The Great Ocean Road and into South Australia

After weeks of inland-dwelling we finally meandered our way back to the coast and to the Great Ocean Road. We could tell before we even got there that we were re-entering tourist country, mainly based on the prices of accommodation and the lack of availability. But we managed to pick out a good free camp about 20 minutes inland from a lovely little place called Airey’s Inlet. We turned up there and thought we’d struck gold as there was only one other camper there, but throughout the afternoon and evening the place slowly filled up, mostly with French and German backpackers who were clearly there for the surfing.

They all cleared out the next morning (to be replaced by a different lot the following evening, and each subsequent evening). Annoyingly the internet there was woeful, so I did have to spend a bit of time in Torquay library getting my work done. Secretly I was ok with that as it was (as usual) a bit cold and windy. When I wasn’t working, we drove the first bit of the Great Ocean Road. It’s lovely, but I have to say, coming from NZ where scenic coastal drives are a dime a dozen, I wasn’t particularly blown away by it. It did lead me to the start of the Great Ocean Walk however – a 100km-ish long 8-day walk of which I intended to do a few sections over the next couple of weeks. Heidi came with me on the first section, which started at Apollo Bay and worked its way west. We finished faster than the signs had suggested, so had quite a long wait to be picked up at the other end, but passed the time killing a million or so mosquitos.

One of the problems with staying in a forest (especially one with gum trees) is that when the wind gets up things can get a bit dicey, so after five nights we were ready to move on. Again we had to head inland, to a place called Colac, which is what we called a “filler” spot – somewhere where we just needed to bide a bit of time before we were staying in a booked spot. We chose the showgrounds campground which turned out to be a great choice – right in town and a really nice spot. We were even “treated” to a show on the oval that evening by a country singer we’d never heard of. Perhaps it was the sound system, but unfortunately, we weren’t overly impressed.

But, we were quite impressed with Colac. It was a larger town that we expected and had all sorts of shops that we needed (once again we were looking for stuff to either fix or replace broken things). So we spent the time catching up on laundry, re-supplying, and fixing bits and pieces. We also had a powered site, which gave us an opportunity to resurrect a battery we thought we’d killed, and recharge everything after a few overcast days in the shady forest. The kids have these mega-expensive bunk beds that actually turn into a couch, so we had a couple of “movie afternoons” too where we all sat on the couch watching a couple of movies online. Jett was most unimpressed to find out that we’d been on the road for nearly six months and hadn’t mentioned that we were travelling with a couch…

After Colac we moved to Johanna Beach which is a stunning beach about halfway along the Great Ocean Road. This campground is a Victoria Parks campground, so about $15 night, where you have a pre-book an allocated site. Unfortunately the freeloaders missed that message, and on the first night there were at least a dozen other campers who had no issue with just camping for free – something that I have to say I have a real issue with. You always get the odd one or two, but to have as many as there were there really bugged me. The same happened each night, making the campground far busier than it was supposed to be.

But the good thing about this spot was that I could complete a few more sections of the Great Ocean Road, and ended up doing three in total, one more with Heidi, and two on my own, including one where I walked to the 12 Apostles, which was pretty cool.

Unlike the earlier parts of the Great Ocean Road, the 12 Apostles did impress me, and I was pretty glad to tick that one off the list. Once again, we were blown out of a campsite, this time being woken up at around 6am by our tent falling down around us. Luckily, because it was a moving day, we had packed up a lot the night before, so we just got up, packed up in the dark and moved on. Winds were gusting at 70km+/hr so it was a tough pack-up.

Speaking of the wind, our next spot was a nice little place on the Fitzroy River in a reserve for $50 for the week. We smugly chose our spot based on the way the wind was blowing, and by the next morning it had swung around completely and once again we were getting blown away. If the wind is coming into the front of the tent we’ve got no hope as the annex acts like an enormous sail. But moving is way too hard so we just decided we had to endure it, which we did basically almost the whole time we were there.

There were also millipedes absolutely everywhere, so we spent some time plugging holes and removing dozens of the little guys from the tent. With those and the wind, I really didn’t get a lot of sleep at that spot. I did however get a fair bit of work done, as I nicked off for two of the days to work in Portland library.

This spot was also close to Port Fairy, which is a lovely little town where we wandered around for a bit and had a couple of drinks in the oldest continuously licenced pub in Victoria. We also spent some time looking around Portland, another nice town with some interesting things to see.

We did a bit of reminiscing while we were here, as this was our last stop in Victoria. Since arriving in mid-December we’ve seen quite a lot of interesting places, and have really enjoyed our time looking around. We’ve moved through summer into autumn and experienced every temperature possible, sometimes all in one day. But time is marching on and we need to keep heading west-ward if we’re to make it all the way around.

We drove into South Australia with absolutely no fanfare (almost missed the sign) and stopped first in Mt Gambier before heading to the lovely seaside town of Southend. There are three campgrounds in town and while the bush camp is our usual style, we chose the old-school one and what a good choice it was. Currently, we are the only people staying here and have access to the most well-equipped camp kitchen I’ve ever seen, within a nice hall that has both couches and a TV! So the kids think it is some kind of heaven, and actually we’re enjoying the novelty of having solid walls and a roof to escape to (because of course it is rainy and windy as usual).

Since we’ve been here we’ve already visited Robe, a larger and more touristy seaside town to the north of here, and gone back to Mt Gambier to look at the impressive Blue Lake Crater and various sinkholes around the place. The weather is supposed to be dreadful tomorrow (what a surprise) so we’ll be hiding out in “our” hall working and schooling. Refer to Jim’s post on the weather to find out why I’ve talked about the wind and rain so much in this story – the weather really does dictate all things when you live out in it. But we’re excited to be in South Australia, and have lots to do and see ahead of us.