We drove from Port McDonald South Aust accross the border to Nelson in Victoria
and on to Portland and booked into the Portland Dutton Way Van Park so I could catch up with washing, even though it was quite late in the day, it just means hanging the washing till the sun goes down, then hanging it out again in the morning when we get up and collecting it again before we leave at 10 am. Portland has a community tram which takes tourists along the grass footpaths and parkland and along the rugged cliffs to the lighthouse.
and on to Portland and booked into the Portland Dutton Way Van Park so I could catch up with washing, even though it was quite late in the day, it just means hanging the washing till the sun goes down, then hanging it out again in the morning when we get up and collecting it again before we leave at 10 am. Portland has a community tram which takes tourists along the grass footpaths and parkland and along the rugged cliffs to the lighthouse.
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| Portland Port |
We then drove out to Cape Bridgewater and saw the blowholes, these are different to Kiama blowholes which blow vertical, these blowholes work when a wave compresses the air in caves in the limestone cliff then pushes the wave back out to sea with a loud roar, more or less horizontal blowholes. We also saw another ‘petrified forest‘, tree stumps in the cliffs still there from centuries ago when the area had a lot of volcanic activity.
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| Yellow Rock Cape Bridgewater |
Stayed the night in a CP behind the beach at Warnambool, each group of sites is partitioned off with a hedge about 8’ or 10’ high, just to protect the vans from the strong south winds off the water which can be bitterly cold. The town is a big town, the bay is quite large with a long sandy beach with the port at the west end.
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| "Petrified Forest" |
We drove down the coast to get away from all the smoke which seemed to be coming from the Pine forests north of the Highway, we hope they were just back burns.
Stayed the night in a CP behind the beach at Warnambool, each group of sites is partitioned off with a hedge about 8’ or 10’ high, just to protect the vans from the strong south winds off the water which can be bitterly cold. The town is a big town, the bay is quite large with a long sandy beach with the port at the west end.
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| Warrnambool map |
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| Middle Island Warrnambool |
20/3/2012: 19 degrees to mid 30’s, hot and sunny. Drove along the Great Ocean Road, which was packed with hire vans and tourist coaches mostly people from Germany. We particularly noticed the road signs marked “keep to the left in Australia“.
Stopped at scenic spots, Bay of Islands, Bay of Martyrs, The Grotto, London Bridge, the Arch, Port Campbell, Two Mile Bay, Sentinel Rock, Loch Ard Gorge, Twelve Apostles although you can only see eight now and Gibson steps. The coastline here is similar to the Great Australian Bight with high cliffs.
We continued on around twisting roads and up and down the very rugged and steep ranges of the Great Otway National Park and stopped the night at Johanna Beach Campground (No.681 in the Camps Six Book), a lovely spot along the beach front which was grassy and trees sectioned off little areas, where we were there must have been 15 to 20 vans, caravans and large motor homes. There was a school group camped up one end with lots of little dome tents, we saw the teenagers swimming and walking along the beach keeping cool in the heat, when we went to bed the temperature had not dropped at all, but later we all felt the southerly hit with driving rain and felt the temperature drop.
Stopped at scenic spots, Bay of Islands, Bay of Martyrs, The Grotto, London Bridge, the Arch, Port Campbell, Two Mile Bay, Sentinel Rock, Loch Ard Gorge, Twelve Apostles although you can only see eight now and Gibson steps. The coastline here is similar to the Great Australian Bight with high cliffs.
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| The Kookaburra |
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| The Grotto |
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| London Bridge |
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| The Arch |
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| Port Campbell |
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| The Razorback |
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some of the 8 apostles |
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| 12 Apostles visitor centre |
We continued on around twisting roads and up and down the very rugged and steep ranges of the Great Otway National Park and stopped the night at Johanna Beach Campground (No.681 in the Camps Six Book), a lovely spot along the beach front which was grassy and trees sectioned off little areas, where we were there must have been 15 to 20 vans, caravans and large motor homes. There was a school group camped up one end with lots of little dome tents, we saw the teenagers swimming and walking along the beach keeping cool in the heat, when we went to bed the temperature had not dropped at all, but later we all felt the southerly hit with driving rain and felt the temperature drop.
