Day 25: The Great Ocean Road

Another lovely morning. Today is meant to be the best day weather-wise for the next week, so it’s a perfect day to tackle the Great Ocean Road.

We packed up the caravan and left the park (9:59am) heading for Warrnambool. The road on the way was highly trafficked with logging trucks from the plantations. I tried to anticipate trucks arriving behind me (I was doing 90) and find a spot on the side of the road to pull over so I didn’t hold them up too much. I was rewarded for my efforts by some ‘thank you’ gestures (blinking left and right blinkers alternatively) as trucks sped away.

The first medium town we passed was Port Fairy. It seems a lovely historic town and we both commented we should come back. We even stopped beside a caravan park to look it up on Wikicamps to see how it rated. Badly… 3/5 stars and lots of comments saying it’s overpriced. Doesn’t matter, there are three other parks to choose from.

Wikicamps has been a great help in choosing parks – we haven’t gone really wrong with our choice yet. The worst park we stayed at was in Adelaide, but that was only because the caravans around us were drying washing, so we needed to keep our windows closed. At least we were only there one night. And we’ve found some real gems like Williamstown.

We sped through Warrnambool. We were planning to eat lunch there, but at 11:20 we were a little early. We thought we could eat a salad sandwich, but needed some meat to include. We found an Italian deli on our route (thanks again, Internet). I stayed with the car and dog while Teresa ran in. She messaged me a few seconds later while in the store: “As good as Mercato!   I’ll be a few minutes!”. She ended up taking almost 30 minutes, but I didn’t mind as she found some great pressed meats, bread, yoghurt and some bacon from Angaston (in the Barossa).

After Warrnambool, the Great Ocean Road starts. Just past the turnoff, we stopped at Warrnambool Cheese and Butter. Teresa has been wanting to try some butter from this company for use in her Cookie Love baking but was unable to get a wholesale account quick enough. So we headed to their retail store and bought some butter to eat on the trip, as well as more for her Christmas baking. While there she also bought some tasty, Swiss and cheddar cheese.

We then hit the coast at the Bay of Islands and traveled to the Bay of Martyrs. These are kind of like the 12 Apostles, but fatter and not as tall. Still, they are an amazing site. It was getting windy by this point in the day too, but at least the wind was not cold. It was about 20 degrees outside.

There was a small beach you could visit with some amazing rock formations. I spent some time there looking for some different shots like this one:

We decided to stop for lunch – bread and meat from the deli, cheese from just down the road, salad from…. a supermarket (3 out of four ain’t bad). It was lovely sitting in the caravan with the above view outside our window!

Next was the Grotto. This is a hole that’s been dug into the rock by the weak acid in the rainwater. Lots of stairs in this one and no dogs allowed, so Teresa stayed in the car. The ocean outside the Grotto was amazingly turbulent. I took a video, but we don’t have the bandwidth for me to upload it yet. Maybe on a later day.

Next was London Bridge and the Arch. We skipped those because we figured we’d get to the campsite first, the come back when the caravan wasn’t behind us. We also passed the 12 Apostles and bee-lined our way to the Princetown Recreation Reserve. It’s a campsite beside the town’s oval that doesn’t have bookings and is pretty cheap – $25 for a powered site. The water is bore water, but we have full tanks from Portland, so haven’t worried about connecting water.

This was another find from Wikicamps. The site is only 8 minutes from the 12 Apostles, so really close to the local attractions. There is a caravan park at Princeton, but Wikicamps had comments saying it was closed. We rolled up and there were only two other vans in the powered area. Teriffic! We chose a spot half way between each and setup.

I headed back to the 12 Apostles to take a look and scope the area for Teresa. When passing by this afternoon, we saw plenty of cars in the carpark, so were worried about the smell factor. The Apostles are definitely spectacular, and definitely worth a look, but for me it was spoiled by the number of other people there. Travelling off-season has spoiled us because most of the sites we’ve visited have had very few other tourists.

Also, because of the time of day (mid-Afternoon) the sun was behind the rock formations which made them very hard to photograph well. The places I read said early morning is the best time, so I’m considering getting up early and coming back… the advantages of a close campsite!

There were a couple of rocks East (not technically part of the Apostles), showing off the strata.

I didn’t hang around long… there was a front and change approaching and it was VERY windy out on the exposed cliff. Before heading back, I took a look at the Gibson Steps. These are steps that were carved into the rock by local Hugh Gibson working on traditional tribe access. It’s quite a site seeing these tall cliffs from below.

I returned home and Teresa decided there were too many tourists for her to go. I was hoping to go back close to sunset, but the front was quickly approaching and there were grey clouds to the west.

Shortly before the front arrived, a new caravan parked beside us. I recognised the van and car – they had been following us from the Cheese shop near Warrnambool. I parked next to them at the cheese shop and noticed the van again at the Bay of Martyrs and again at the Grotto. I’ll need to say hi tomorrow morning.

As dark settled the storm came though. The BOM had issued a strong wind warning for almost all the Victorian coast with gusts of over 100km/h expected. I don’t know if we got winds that strong, but they definitely buffeted out caravan around most of the evening. It should abate by the morning – hopefully we’ll be able to sleep through it tonight.

We’re planning to head to Apollo Bay tomorrow and stay there a couple of days. We’ve had 4 days of travelling with only one day off, and we’d like to take it easy for a bit. Plus visit some of the attractions around the Otways.