different sections: The westerly section where you will get limestone feature overload, the middle section where it leads across the green hills of Cape Otway and the easterly section where the road is carved into the cliffs and the drive itself becomes the attraction. It is on this last section where you are better off if you drive east to west because you are on the ocean side, where all the lookouts are. It is almost impossible to get to them if you drive in an easterly direction. I also suggest that, if you have never driven it before, you take two days and break at Cape Otway. There are some nice walks to be had in the Cape Otway National Park and it also gives you more time to look at the many different sights on the westerly section.

Coming from the west, on the first part of the drive I felt like a postman. There are so many lookouts and sights that you rarely drive more than a kilometre or so before you get out of the car again to look at some coastal feature. The coast is limestone and, as we know by now, this weathers into spectacular shapes, so all along this section you will be presented with different formations of arches, pillars, islands and gorges. Of course they all have fancy names like the Bay of Martyrs, Twelve Apostles, Razorback, London Bridge etc, probably named by the tourist board, rather than the early explorers who were much more literal and would have called them Bay of Rocks, Rock Pillars and Holey Rock, or Blandings Bay, after some English aristocrat. The one thing that all these attractions have in common is that you will share them with lots of other people. The Great Ocean Road is a major tourist attraction and easy to reach in a day from Melbourne. You will also soon learn that the tourist dollars are resolutely delivered to us on the right hand side of walk ways... Luckily each car park exit has a large sign "In Australia we drive on the left!", so the danger of collisions on the road is less than on the footpaths.

Arches

Islands

Pillars

People

Cape Otway is my favourite part of the Great Ocean Road. The road climbs high into green hills and pastures. The drive from the road to the cape is about 12 kilometres and leads through dense forest. On the cape itself there is a lighthouse and the old lighthouse keepers cottages, where we stayed overnight on our last trip. Today I didn't get close to the lighthouse because they fenced it all off and wanted $20 entry fee. So I took a walk up to a lookout instead, which is why you only get a far away view of the light house. What was far more pleasing for me is that I saw my first koala in the wild. Not only one, but several, it was koala city out there! About 2 km from the tip of the cape is a forest of Manna Eucalyptus, which they like to eat. I always thought that koalas mainly sleep because they are permanently stoned from the toxins in the leaves, but they were quite active, climbing around to find the juiciest foliage.

My first wild koala sighting 

 

Cape Otway Lighthouse

From Cape Otway the road then descends back to the beach at a town called Apollo Bay, and from there it follows the coast very closely along beaches and carved into cliffs. There are some spectacular sections. This part of the drive is as windy, or even more so, than the hill section, so you won't be able to drive very fast. As I mentioned before, here the Great Ocean Road itself is the attraction, more so than the coastal features. Albeit, along the way you will get to some small towns that look like nice places to spend a few days on a beach holiday.

Along the descent from Cape Otway

And then the road becomes the main attraction

Tomorrow I will head into Melbourne's suburbs to catch up with a ski bum friend who I haven't seen for many years. After that I will head through the Victorian high country towards Thredbo, where the loop around Australia will close. Let me finish today's post with a short video of a young koala taking a leap:

Entering Victoria

No, not what you think with your dirty mind! 

Today is my birthday and I just arrived in Warnambool in the state of Victoria, where I am staying in a rather posh hotel at a cost of less than my basic room cost me in the Nullarbor; a good example of supply and demand...

Yesterday I drove from Victor Harbor to Robe. The satellite navigation system in my car wanted me to backtrack to the A1, which I chose to ignore because that's where I came from. Instead I just followed a minor coast road in an easterly direction, first to Goolwa and then to a place called Milang, which is on Lake Alexandrina. The lake is rather big and forms part of the delta of the mighty river Murray. I had to circumnavigate the lake to get to a town called Wellington, where there was a river crossing. Little did I know that there wasn't a bridge, but a ferry, an extra treat! I waited to drive onto the ferry together with only one other car and was fully prepared not to pay until it gets me to the other side (you see, I learned my life skills from pop songs), but to my great surprise the service was free. 

So ferry across the Murray
'cause this land's the place I love...

After the crossing, with Gerry and the Pacemakers on my mind, I stuck to my plan and kept close to the coast. The road followed the Coorong for over 100 kilometres. The Coorong is a lagoon separated from the sea by a very long bank of sand dunes, and is meant to be a paradise for sea birds. It was OK for a while, but the further south I drove the more it started to stink. I later did an Internet search for "Coorong stinks" and found out that there is a problem with the Murray river not carrying enough water to flush out the Coorong and that it's salt levels are now more than four time that of the ocean beyond, which leads to it dying off. I guess this could be a side effect of the Murray Darling Irrigation Scheme.