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| Johanna Beach |
21/3/2012: 17 degrees - 21 degrees, rain and wind. Continued in Great Otway National Park weaving up and down and twisting in and out around the forest, didn’t see any koalas, apparently there are lots there.
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| Mist and showers on the Cape Ottaway winding road |
Stopped at Apolla Bay and checked out the shops and Tourist Information Centre, then drove on through Lorne and Anglesea and stopped at Bells Beach which was being prepared for the Easter Surfing Classic. We walked down lots and lots of steps to watch people on boards catching waves but they did not seem to be very big, we have seen bigger at home along the Peninsular.
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| Apollo Bay |
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| Great Ocean Road |
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| Unusual houses |
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| Bells Beach |
Stayed overnight in Geelong which is very big, possibly as big as Parramatta and probably the same distance from Melbourne to Geelong as Sydney to Parramatta. We had been getting concerned about the house batteries as our battery monitor was indicating very low voltage and the need to be charged from 240 volt power - not looking very good. We had had a couple of bush camps and wound up with no power and driving the bus was now not charging the batteries.
22/3/2012: 12 degrees - 29 degrees. We decided it was time to find an auto electrician, so Lloyd found one on the internet who was nearby and we went to see him. After he plugged our Coaster in to a power point the house batteries started to charge, we must have been there about 3 or 4 hours, but he did all the checking, we stayed in the Coaster, had morning tea, lunch and he told us we needed a new 24v to 12v charger for the house batteries as the existing one had failed, so we told him to go ahead and get one for us. He sent his offsider to go pick one up and he fitted it in the bus and retested to check the house batteries are operating as they should. $600 later, thank goodness for plastic cards, (we must have lots of points now) and we were again on our way.
We continued on our way from Geelong to Ballarat arriving late in the evening and booked into the Shady Acres Van Park, it was very cold when we arrived.
23/3/2012: 11 degrees - 23 degrees - sun. Drove to Bendigo and rang Lloyd’s cousin Beverly who was waiting for us to arrive, we spent a lovely time catching up with Beverly and Das who came home from work to have lunch with us, they were intending going down to Melbourne to spend the week catching up with their two boys and their grandchildren, we saw the lovely photos of the children (and I would be going down to Melbourne to see them if they were my grandchildren) and caught up on the family activities.
We left Bev and Das and traveled on through Shepparton, we could see where the heavy rains they had had in the last few weeks had left lots of water either side of the road after the floods. We stayed at an overnight rest stop beside a creek at Casey‘s Weir (No. 470 in the Camps Six Book), 10 kilometers west of Benalla.
24/3/2012: 14 degrees - 22 degrees. In the daylight we could see where the creek had been in flood during the recent floods. We drove to Wodonga and caught up with shopping and found a laundrette and caught up with the washing.
Drove up the Hume Highway to Jugiong between Gundagai and Yass and stayed in the Showground, after all our traveling we were very tired so we went to sleep early and were woken up by very loud music coming from the tennis club about 11 pm we had duff duff music until 4 am, we think it was a karioki machine. We have made a note, not to stay too close to the tennis club in future and maybe not on Saturday nights.
25/3/2012: 8 degrees - 19 degrees - sunshine. The next morning we woke to very thick fog everywhere, Jugiong had also been in flood a few weeks ago. We saw bodies who had been at the tennis club last night arising out of the fog from their swags, they must be rugged, we were frozen and didn’t want to get out of bed.
We drove up the Hume Highway to our home arriving late in the afternoon. We can now clean up and pack our bags to fly up to the Sunshine Coast Airport for Derek and Mel’s wedding on Friday.
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