Port Campbell to Port Fairy

We make a relatively early start out to the less popular, but equally impressive formations at Loch Ard Gorge, the Razorback and London Bridge.

The crowds are a lot smaller, drawn by the 12 Apostles further back, and possibly repelled by the weather conditions. From our point of view the slight haze and mild rainfall only serves to increase the atmosphere of these places.






We visit several more little viewing areas off the main road and then head for Port Fairy. We stop in Warrnambool which is more like a large truck-stop than anything else, but is the best place to stock up with grub and booze before moving on, as we've no idea what the next town is like or what facilities it has. After all the excitement of the Great Ocean Road it appears that most people just hit the highway back to Adelaide or Melbourne.

But we feel a bit more adventurous, or maybe solitude is our main aim.

Port Fairy is like a lot of smallish towns in remoter Victoria. Wide streets, low visibility of inhabitants and a palpable sense of their pasts as frontier towns, ports, or mining sites. Friendly enough but sometimes eerily quiet.

We pull up at the Caledonian Inn and grab a bed for the night, as a change from the van is required.

Lorne to Port Campbell

From Lorne out to Apollo Bay on the Great Ocean Road is a beautiful winding stretch of blue/green ocean and sandy inlets. It reminds of the Northern Beaches where we've been living most of this year. Although the waves are a bit more threatening here.

We stop for lunch at Apollo Bay which is a pretty seaside town with a strip of cafes and restaurants at the waterfront.

The next stop is Cape Otway for this reason -

Another tick on the list of Aussie animals to see in the wild.

From here we move on to the main attractions. The coastline becomes a bit more wild and woolly and the incessant force of the Southern Ocean has eroded remarkable limestone formations. There isn't really any way to explain these fully so I'll let the following pictures speak for me.




The main formations are the stunning 12 Apostles which is the centre of the whole Great Ocean Road. Tourists flock here in their millions and behave with the usual mix of idiocy and desperation in an effort to capture the one photo that sums it all up.

There are other formations to view but what with the drive and supressing the urge to kill stupid people, we head for Port Campbell and a good night's rest.
Blighted only by a weird family whose father had pretentions of being Jim Reeves, John Denver and Sydney Devine; and who had no hesitation in belting out his misguided belief in the powers of his voice.

Luckily the pub was nearby.

Wilson's Promontory to Lorne

In the morning we take what we think is a short stroll through the forest to Lilli Pilli Gully. It's a nice gentle slope down to the gully from the car park and then a steep climb back up on the return side of the circular route. In all it ends up being about 3 miles, at least double what we reckoned, but that's country measurements for you.


The next stop is Squeaky Beach, another one of those typical Aussie no-nonsense names. It's a beach and the sand is indeed squeaky, due to quartz content. Having worked up an appetite at Lilli Pilli, Mandy starts making breakfast which attracts the local lorikeet population. They're friendly and colourful, but of course they're only after one thing. So I lose a good chunk of my brekkie to the bandits, whilst laughing at one bird on my shoulder another nicks bits from my opposite hand.

The rest of the day is spent driving round Melbourne and down to Lorne at the start of the Great Ocean Road. I'm looking forward to this leg of the journey, as it's the main reason we headed down the coast instead of going straight to Adelaide from Sydney.

Tiny Mojito

Mallacoota to Wilson's Promontory

Wilson's promontory is the Australian mainlands most southerly point and as it's a national park access is limited. So we register for the camp site at Tidal River, make dinner and head off down to the beach for sunset.

On our way out of the campsite we're stopped in our tracks by the ethereal site of two kangaroos about 10 feet away, mooching their way around. It's a busy campsite but almost no-one else sees them.

This is the closest I've been to wild kangaroos and it's quite a weird experience, they're not small animals, but they manage to bound quietly through the campsite effortlessly, almost without witness, then disappear into the bush.

Wilson's Promontory has that air of Gondwanaland similar to New Zealand. The pounding Southern ocean gives way to large flat beaches, massive sand dunes and then into scrub and bushland which climbs its way up mist covered mountainsides. It wouldn't be a shock to see Pterosaurs drifting above the cliffs, or King Kong rattling his way through the trees.

