Otway National Park

21^st April

We didn’t make it to Scienceworks in the end on Tuesday afternoon, and went to the museum instead, which was just as good. That night Jane and Paul and their kids came over for dinner which was lovely to all catch up, and then yesterday morning we headed off from Melbourne in some uninspiring drizzle. The Navman we’re using was great in Melbourne proper to find our way between Penny and Nick’s house and Tom and Colette’s house, but for some reason we really struggled with it in Geelong, only because it kept wanting to take us the fastest route (inland highway), when we wanted to go along the Great Ocean Road, the scenic way. Even after living in Melbourne for a few years we had never been along the Great Ocean Road, so I’m really glad that we did. We finally got out of Geelong, had a sandwich in Torquay and even though it was a cloudy grey day the view along the road was still fantastic, very twisty and turny and some great cliffs with pounding sea. It was a pretty long day in the car what with getting lost in Geelong (and we didn’t even travel that far in terms of distance) so the kids were pretty sick of it by the time we got to the Aire River East campground in time to set up and cook dinner in the dark. We’ll be here for 3 nights so we’ve set up the annex roof (first time this trip!) and are able to spread out a bit more and work out where to put things. There were quite a few people already here when we got here, and even more by the evening (it’s a free site and you’re allowed campfires).

Tomorrow is the first of a 5 day long weekend so I’m expecting even more people will probably turn up tonight. If they don’t mind the cold that is – it looked to be a beautiful day this morning and although it’s not raining or anything I’m absolutely FREEZING. Possibly because we gave in to Conor’s requests and sat around this morning playing a board game (Risk) so when we go for a walk or ride soon that will help. The kids have got their lego out for the first time this morning which is working ok, the table is on a bit of an angle although we’ve propped up one side of legs so there’s still a bit of a danger of everything sliding off – before we had it propped up last night there were literally peas rolling down the table (unfortunately I was on the low side). We were all warm last night in bed though thank goodness, after buying an extra blanket from the Salvos in Melbourne. Hopefully in a month or so we’ll be in warmer latitudes and won’t need them (and then we have to find somewhere to store them).

Nick and I are still recovering a bit from the whole pack-up-and-go experience I think, and turned off the light last night at 7.30pm with the kids for a 12 hour sleep. A couple of those and I’ll be good to go again – I spent quite a bit of Melbourne fine during the day but coming to a crashing halt at about 8pm each evening unfortunately, so I was very glad that we were staying with friends and still got to see them in (my) waking hours.

One lot of our neighbours in the campsite are Russian speakers so I’m understanding the (very) occasional word, but it has occurred to me that from their tone of voice it sounds like they’re constantly fighting which is slightly disconcerting. The other side have a generator so, although it’s a basic campground in terms of no showers etc, it’s still not quite the ‘getting away from it all’ experience. I guess we’re still too close to civilisation (plus it’s school holidays).

22^nd April

We survived our first night of rain last night pretty well really. A bit of water came into the tent but we didn’t notice until the morning because we had rubber mats down under the kids’ beds. It’s not that we haven’t taken the trailer camping in the rain before, but knowing that we don’t have a house to go home to the next day if everything is wet makes it a bit different. I felt that we’d already acclimatised and become rugged campers when we drove back to the campsite from Apollo Bay in the rain, decided we didn’t need to get takeaway just because it was raining, then cooked our stir fry in the dark (with headlamps). I know being 20 mins from a town isn’t exactly ‘rugged’ but I’m just trying to make myself feel good early on J

One of the great things about Otway National Park is that there are a lot of wild koalas living here – we just noticed one sitting eating quite low down in a tree right over someone’s tent - I guess they’re quite used to people being around. We went to the Cape Otway Lighthouse in the afternoon and the road in there had loads of cars pulled over on the side taking photos of them in the trees.

The lighthouse was pretty cool, but also pretty freaky being up on the platform in the wind. There was a guide sitting inside up there and apparently he gets the job of cleaning the windows all year ‘round! It was a 4 – 5 gale force wind yesterday he said and I hardly wanted to go out on the platform to look at the view let alone stand out there with a squeegee. I had never thought about Australia having a lot of shipwrecks but it seems that this coast has an awful lot – there was a sign listing them over the last couple of hundred years and a couple of things around the lighthouse mentioned it was set up to host shipwreck survivors.

Unfortunately we’re out of mobile range at the campsite, so I’ll have to load up a couple of days’ worth of blog at once when we next get into a town. It’s a wild woolly day today (Good Friday) and we’re hoping that the Otway Fly treetops walk is open. They also have a cool sounding big long flying fox type of thing where you zoom through the tree tops attached to a cable between platforms for an hour or more, but it’s hundreds of dollars for a family, so we might have to pass on that one unfortunately. We’re trying out a stew in our thermal cooker today because we’re getting tired of coming home late and cooking in the dark, so fingers crossed that it goes well. I’m not entirely convinced after my test run at home didn’t go so well, but maybe your expectations are also lowered when camping!

Later… the treetop walk at the Otway Fly was really cool – amazingly tall Mountain Ash trees 2 or 300 years old (apparently you can tell how old they are by their diameter at waist height). Conor and Nick were brave enough to climb up to the top of the tower which was part of the treetop walk – 47m above ground level. I made it about ¾ way up and vertigo got the better of me. Daniel decided we were all crazy and didn’t even attempt it. We also had lunch and a nice walk at Triplet Falls nearby – and there we saw an Otway snail in the wild (spotted by Conor). They are interesting partly because they are only native to this area, but even more so because they are the only carnivorous snail in the world, and eat insects etc. Because of this I expected them to be quite big but they were no different in size to a normal garden snail. We have a photo but haven’t downloaded it yet. Heading back now via Bends café (thanks for the recommendation Penny and Nick) and to see how our thermal cooker is going.