Blanket Bay to Budj Bim

The Twelve Apostles

I woke to a fine day but that was to change within an hour or so. As I extracted myself from my very cosy sleeping bag and got out of the car to the sight of a very vocal bird, possibly a whistler hopping around close to my table and a wallaby grazing on one of the bushes nearby. A little later, when I turned my back for a moment, I did have to rescue my rubbish bag from the wallaby, it seems the smell of last night's banana peel was very tempting. 

A little later a family of wrens visited; the male blue wrens really are stunning at this time of year. They will not stay still long enough to get a photograph though. 

The surf was still running at Blanket Bay

As usual, the butane stove took ages to boil water and while I was organising my breakfast food, again with my back turned to my little table, it was visited once more by the wallaby, and a curawong who was eyeing off my grapefruit. I'm sure it would not have been tasty but curawong will have a go at. anything.

The surf was still running when I went down to look at the water, so snorkelling, rock, pooling and swimming were off the agenda for the morning. I left a bottle of bubbly by their car for Lisa for helping me out last night with lending the phone and lending me a warm jacket so I didn't freeze while waiting for the RACV. 

I headed west, more or less, travelling through forest and agricultural land with only one brief view of the coast before the weather descended and I was in thick fog and heavy rain.

A glimpse of the coast while the weather was clear

A diversion into Princetown, because it promised a cafe and coffee, did provide public toilets but it lied about the rest.

The beach and cliffs at the Gibson's Steps lookout

My intent to walk down Gibson's steps to view the rock stacks, Gog and Magog, from the sand was confounded by closure due to unstable geology.

Gog or Magog?

At the 12 apostles I walked out onto both lookouts, hanging onto my hat as a gale straight from the bowels of Antarctica was intent on blowing us all away and turning umbrellas inside out for those foolish enough to carry them.

correa flower

The coastline is stunning and on a nice day it would have been lovely to linger and absorb the views for longer. 

I continued to Loch Ard Gorge, and did a few little walks to various lookouts, admiring a range of stunning formations, and reflected that the coast is definitely a  a take no prisoners sort of landscape. 

The steps down to this beach were also closed - recent landslide

My next destination was the arch but a very large gate and assertive notice dictated otherwise and I proceeded to London bridge. Which has of course fallen down around 1990. 

London Bridge

London Bridge

At The Grotto I elected not to fight my way down through the humongous crowd of Chinese tourists to try and see what the view was like from the bottom of the lookout.   I did stop for a while to watch the water churning against the rocks and concurred with another visitor that the action was like a washing machine.

At the Bay of Martyrs and the Bay of Islands, I enjoyed the views of many more rockstacks created by the never-ending pounding surf. I'd never really thought much about the Great Ocean Road, but I guess the landforms that created the 12 Apostles had the potential to create many more the same, and it did. It's a truly remarkable coastline. 

I headed  away from the coast and via Warrnambool up to towards Budj Bim national Park, having decided to ditch a number of diversions on my itinerary in the interest of setting up camp before dark.

A little way out of Warrnambool, I started looking at the sky with some trepidation. It was incredibly dark and threatening and in due course the threats were realised into heavy downpours. Fortunately, by the time I got to MacArthur it had pretty much cleared so I was able to set up camp in good lights and clear weather which does make things easier. 

My campsite has evidence of some critter who's been living in one of the gum trees; another camper, the only one at that moment, was kind enough to point out a koala that he had spotted earlier. He said he'd seen more than a dozen since he got here about 1pm. It's very peaceful - loads of birds and frogs and at the moment no wind which is delightful. 

This campground has somewhat more civilised amenities than last nights at Blanket Bay. Last night was pit toilets, albeit  in a fairly civilised toilet block with a hand basin & tank water. Here has flush toilets and a shower with hot water which I shall enjoy. Enormously. Certainly much more than my quick mandi bath this morning.  

I watched the sunset with a glass of wine and the warmed up lasagna which had been sitting in my 12-volt food heater plugged into my car as I was driving. Previous experience has taught me not to use the 12-volt food warmer when the car is not in motion. 

I'm hoping for a night free of dramas. I figure I've had three decent dramas over the last 3 days. The roller coaster crossing of Bass strait, the solar panels on arrival at my Airbnb in Anglesey and last night's debacle with my car keys. 

Campground late arrivals were quiet enough but they were using a floodlight that had enough light for a night match at the MCG, and it was shining right in my car window. Since opening the door and calling out had no effect, I eventually put more clothes on and walked across and called out to them. So they did turn the light off but not after grumbling that I stood and waited while they did. But they did say they had no intent of disturbing me. They didn't know I was there - they couldn't have looked very hard at what their floodlight was lighting up!