A slow start today. As it appears we have unlimited Internet here (yey!), I spent the morning backing up photos to the cloud and downloading some TV programs our Myth had recorded at home.
We also did some research on the Great Ocean Road and have decided on a plan of attack. We’ll drive the caravan to a park close to the 12 Apostles tomorrow. I want to try to capture the 12 apostles at sunset as that will have the best light. On Sat we’ll head to Apollo Bay for at least three days and use that as a base for exploring the Otways.
We had some local fish and chips for lunch (which was disappointing) then ventured to Cape Bridgewater, the Blowhole and the fossilized forest.
Cape Bridgewater is excellent! It’s a large bay west of Portland with pristine clear water and an immaculate beach. We found a road called Panorama Drive that we figured would show us a great overview of the cape, and we were right! We did find a caravan park here, but quickly discounted it because it only had 3 starts on Wikicamps (we try to look for 4+) and there is no mobile reception.
I’m still amazed at how often when we go places, there is almost no one else there. I’m sure it would be different in peak times, but when we went past, there was only one group on that whole beach, and only one other car at the blowhole.
The sea at the Blowhole was ferocious – waves pounding on the cliff rocks relentlessly. We think we must have been there at the wrong tide level because we didn’t see a blow hole per se – just sprays of water generated by the rock face. Still pretty impressive though.
Teresa walked back to the car after that, but I walked across the cliff a bit to the petrified forest. These are rocks that look like tree trunks, but were actually formed by limestone and millions of years of water erosion.
We visited at the wrong time of day for photos – midday. This was the best I took:
A final highlight of this area was the wind farm right on the coast. We passed through the Cape Bridgewater wind farm which consists of 29, 2MW windmills. Neither Teresa or I had gotten this close to windmills before, and it was quite impressive driving up to these massive beasts.
Windmills up close with Teresa and Leo in the foreground for scale
We then headed back to town and filled the car for our trip tomorrow. Tiny isn’t too bad with fuel economy – we have driven over 600km on one tank towing the caravan since our last fill up in Victor Harbor. That’s 20km/l on windy days.
Back at the caravan park, I tried to keep downloading more shows, but unfortunately they’d fixed their login system, so we were back to the 500mb limit. Fine for regular browsing, but not for TV shows.
Teresa was feeling dizzy so we had a quiet evening. Tomorrow, we plan to see the 12 Apostles and stay our first night in a Reserve and not a caravan park. Of course, I’ll let you know how it goes!
For when you get to Apollo Bay do not go to the caravan park in the town and not on the foreshore. You would not like it at all. There is one heading out of town towrds Melb high on cliff that looks nice and another the Portland side of AB that is treed and close to the water. It is in the area called Marengo and takes pets. Just looked it up 3.9 stars.
Don’t forget the Otway Fly. It is great.