The Coorong stretches for over 100 km along the coast

I arrived in Robe around lunch time. It is a small town, still in South Australia, with a nice little harbour from which they run a fleet of crayfish boats. I took a walk along the foreshore around the harbour and around Cape Dombey, on which stands a large obelisk. It was put there in the mid nineteenth century as a marker for ships and to house rockets that they used to fire rescue equipment to ships in distress. Cape Dombey was first named Cape Lanne by our good old friend Nicholas Baudin, but was soon after renamed by our other friend Matthew Flinders. At least Flinders named the rocks out in the sea off Robe "Baudin Rocks" and the bay on which Robe is situated "Guichen Bay" after a French admiral. 

The obelisk at Cape Dombey. It took 32 oxen to pull it there!

The walk around the cape takes you to the modern lighthouse, which to me looked a lot less appealing, but I must congratulate the designers for being brave enough to break with tradition. After the view of the new lighthouse I took a loop track back, which took me to the ruins of the old Robe Gaol, which isn't much to behold. Much more interesting is the old customs house, which is now home to a small museum that explains the history of Robe. I think the the most interesting event happened in the years of 1856 to 1858, when over 14,000 Chinese arrived in Robe and from here walked over 300 kilometres to the Victorian gold fields. They were forced to do so by the Victorian Government introducing a £10 tax on any Chinese arriving in a Victorian port.

The old customs house, now a small museum

Modern lighthouse design

Directly opposite the customs house is a memorial for all the ships that got wrecked along the coast. It also displays busts of Captain Flinders and Sub-Lieutenant Baudin (I mistakenly made him a captain too in earlier posts), so we can finally put a face to their names.

Flinders and Baudin

This morning I left Robe at half past seven and kept going along the coast towards Warnambool in Victoria. After a couple of hours of driving I saw a tourist sign "Seal Colony" and, because I like seals, followed it. A small winding road took me to a very small town called "Cape Bridgewater". I parked my car and found a sign that told me that it was a 2.5 km walk to the seal colony, just over the cliffs. The walk was absolutely delightful. It lead along cliffs that were very reminiscent of the coastal walk in Cornwall in the UK, with grazing land abutting the cliffs and soft grass underfoot. The walk first led down to the sea, where you could take a boat trip to see the seal colony, and from there up the highest cliff in Victoria, 135 metres above sea level. Once the highest point is crossed it then leads straight ahead to the tip of the cape. There are two seal colonies, an Australian fur seal colony and a New Zealand fur seal colony. They ozzies are to the left of the cape, the kiwis to the right, they don't mix! There is a good lookout to watch the Australian colony, and a smaller one for the New Zealand fur seals, where you have to crane your neck a bit to see them. When I walked along the Cape's southern edge to try and find a better vantage point I came across a large mob of kangaroos hiding in the bushes.

The walk goes all along these cliffs to the tip of the cape

Australian fur seals

The track reminded me of Cornwall...

...but there the bushes don't have heads

The lush eastern side of the cape is formed from volcanic rocks, whereas the western side is limestone, which is a total contrast. There is not grass here at all, but some spectacular rock formations, which are called "the petrified forest" because they look like tree trunks, but apparently they are purely a geological phenomenon.

The petrified forrest

From Cape Bridgewater it was still about 100 km to Warnambool. Along the way I stopped off at a place called Port Fairy, intrigued by its name. It is an old town with over 50 listed buildings and a small harbour, which is protected by Griffiths Island. There is a 3 km walk around the Island, which was just right for a little afternoon exercise. The island is a bird sanctuary, so you need to stick to the track. If you walk the track clockwise, the first kilometre or so leads to a lighthouse on a well maintained track suitable for wheelchairs and prams. After that the track leads along the seaward side of the island through the dunes and along the beaches. The island is formed from black lava rock, which provide a great contrast to the green vegetation and the blue sea. The walk only takes just over 1/2 hour and is definitely worthwhile.

Griffiths Island lighthouse at Port Fairy

Black lava rocks

All up I walked just over 16,000 steps today, which means that I can indulge in a birthday dinner. Tomorrow I will drive the Great Ocean Road to Torquay. 

I will follow the lead of this Pied Oyster Catcher on Griffiths Island
 and go looking for some seafood!

Speed Gapping through South Australia

The term speed gapping originates in the United States, to be more precise just north of the Golden Gate Bridge, where my friend David Gould lives. He uses the term for people who don't linger long enough in a particular area during their gap year. To be fair, I am travelling through South Australia rather quickly, only spending six nights in total. This is not a reflection of a lack of tourist attractions or bad hospitality, it is more that after 73 days on the road I am getting a bit travel sore and look forward to unpacking my bags for more than a few nights. My current plan is to get to Thredbo sometime in the next couple of weeks. This is why I stay only one night at the time in all these beautiful places here. However, I have cut down the distance travelled for each day, so that I get some time to look around the main attractions.

