2019/11 Australia trip - Great Ocean Road |
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Wednesday November 27th
We had another cool and windy morning, and it stayed windy all day. We were going to drive along the Great Ocean Road, stopping at some of the coastal overlooks. Erosion of the limestone cliffs has resulted in the creation of islands, stacks, and arches. We began at the Bay of Islands, where we also found these flowers. I remember them from an earlier trip, but don’t know what they are. [Possibly Mother of Millions, invasive weed from Madagascar]
Nearby is the London Arch. It was called London Bridge until a few years before our first visit, when one of its arches collapsed into the sea.
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Great Ocean Road beaches (3.18) |
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After lunch in Port Campbell we visited Loch Ard, another spectacular overlook. It has a great beach and cave too but John and I were hurting and didn’t risk the steep walk down (and up). We bypassed the Twelve Apostles overlook too but mainly because it’s very crowded, the destination for dozens of bus tours. There were only ever eight stacks and now there are seven, so those bus passengers must feel cheated.
We were going to take a side road down to Cape Otway to look for koalas, but got confused and thought we’d missed the road
, so we covered some of the main road twice, but on our second pass we found a koala in plain sight and then another, more active, taking this leap between trees.
There were lots more on the side road, though not always easy to see. We found a safe place to pull off and could hear a male koala grunting. Nearby was a family with a very active youngster which left its mother and climbed high into the trees amongst tiny branches being thrashed by the wind. It looked terribly dangerous.
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Koalas (10.09) |
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At the end of the road the lighthouse had already closed for the day, but I took the short trail to the overlook only to find that it was almost all steps and only the top of the lighthouse could be seen anyway. Back on the road the youngster was still climbing from branch to branch keeping the humans entertained.
We had another koala cross the road in front of us and it was captured on the car’s dashcam. A lot of them die while crossing roads; this one was lucky to be missed by oncoming traffic.
It was getting late when we arrived in Apollo Bay and the first few motels we tried had no vacancies. The Beachfront Motel had two rooms left, not cheap but we were getting desperate. Apollo Bay is a popular spot; it’s where Robert and Amanda take the family for their Christmas vacation.
We found we had a choice of three restaurants, all Chinese. The one we picked had all Asian customers too, with staff that struggled with English. The food was good, though Sandie and I discovered that the three-chili marking alongside the menu listing for our lamb stirfry was a serious warning!