Twelve Apostles

Unfortunately Bends café was closed…. But in compensation the thermal cooker worked just fine and we had a lovely hot stew waiting for us. Yesterday (Saturday), we packed up in the morning, which is still taking us quite a while, and drove to the Twelve Apostles which weren’t very far away, followed closely by Loch Ard Gorge.

After seeing so many photos of the Twelve Apostles it was kind of surreal to see actually them, but also very impressive. They’re so dramatic, in fact the whole coastline along there is so dramatic that I’m so glad we stopped in. I love the way that, even when you feel like you’re inland, you turn a corner and can suddenly see cliffs and the sea again. It was kind of funny to be driving along what seemed like pretty quiet roads, and to suddenly get to the Twelve Apostles where there’s a huge car park, café and underpass to get across the road to where crowds of people from lots of different nationalities were all snapping away or setting up their tripods.

Loch Ard Gorge was possibly better than the Twelve Apostles, probably because there’s a bit of a story behind there being a shipwreck there with just two survivors (Tom and Eva), a graveyard housing those who didn’t make it, a great lookout to an archway and Thunder Cave, which is a huge sea cave you can look down on and watch as the waves crash against the sides, making a noise just like a thunderclap. It was slightly disconcerting there to realise that we’d just walked over the top of the cave, when there’s lots of signs around talking about decaying and crumbling paths… there was also a little beach you could walk down to and imagine the survivors and bodies being washed ashore. The surf was huge, not sure if it’s like that all year ‘round, but I can see how a boat could be smashed up against the rocks pretty easily. After lunch and refuel in Port Campbell we drove up to Hamilton, to arrive and set up in Michael and Cathy’s beautiful garden just before dark. The kids were in heaven and headed straight for the couch in front of the TV for some vege time. Conor struggled today with a bit too much sightseeing – in his words, he wouldn’t mind seeing some volcano stuff, but ‘no more cliffs, mum’. There’s a full house here with two of Michael and Cathy’s kids, her sister Chris and husband Dennis, so we had a lovely roast lamb dinner around the table all together last night, all toasty by the wood stove. Apparently there’s quolls, bandicoots and foxes which visit the garden at night but we didn’t hear a thing. They also have guinea fowl which greeted us when we arrived yesterday afternoon, chickens, heaps of dogs and countless sheep and cattle, which are apparently lambing and calving at the moment so the kids are hoping that we’ll get to see some up close.