The Great Ocean Road, Day 1

I had booked a two-day tour to go and experience the scenery of the the Great Ocean Road. The centerpiece of the area is an attraction called the Twelve Apostles. More on them later, but they and other formations on the southern coast of Australia are carved by the sea out of limestone cliffs that are a dominant feature of the area. They were all referred to as rock stacks, but they are really more layered limestone that wore away to create these sights. And there are lots of different tour companies that go out to see them. The company I chose advertised themselves as a company that bucks the trend. Most of the companies start at the “beginning” of the Great Ocean Road and go to the “end.” Ride Tours proudly proclaim that they go the other way around. This would mean that there would be little bumping into other tour groups at the various stops. This was an appealing notion, so I went with them.

So, bright and early on Thursday, I got up and headed out to the meeting point at the nearby Immigration Museum. Shortly after I arrived, a German girl arrived. And then a French girl came along. We waited for the bus to come and pick us up. It was a bit late, but this was one of the later pick-up points on the list and it seemed that it was simply taking a while to rouse the rest of the passengers to get on the bus. When the bus showed up, lo and behold, it was empty. Hmmm... Jude, the driver, apologized for being late and said that traffic had been horrible and, as sometimes happens, she had seemed to hit every red light possible on the way. She ticked us off on her list, which only had five names. Out of a normal 21. I like doing things in the off-season. Then we headed off to the next pick-up point to get the other two travellers. When we got there, there was nobody waiting. Hmmm... Jude called the phone number of one of them, then chuckled. The names were Spanish. She remarked that the Spanish were often late. Then she noticed that they hadn't paid yet. And the phone number she called went to voicemail. She called her boss and eventually it was decided that we would be heading off without them as they weren't there and weren't answering their phone. Bonus!!!! We had a small group of four, myself, Jude, Anna (the German girl), and Julie (the French girl). Not so good for the company, but good for the three of us travellers. Jude was a talkative guide/driver. She spent much of the next three hours as we reached the “wrong” end of the Great Ocean Road telling us about the itinerary and a great deal of what we would be doing for the next couple of days, the sights, the animals, and the places involved in both.

Our first stop was in a little town, whose only claim to fame is that some guy, on his way to somewhere else broke an axle on his wagon and had to stop to get it repaired. He had to send the axle someplace else to be repaired and it took six weeks. In the meantime, he found the place to have many advantages, including that there was plenty of water in the area. So he decided to stay. The place was so forgettable that I have forgotten its name. But, in an effort to be memorable as a touristic place for people to go and spend some money, they have commemorated the guy with the axle with a giant replica of, you guessed it, a broken axle.

Just at the beginning of our stint on the Great Ocean Road, Jude stopped for gas. And, as it would be oh, so stimulating to watch her refuel the bus, she dropped us off at the nearby Cheese World, where it was possible to do some cheese tasting of the products of the cheese factory across the road. I didn't taste any, not being a great fan of cheese (Hey!  I heard that!), but I did find it quite amazing that the factory takes delivery of over 2 million liters of milk. Every day!!!

Next it was off to Logan's Beach. This is a very nice beach, with crashing waves and a long stretch of nice-looking sand. I'm sure it would be very nice to spend time there in the warmth of summer. This is wintertime here at the moment, however, and there would be no swimming this day. What we were hoping to see, though, was whales. Specifically southern right whales. Starting in June and continuing for a couple of months, pregnant female right whales head up to Australia from the Antarctic to give birth and start rearing the baby whales. This was early in the season, but it was possible that there would be whales in the area. Alas, our luck was not to be on this, and we spotted no whales. Incidentally, the name of the right whale comes from the whalers of the past, who saw these whales and found them to be the perfect whale to catch, kill and use. So they called the right whale, as in the correct whale to pursue. And to extirminate from existence, of course.

From Logan's Beach it was on to Tower Hill. This is a national park and an extinct volcano. Because of the amount of volcanic ash in the crater area, it is extremely lush in vegetation and life in general. In fact, because of its natural advantages, the area teems with just the sort of life that visitors to Australia want to see, namely kangaroos, koalas, and emus. We headed into the cone with high hopes of seeing us some Aussie fauna. I had seen emus and kangaroos before. I had even seen and held koalas, but I had never seen a koala in the wild. So here was my chance. Anna had seen these as well, but Julie had only arrived in Australia a week or so previously, so hadn't seen any of the animals yet. As we descended into the volcano's crater, we saw all the different layers of ash that had been laid over the time of the volcano's active period. Then we passed a few emus on the edge of the lake in the crater. They were some distance away and Jude didn't stop, saying we would see lots later and from a much closer distance. We arrived at the visitor center and were turned loose to have a look around. Jude gave us some pointers on where to find the various critters. We began by stalking kangaroos. They were to be found along a path that led to the top point in the crater.

And then we spotted them. There were quite a few, resting in the trees, eating some grass, and generally being quite casual about the presence of strangers. I guess they get a lot of strangers in them parts.

The view from the top was also quite nice.

Then it was on to the picnic area near the visitor center. There were lots of eucalyptus trees there and that was where we could stalk koalas. So we snuck around the trees quietly. I'm not sure why we were being so quiet. Koalas sleep 20 hours a day and don't move quickly at the best of times. But we skulked about as though we were disturbing a gang of high-strung prairie dogs or something similar. And we found nothing. And more of nothing. And a whole lot of nothing. Finally we headed back to the bus, disappointed and thinking we just weren't to see any koalas. We looked up into our last hope, the final tree before the bus. 