Yesterday I drove from Streaky Bay to Clare. This meant crossing the Eyre Peninsula to Port Augusta and then heading south on the eastern side of the Spencer Gulf towards Adelaide. Driving to Port Augusta took most time of the drive, the Eyre Peninsula is quite fat, with a lot of grain fields on the western side, but quite arid on the eastern side towards Port Augusta, reminiscent of the outback, maybe that is why the mountains in that area are called the Middleback Ranges. I didn't take any detours or scenic drives, but I did stop at a town called Kimba to be able to bring you a picture of the big galah, which is surely of equal cultural value to the big trout in Adaminaby.

The big galah in Kimba

Landscape on the eastern half of the Eyre Peninsula

Driving south from Port Augusta takes you through grain growing areas again, but to start with the left hand side of the view is dominated by the southern end of the Flinders Ranges, which are an imposing sight when you first drive into Port Augusta. When you get to the Clare Valley the sweeping wheat fields turn into a more hilly landscape, with a mix of smaller wheat fields and vineyards.  I didn't visit any wineries, but did a loop walk early in the morning that took me past several of them. The Riesling Trail is a cycling/walking track that runs for 35 kilometres through the Clare Valley and has a few loop walks branching off it. The walk that I did is only a 9 km loop called the John Horrocks Loop Walk. John Horrocks was one of the first settlers in the area and founded the town of Penwortham, through which the walk leads. He didn't grow old because he shot himself by accident when his camel bucked on an expedition to find more agricultural land in the north of the colony. As you can tell from my knowledge of local history, there are interpretative signs along the walk...

I started and ended the loop by the Sevenhill Pub, 6 km south of Clare

Despite the tempting big signs I followed the little yellow marker on the bottom left

The walk goes past many vineyards and cellar doors

And finishes along the Riesling Trail

After my walk I headed off on the next part of my speed gapping to a town called Victor Harbor, south of Adelaide. It is only a 220 km drive, but it leads straight through the city, which is a bit time consuming. If you have a need for more vineyards, the McLaren Vale wine region is along the way. It is much more open than the Clare Valley with more sweeping vineyards, similar to the ones at Margaret River, also because of the proximity to the coast.

View over McLaren Vale

Victor Harbor is the premier tourist town for Adelaide. I heard it mentioned on the radio a few time on my drive through the Nullarbor, because last week was "Schoolies Week", which is an Australian tradition that demands the high school leavers to congregate in tourist resorts and celebrate as hard as they can. Victor Harbor is for the Adelaide schoolies what the Gold Coast is for the Brisbane ones. Apparently there were 26 arrests on the weekend that just passed. Luckily the week is over and the town is quite again (apparently non school leavers that stay here during schoolies are called foolies). I walked through the old town centre and then across the jetty over the causeway to Granite Island, where the actual harbour used to be. The town was established in 1863 as a port through the extension of a horse drawn tramway from the town of Goolwa, which is at the mouth of the mighty River Murray, where the wool and other agricultural goods arrived from the inland farmers. Early in the nineteenth century there was also a thriving whaling station near Victor Harbor, but they slaughtered the southern right whales with such vigour that they ran out of them by 1872. Nowadays the whale population has somewhat recovered and from July to September you can come whale watching. The bay on which Victor Harbor is situated is called Encounter Bay, named by Mattew Flinders on his 1802 circumnavigation on the Investigator, after having an encounter with the French Captain Nicholas Baudin on the ship Le Geographe, after which a lot of places in the south west of Western Australia are named. Driving around Australia really brings all these events together and shows the far reach of these explorers.

The tramway still operates between town and Granite Island

The jetty across the causeway 

The view across Encounter Bay towards Victor Harbor

Plenty of granite on Granite Island

There are a lot of old buildings in the town centre

Tomorrow I will speed off to a town called Robe, close to the state border with Victoria and my last port of call in South Australia.

Through the Nullarbor to Streaky Bay

I left Norseman at six o'clock in the morning to start driving east through the Nullarbor. This is an epic journey of about 1200 km to a town called Ceduna in the state of South Australia. My plan was to break the journey at the Border Village Roadhouse, about 720 km away. After leaving Norseman the drive takes you through semi-arid eucalyptus forests for a while, until you cross the Fraser Ranges, which may sound like mountains, but really are fairly shallow hills. Once you cross them you soon come to the 90 mile straight, Australia's longest straight; not that the rest of the road is exactly winding. 

