Day 9 - Aussie 2011

We woke up in the freezing cold!  We had camped by a lake and the beach and I think the mist and fog may have made things even colder than usual.  We would definitely be trying to bundle up more the next night.

After getting our things together, we walked along the river and the beach for a while.  There were a lot of gnats, herons, and spider webs!  There was a whole section of bushes by the river that was covered in spider webs, like something out of a scary movie or Halloween decorations way overdone!  It was kind of creepy but cool too, this forest of spider webs.  I probably would have felt differently if I had had to actually walk through those bushes, but they were sectioned off from the main trail.

On our walk, we passed the Yambuk slide!  Wow, it was this really long slide on this hill by the beach!  Cool!  Nick called it a Big Boy Slide.  We wanted to try it out and I had Nick go first so I could take his picture.  Well, I sure wish I had been filming instead because he went down that slide a lot faster than expected and gave quite the shriek, haha!  The slide was covered in a pretty thick layer of water from the morning dew so instead of sliding down like you would a slide on a playground it ended up being more like sliding down a water slide!  So Nick came barreling down the slide with a shriek and went flying off the end with wet pants, haha!  He did it again but since he had wiped a lot of the water off the first time, he didn’t go as fast the second time.

I went up and was actually a little scared.  The slide looked a lot steeper when you were at the top about ready to go down.  I put my jacket down on the slide to protect my pants from the water and enjoyed my Yambuk slide experience very much.  I went down three times and could have gone again but we need to get going on our adventure down the Great Ocean Road!

We stopped at the next town called Port Fairy, which I had to stop at more for the name than anything else.  I wanted to stop at the beach there and rest for a while but we realized Nick had left his jacket at the Yambuk slide so we had to go back and get that and that set us back a little.  Still, we watched some surfers for a bit and enjoyed a little mermaid lagoon area with rocks perfect for climbing and exploring.  And I got my picture by a Port Fairy sign which was good enough for me.

The rest of our day was stop and go.  Once the road started along the sea cliffs, there were look outs every few minutes!  So, if we saw a place to stop and check out the scenery, we did so!  This is what our journey had been for, to stop and look at the unique cliff formations on the coast!

In some areas, there were beaches with cliffs overlooking them and in some places the cliffs went straight down to the water.  We walked on the beach once and also walked along the cliffs on a few short hikes.  Just beyond the cliffs were unique rock formations rising from the ocean.  Some were tall and jagged, others were low and long like small islands, and one formed a natural bridge with the water running in between.  There were a few sea caves too and we were able to take our picture by an arch in a cliff overlooking the ocean, similar to Admirals Arch on Kangaroo Island.

Speaking of pictures, they didn’t turn out as great as I had hoped.  On the one hand, we lucked out with nice weather.  It was sunny and pleasant and made for an enjoyable day spent more out of the car than in.  On the other hand, the sun made it difficult to get good pictures of us with the scenery, with harsh shadows on our faces or bright light in our eyes.  Oh well, can’t have it all!

This was a problem with our final destination, the iconic Twelve Apostles, not well-named as there are only eight or nine rocks sticking out of the water.  We got there and the rocks were all back lit.  That also meant either we were back lit or had the sun right in our face for pictures.  So we decided to wait until sunset and get shots of the Twelve Apostles then, which turned out to be a very good choice as the red light made for some unique shots.

It was a great day, really, with all the scenery and the walks.  One of our favorite moments was actually a little nap we took.  At most of our stops we were alone and such was the case with a walk we took along the cliffs in the afternoon.  Both of us were feeling the afternoon lull and found a bench to sit on overlooking the waves down below.  I laid my head on Nick’s lap and reclined on the bench and we both fell asleep with a cool ocean breeze blowing and the sound of the waves crashing against the cliffs.  It was one of the most peaceful and rejuvenating naps!  We were both so refreshed after!

So, we left the cliffs behind and continued on the Great Ocean Road toward Otway National Park to find our campsite at a place called Aire River.  It got dark pretty quickly and we had a bit further to go than I had calculated.  We got to the campsite around 7:30pm and were a little perturbed to find the site to be very small and also very full.  We drove around it twice checking for a place to pitch our tent.  The sites went in a circle so there was a grassy area in the middle, which was obviously not a site for a tent, but Nick proposed we go there.  I refused to sleep in the middle of everyone else, however, as I didn’t want to be the center of attention, especially when the attention would be “Gee, they were really desperate."

We finally spotted a little bit of room at the entrance, not exactly a spot but just enough room for our little tent and car and far enough away from the other campers to not be bothering anyone.  So we set up our tent, again in the dark, and had a little meal of cold soup and bread.

I had to laugh when we heard a growl outside our tent in the nearby woods.  Nick and I were face to face and I smiled when I heard the growl as I expected he would react to it.  I said, “Did you hear that?” and he replied, “Yeah, was that you?”  I laughed.  He had thought it was my stomach or something and that my grin was a look of pride in my bodily noises, haha!  “No,” I said, “That came from outside.”  Nick’s eyes went big and then we heard it again, a low snarly growl with a sort of snorty sound between growls, almost like a boar would growl, if they do that sort of thing.

Nick was cracking me up with his reactions.  He said, “WHAT was THAT?”  I didn’t know, of course, and said jokingly that it was a kangaroo and more seriously that perhaps it was a Tasmanian devil or a dingo.  We heard the growl a few more times and Nick’s eyes would get big every time.  I asked him later, “So, what are we doing?” and he said, “Surviving.”  Haha!

We weren’t up too late and went to bed to endure yet another cold night.

Pictures:

We start with our pictures along Yambuk Lake, including the scary spiderweb area and the Big Boy Slide.  Then we move on to Port Fairy with the town sign and the mermaid lagoon area - not the official name, it just seemed like a place where mermaids would hang out.  After that we see the rock formations along the Great Ocean Road, ending with the Twelve Apostles as seen at sunset, and a picture of me with the rocks to prove I was really there!