Apollo Bay

Two days in one place is the new norm, well, for now, as we proceed along the Great Ocean Road.

At the cabin, we enjoyed the interplay between the cockatoos and the king parrots. Cockatoos are twice the size so guess who wins most of the time?

The big surprise though was getting up to find that the heater turned on. Yes, it was cold enough for an actual heater. I wouldn’t have bothered, myself, of course, but you have to look after the ladies with their narrower comfort zone when it comes to temperature. (Mick ducks.)

We returned to the Deans Marsh Store for breakfast. Outside, in the bed with rhubarb and strawberries, I found a rock which I should have moved to a different location, but I didn’t. Vic rocks, along the lines of Chch rocks.

Yesterday, we’d driven past a sign warning us of echidnas riding skateboards. For some reason, we didn’t stop to take a picture so today, we decided to retrace our steps for a photo. Wild goose chase. We never did find it, we all remember seeing it but we all began to doubt our collective memory and sanity. So we resorted to that fount of all knowledge, the internet, and found this picture, thanks to whoever it belongs to.

We saw a few temporary signs in Chinese. Programming error? There is a lot of logging in the area, and we wondered whether they’re owned and run by Chinese companies.

Stevenson’s Falls was a very pleasant walk. The conspiracy theorist in me wonders whether this is a genuine warning?

Are they trying to preverse the berries for the local wildlife? Or, if they have used chemicals, won’t that be detrimental to local wildlife as well as to us humans?

There are lots of fallen trees here. In fact, they’re in most of the forests and woods we’ve visited, and it’s good that the old trunks are being left for nature to make use of. Sometimes, though, a tree might keel over in the wrong direction and (potentially) bonk someone on the head.

This must have been an exciting few moments for any innocent bystanders.

We were advised that Kennett River was the place to go: guaranteed to see lots of koalas. Again, we doubted our powers of observation when, after quite a long walk along the trail, we’d seen hundreds of gum trees but no cuddly little chaps. Maybe it just takes a while for our eyes to tune in to the right frequency.

Eventually, we found this beauty, much lower down than we would have expected. And another one!

On the walk, we heard lots of birds and even saw some, including a kookaburra, coots, swamphens and, er, butterflies.

Back on the mainly westbound road, we stopped several times to admire the coastline and the Bass Straight. Jump up high enough and you’ll see Tasmania.

The view from Cape Patten revealed a rugged coastline but the clouds were fascinating too.

Apollo Bay welcomed us with phonelines along our road, all but fully laden with galahs, or pink and grey cockatoos.

We enjoyed a relatively lazy day at Apollo Bay, in our b&b. I wrote. Liesel read. Jyoti went to use the wifi in the local library.

Later in the afternoon, I did go for a quick walk with Jyoti. It was a Saturday, and the town was very busy.

The Great Ocean Walk starts here, and we did a short section of it, just round the corner to the harbour.

Jyoti dragged me into Tastes of the Region, the local beer shop. There, I was strongly encouraged to sample some of the local beers on offer. I selected 5 from a list of fifteen and tasted them in the recommended sequence, cleansing my palate with plain water between samples.

My favourite was the Otway Stout, so I bought a bottle to take home for supper. We also bought coffee to take back for me and Liesel, who was enjoying a totally relaxing, pain-free day, for a change.

One of the streets in Apollo Bay won an award 25 years ago and rightly, they’re still very proud.

On the other hand, they should be genuinely proud of one of the most ornate drinking fountains I’ve ever seen.