Just making sure you realise that it is going to be straight for a while

And it is

And this is what the more winding sections of the road look like

There aren't really any towns along the way, but the drive is dotted with roadhouses every 150 km or so. Each one of them usually has a petrol station, a restaurant and a few motel rooms and/or a caravan park. Water is very scarce, so you need to make sure to stock up in Norseman, the roadhouses sell it at a high cost. The petrol wasn't as expensive as it was in the northern passage that I took through Queensland, where it was over $2 a litre. One peculiarity is that each of the roadhouses has one golf hole. This is part of the Nullarbor Links, the worlds longest golf course spanning 1,365 km from Kalgoorlie to Ceduna. I am not a very experienced golf player, but the fairways looked pretty rough to me, and I suggest you were solid footwear if you attempt to play it.

The golf tee and fairway at Caiguna Roadhouse

I got to my Border Village Roadhouse mid-afternoon. The clocks go forward by 45 minutes east of the Caiguna Roadhouse to observe Central Western Australian Standard Time, an unofficial time zone that extends for about 340 km and about 100 meters across the South Australian border so that the Border Village Roadhouse is included. I had a motel room booked in one of their cabins, which was very basic, but clean. The beer in their bar was ice cold and the burger that I had for dinner was big. There were about a dozen other people in the bar, some road train drivers and some grey nomads, all enjoying the hospitality and watching the one-day cricket match between Australia and South Africa. I turned in at about 8.30 because I wanted an early start. 

The cabins at Border Village Roadhouse (traveller's chapel in the foreground)

I set off at 5.45 AM ACWST, which meant that after driving 100 meters it was 7.30 AM Australian Central Time. After the border this is really where the Nullarbor Plain begins. It is the worlds largest exposure of a single limestone slab, and a dog's worst nightmare, there is not a single tree in sight. This is also where the Eyre Highway follows the coastline of the Great Australian Bight. There are four lookouts along the way where you can take in the cliffs and try and spot a southern right whale, at the right time of the year. I found the most eastern lookout the best, with the most spectacular 80 metre high cliffs towering above the ocean. 

This is the reason for the name Nullarbor, not a tree in sight

Where the Nullarbor Plain meets the Great Australian Bight

Not a good idea to go too close to the cliff edge

The Nullarbor Roadhouse marks the end of the plain when driving east. Soon afterwards the eucalyptus forests return and once you get past an aboriginal settlement called Yalata you will soon notice vast wheat fields. The first town you will get to is called Penong and then Ceduna. I decided to go past Ceduna and follow the coast for another hour to a small town called Streaky Bay, where I booked a room at the pub for a couple of nights. I got there at about four o'clock in the afternoon, finishing my Nullarbor crossing. I didn't think it was as epic a journey as you hear about. It probably was horrific when it was just a dirt road, but these days the road is one of the best ones that I have driven since I turned left in Townsville. The Barkly Highway felt the most adventurous outback road to me. It had a speed limit of 130 km/h, but I was rarely game enough to go faster than 100.

Anyway, I am writing this post from Streaky Bay, after a day of exploring the area. The town itself is very small and very friendly. Everyone I walked past in the street said G'day, even the children. The pub is quite charming. It has an old part and a modern annex. My room is in the old part, up on the first floor with a lovely verandah overlooking the sea.

The Streaky Bay Hotel

My blogger's office

The sights I took in today were all south of the town. The coast here is quite serrated with cliffs and capes forming many bays. I visited a few of them to bring you some pictures, but the highlights were Point Labatt, where the only permanent sea-lion colony of mainland Australia lives, The Granites, where I spoke to some local surfers and the Whistling Holes on Cape Bauer, where the swell blows air and water through holes in the limestone karst. 

Surfer at The Granites

The Granites with High Cliff in the background

A male sea lion at Point Labatt

Point Labatt from the cliff above

Whistling Hole at Cape Bauer

On my way back from Point Labatt I headed inland to see Murphy's Haystacks. They are a granite formation in the middle of a field. Apparently an Irish agricultural expert, who was travelling Australia to promote a technique for making hay, saw them from the highway and pointed out to the rest of his group on the coach that this farmer surely must have used his technique to get such a lot of hay. In geological terms the formation is known as inselberg (island mountain) where the landscape eroded around the rocks (I think Uluru is an inselberg too).

Murphy's Haystacks

Seen from the higway they could be mistaken.

For the ones of you who are multimedia enabled, here are a couple of videos, one of a sea-lion going swimming and one of a whistling hole blowing water:

I haven't yet made up my mind how far I will travel tomorrow, probably to somewhere in the vicinity of the Clare Valley wine region. My plan is to get to Melbourne by the end of the week. I will most likely give Adelaide a miss because I lived there for a little while and know it quite well.