And there was a koala languishing in an upper branch, munching on some leaves. She was awake!! Yeah!!!

Jude, on hearing of our troubles, took a few extra moments to have a look around and found two more koalas hanging out, but they were both asleep and the best sighting was the one we had just before the bus. But there were no more emus, and Jude remembered that this was breeding season for emus and so figured they were off in the bushes doing their thing.

So, we piled into the bus and headed for the Bay of Islands.

The Bay of Islands was the first spectacular part of the Great Ocean Road. The coastline outside of the Great Ocean Road is made up of limestone. Being very soft, as far as rock goes, limestone is easily eroded, and as the southern ocean (I always heard it called the Antarctic Ocean. I'm not sure why they changed it. Maybe it has something to do with the “ant-”, kind of like AntiChrist.) pounds against it in ceaseless watery violence, particularly during the winter, the coastline is in constant retreat. One of the people we met told me that they lose 5-15 millimeters of the coastline to erosion every year. However, the stone does not erode away at constant rates everywhere. Some spots wear away faster than others. As time goes on, the coast is eroded into points and bays, and sometimes there are little free-standing islands left as the rest of the coast erodes away from them. The Bay of Islands is one of those spots. There is a fairly large bay that extends inland several hundred meters. But in the bay there are numerous islands that have been left behind. It creates a fantastic sight.

Next we headed to the Bay of Martyrs. This bay has a sad history. Before the Europeans arrived, the Aboriginal culture had been present on the Australian continent for what they now believe to be well over 30000 years. That's right, thirty thousand!!! But as seemed to be the case with the Europeans, they arrived as greedy marauders. They made questionable land agreements with the Aborigines. In cases where the Aborigines had the temerity to try and assert their rights and claims, the Europeans became violent. The Bay of Martyrs was one such place. The Aboriginal inhabitants of the area made a stand, and a forceful one at that, defending their land with arms. Of course, the arms that were available to the Aborigines were mainly sticks, and spears, and whatever other arms they had acquired from the white man when he first arrived. And they were only a couple of thousand strong. The Europeans had guns and cannons (I assume that anyway), and they had thousands of soldiers. The Aborigines were overmatched and lost battle after battle. And the Europeans would take any of the Aborigines they captured to the cliffs and toss them in. The indigenous population went from a couple of thousand to a couple of hundred before the conflict was done. Hence, the Bay of Martyrs. (I'm not sure the name is fairly bestowed. Martyr is one who is killed in a holy cause. And then the martyred are held out to motivate those who follow. I'm not sure all that applies here... But I am an outsider, so I guess I can't really comment.) In any case, the coast is just as spectacular.

Next it was on to a cool hole in a cliff, carved by the ocean. It was called the Grotto.

We were supposed to go to one more spot on this first day, but we were a little behind. You would think that with a small group, this wouldn't happen. But Jude admitted to being always behind on things, particularly in the winter with tighter hours because of available sunlight. And then we would also get a bit complacent since there were only three and you would think it wouldn't be hard to keep to a good time schedule. And so we would get into something and lose time a bit and then get scrambly because we were suddenly behind. In any case, we were behind by this point and, if we were going to be able to watch sun set over the Twelve Apostles, we had to high tail it and get over there. So we skipped London Bridge for this day and it got added to the beginning of the second day of the tour.

And so we headed over to the Twelve Apostles. They have an interesting history. When the area was first settled, there were 18 rock stacks. And the first one looked, apparently, like a pig. I couldn't see the resemblance myself, but it was certainly large, so the rest of the name for the stacks made some sense. It was originally called the Sow and Piglets. As time passed and more people came to live in the area and, more importantly, visit the area, the thoughts of the locals turned to how to encourage more people to visit. Tourism has always been important, I guess. And for some reason, those in charge of promoting the area for tourism felt that the name of Sow and Piglets was not enticing for bringing in the visitors. I find this shocking. I think the name of Sow and Piglets is fantastic. I can't imagine why people would not be instinctively drawn to an area with such sight to be viewed. Oh, wait, I've seen lots of farms and my fair share of pigs. Maybe I wouldn't need to see any more. Ahhhhhhh!!!!! Now I understand.

These same people figured that maybe a name change would bring more people to visit. So they brainstormed and came up with what they thought was a great name, the Apostles. They liked it. And it is a very intriguing name. But although tourism picked up, it didn't get to spectacular, or even desired, levels. So they gave it some more thought. They really liked the apostles, and they didn't want to give that up. Now by then, time and the ocean had been working hard and four of the rock stacks had been toppled, leaving only 14. Someone had the brainstorm to call the formation the Twelve Apostles. This did the trick. People were intrigued. People were curious. People wanted to see this formation that was being likened to something out of the Bible. And they started coming in droves. Now, some of those who came were not particularly math challenged. And they counted. As I already mentioned, there were 14 stacks, but the name was the Twelve Apostles

When this was pointed out, the powers that be explained that there were twelve off in one direction, while two were in the other direction from the viewpoint. They were called the Rockpiles, or something like that. The other twelve, those were the Twelve Apostles. Ah. Spin doctors had humble beginnings. Anyway, with that background, we went to the viewing platform to watch the sun set over the Twelve Apostles. Unfortunately, the day was cloudy and it was more of a fading of the light. I imagine an actual sunset must be quite amazing, though.

Then, with nobody having died, we headed to Port Campbell and our accommodation for the night and had some dinner and hit the sack.