We left Ballarat the following morning and drove south to the Great Ocean Road. We were staying at Apollo Bay which is a small beach town/tourist resort. After finding our motel we went for a walk around town before setting off in the afternoon to explore the Great Ocean Rd.
The Great Ocean Rd is stunningly scenic. There are lots of lookout points from which to admire the amazing rock formations structured by years of erosion. Due to the nature of erosion, the Great Ocean Rd is still work in progress (if you would). We visited the 12 Apostles which are free standing rock formations jutting out of the ocean. I think that there were only actually 9 rocks, so I wouldn't like to speculate on the name 12 Apostles. There are only 8 now as one of them collapsed in 2005 and is just a pile of rubble now. This is not the first time that the rocks here have eroded to the point of collapse. More famously the London Bridge or London Arch, as it is known, collapsed in January 1990 stranding 2 tourists on its' outer arch. So as you can see, this is an ever changing coastline. On our way to the Apostles we had spotted an Echidna crossing the road. These are like large hedgehogs but with a difference.
Millions of years of isolation have given Australian wildlife the freedoms to adapt to their harsh surroundings. There are animals here that you would not find anywhere else in the world. The Echidna is what is termed a monotreme, meaning 'one hole'. They have one hole, called a cloaca, which serves for both excretory and reproductive purposes, an anomaly of the animal world. When monotremes were first discovered, nobody knew how to classify them. They lay eggs (a reptilian trait), but they also suckle their young (a mammalian trait). So they were classified as monotremes because nobody could decide whether they were reptiles or mammals. The more famous of the monotremes is the Platypus, also a native to Oz. I was really happy to see an Echidna, just going about its' daily buisness, but I worried about it all day because there was other traffic on the road and I did so hope that it had crossed the road safely.
The Great Ocean Rd is a very beautiful coastline and well worth a look if you are in the area, however, there was just one thing that hampered our day.....
FLIES!!!!! It was a biblical plague.. According to the locals, the flies are multitudinous this year due to the drought. The good news was that there were no mossies, because there is no water there is nowhere for the mossies to breed, but the flies are relishing the current conditions. They were everywhere and although they are harmless they are annoying. We developed what is known as the Aussie wave where you are constantly flapping your hands in front of your face to keep them away. It was total misery, they were crawling all over everyone and I swear that one of them crawled under my sunglasses and tried to suck the juice off my eyeball.
We tried to keep a stiff upper lip (we had to otherwise the flies would have crawled into our mouths), but we had to brush the little blighters off each other before getting into the car. It was hell.
We had an evening meal in Port Campbell before driving back to Apollo Bay. It was dusk by this time which can be quite a dicey time to drive in Oz. The animals can be quite active at this time of day and they often end up on the roads. Some of these kangaroos are massive and fast moving. They do a hell of a lot of damage to your car if you hit one. We were a few miles away from Apollo when I spotted a face at the side of the road......
"WOBBLY!!!!!" I shouted (rather loudly), almost causing Sparks to jump out of his skin....
There was a Wallaby by the side of the road, eating supper and minding its' own buisness.
I could not have been more thrilled to see a Wallaby in the wild, and we saw 2 more before we reached our destination. All the way home I had been checking the road for a squashed or injured Echidna. I never saw it, so I assume that the little fella made it..
Happy days..
Here are a few pics of the Apostles...