A Grey Day

Well all good things must come to an end.
Unfortunately our holiday fitted into that category.

On our last morning the early cloud didn’t burn off as it had on every other morning. Through the morning the weather alternated between windy and grey and windy, grey and wet.

We elected to meander along The Great Ocean Road in the direction of home.

We have travelled this piece of road on a number of occasions. The scenery is so spectacular we just can’t seem to get enough of it.

In spite of coming along here before we managed to find spots we hadn’t caught before.

Like this spectacular cove at the end of a little track, and from the same point turning about 90 degrees to the right.The sea was of course reflecting the sky and instead of deep blue it was grey and green.

At one point along the cliffs I found these fellows: Long Beaked Corellas, an Oz cockatoo.
These guys are normally associated more with the dry inland than the coast. They usually nest in hollow trees. I would have guessed they were looking for possible nesting hollows along the cliffs, except they don’t begin nesting until mid-winter (July down this end of the world).

A little further on was this feature, called strangely enough “The Arch”

Near Loch Ard Gorge the sun briefly poked out from between the clouds.

We elected not to stop at the famous “Twelve Apostles, because we have seen them before and with the holiday they were simply unpleasantly crowded.

Just to the East of the Apostles are “Gibson’s Steps”.Deb waited at the top and snapped a few photos.
This is Deb’s isn’t the look of the sea a total contrast compared to just a few days before?
Then as she waited a slightly portly, amateur photographer with pretensions to publushing came into sight at the base of the cliff.
It was so cool I had pulled a woollen jumper over my T-shirt.

While I was going down the stairs and from the beach I captured these piccies of the cliffs.Then it was a matter of climbing back up the stairs to see if Deb had blown away.
Now that is it, my protracted description of our holiday has come to an end.

Next time: an odd word

Some Loons and a Few Odd Little Birds

Here I go again in an attempt to out do my imaginary Uncle Harry in the boredom stakes.
We stopped at the Bay of Islands with the girls. Unlike last time it was not blowing a gale, but the weather was cold and it rained intermittently. But the weather did not deter some loony locals. In the circle in this photo (number one daughter in the corner by the way)...
are these guys, surfing far off this inhospitable coast.Every now and then surfers are drowned somewhere on this coast, when the conditions change suddenly on a rugged coastline they can easily be trapped against sheer cliff faces. When you see them in places like this you can see why.

To continue boring you, another shot of The Grotto.
And London Bridge at low tide in calmer seas.
I took this photo of the cliffs facing away from London Bridge the previous time we were there. I noticed footprints in the sand at the base of the cliff at the time and wondered how anyone could have climbed down there.
Two weeks later and there were still footprints at the bottom of the cliff, lots of them.
So I had a closer look. In the vegetation covered bank at the base of the cliff are dozens of burrows.
Then it went click, Fairy Penguins live along this coast. During daylight hours they fish out at sea, then at night they come ashore to rest in burrows where they raise their chicks.
All these prints are the work of cute little fairy penguins.

This picture is from Wikimedia Commons

Next along to Loch Ard Gorge
Where there are these interesting but rather ugly stalactites.
Out at the point beyond the gorge you can see where the Loch Ard foundered. The formation with the arch through it is Muttonbird Island. The Loch Ard was wrecked on the shelf at the base of the cliffs in the extreme left of this picture. Somehow the two survivors made it past these cliffs, through this gap, to land on this beach.

From here we continued on to the Twelve Apostles. These nifty little helicopters run tourists past the Apostles. We decided not to go last time because it was really windy, and this time because it was raining.
So we made do with looking from ground level

Here they are again from a different angle to last time and in very different light.
We had hoped to go on to Cape Otway, which we have not made it to on either of our previous trips, but the rain continued to get heavier so we decided to head for home.

Having made Uncle Harry proud by boring you all to tears, that is all for a while from the South West Coast.

Of course we still have to head down that way to see Cape Otway, maybe in summer before the high season. So Uncle harry could yet ride again!

Next: I cast an eye over my novel.

London Bridge: Uncle Harry’s Revenge!

London bridge is...

This image (Circa 1988) is from Panoramio by atiiota

Falling down…
“Enough of the kid stuff!”

Uncle Harry…

“No son, the blokes reading this blog thing of yours are adults, not a mob of screeching galahs.”

I’m not treating them like galahs…

“Don’t come the raw prawn with me.”

Are you quite finished?

“Only for the moment.”

Right then, I’ll go on.

The coast here is being continually carved by wind and wave. London Bridge lies eastward of Martyrs Bay. Until 1990 it was a double arched formation, when the landward arch collapsed, two unlucky (or perhaps lucky) walkers had to be rescued by helicopter.
Nearby this set of stairs…
leads down to the Grotto.
Back in the car we drove on, stopping in Port Campbell for lunch.

The next place we stopped was at Loch Ard Gorge. This area is named for the clipper ship the Loch Ard which was wrecked here in 1878. There are a number of fascinating sights here.
First we walked along to the Blowhole.
The cave in the picture is the mouth of a tunnel that leads to the ocean about 200 metres away. The spray is from a wave that has come all the way through the tunnel before hitting the wall.
To give some idea of scale, it is about 20-25 metres down to the surface of the water.

Also at the Loch Ard Gorge is Thunder Cave seen here looking into the mouth of the cave.
And from the cave mouth out to sea.
Above the cliffs is the Loch Ard cemetery. Of the 54 people on board when the Loch Ard was wrecked 52 perished. Only four bodies were recovered, they are buried here at the cemetery.
This grave contains the remains of two members of the Carmichael family, the bodies of five more were never found. An eighth member of the family Eva Carmichael, was one of the two survivors of the wreck.

Our final port of call on our way along the Great Ocean Road was The Twelve Apostles. Originally called the “Sow and Piglets” they were renamed in a brilliant piece of marketing back in the 1950s. They must be one of the most popular tourist attractions in Victoria, if not Australia. It has never been possible to see 12 stacks from one place at the Apostles and it is getting harder, the boulders in the front are the remains of stacks that have collapsed from erosion in the past few years.
The height of the cliffs can be judged by how small the people look at the top of this lookout near the Apostles (click on the picture and you'll see what I mean).

By the time we had reached here it was getting late and we elected to head straight for home, bypassing places like Cape Otway (so at some point I foresee another trip down the Great Ocean Road).

We stopped for fuel at Apollo Bay which is really beautiful, although nowhere near as rugged as further west.
Now what do you think Uncle Harry, are you happy now?

Uncle Harry?