Bateman's Bay to Malacoota

Heading south from Bateman's Bay we make the obligatory stops; firstly at Mogo to pick up some choice beers from the excellent selection at Mogo Cellars, and then at Tilba to pick up some excellent cheese from the excellent Tilba cheese factory. Both essential ingredients for a good camping holiday.



We had planned to stop somewhere round Eden, but it's not great weather and Eden has that air you expect from an old whaling town, so we head across the border into Victoria and head for the weekend holiday spot of Mallacoota.

South to North Road Trip - Sydney to Bateman's Bay

Sydney hides its glorious geography under a dreich, wintry coat today. In an unusual display of modesty, the topographical tart hides all her glories in a sympathetic attempt to ease our departure; or maybe it's giving us a preview of what we're heading back to.

We packed the last stuff into the van, said our goodbyes to Florence, Gareth and Mark, then headed down to say one final cheerio to Theresa and Aaron and of course Lennox. There were mixed feelings all round. Everyone was quite jealous of us doing the great rite of passage that is the Aussie road trip, but we (especially Mandy) have heavier thoughts about leaving Sydney, however we are also chuffed about the upcoming travels.

Of course we're not going to do the classic east-west perambulation from Sydney to Perth. Oh no, we have a few more sites to tick off so our route is something like this.

And so with heavy hearts and windscreen wipers we head off to the unknown.

Breakfast barney!

As ever, life always throws in a little bit of rain on your sunny days to restore some balance to things.

We've had an exceptional four days in Port Douglas and created some memories that will not leave both of us for a long, long time. Everything has been pretty much perfect, until this morning.

The shuttle bus to Cairns airport isn't until 4.30pm, so we have a lazy morning and head for brekkie just after 10ish. We sit down, order some chorizo on bread, and wait.

Then we wait some more. It's not that busy and everyone seems to have been served apart from us. So we wait a little bit more and then try to get the attention of the staff. No joy. They're busy doing something apart from cooking our breakfast. I reckon we've been here about 40 minutes and since people who arrived only 5 minutes ago are getting served and we can't get any attention, we decide to go and pay for the coffees and then leave.

We approach the counter and tell the waiter who took our order that we are going, and he looks, well, who knows what the expression was, just looked like he didn't care or didn't understand, so we still offer to pay for the coffees. Then he goes to the kitchen, without telling us what is going on, and then hell begins to open.

It's an open kitchen so we can see the chef and she starts ranting, the waiter comes back to us with no information so I'm suggesting we just go. Then the chef comes out with a face like fizz.
'Im cooking your food now, you cannot leave. It's being done right now.'
'We've been here 40 minutes and everyone else is being served before us. So we're going to pay for the coffee and leave.', I suggest.

'You have not been here more than 15 minutes, here is the ticket', she produces the ticket and waves it at us. 'I'm cooking it now, it'll be one minute and I will serve you personally.', she barks.

The prospect of sitting down with our tails between our legs and getting served by this pram-faced harridan is about as appealing as taking a dip in a bath full of funnel-web spiders, and now she has also accussed us of being liars. Mandy is still trying to pay for the coffee when the chef comes back out with two plates, and we say we are leaving anyway.

'This is good food', she cries. 'It is very specific.'

It is sausage and toast!!!

She then starts to get abusive, at which point Mandy walks off to avoid bloodshed, and I exchange a few pleasantries with the psycho chef before following suit.

'You are stealing my wages. I don't know where you are coming from.', she yells after us.

'I know where we're not coming back to.', I reply.

And so for the first time ever, we walk off without paying for anything, and she's still yelling at us when we're at the other end of the street. Neighbouring cafes are bemused by the whole thing, and who knows what the remaining customers are thinking.

It takes a good hour or so to fully calm down from something that could have been avoided with a simple 'We're sorry'; 'the kitchen is busy'; 'my dog died today'; 'the staff are incompetent and I am possessed by satan and his hairy minions'; standard type of excuse. Instead it escalates into something like the 'Dirty Fork' sketch from Monty Python.

See here for Details: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gk4_Bt0yNgw