Port Fairy to Port Campbell

November 12

In the morning, when I went for a shower in what we caravanners call the "amenities block", I was startled by the sign that I passed en route.



Later I walked into the town, through the tiny botanic garden with its huge Norfolk pines.


The main street was busy with locals and tourists, but it was quiet along the river.



Just a few couples strolling, and one fishing boat crew organizing their lobster pots.



The heatwave was continuing in Adelaide and inland but on the coast it was tempered by a cool sea breeze. The air was a little hazy, but at least the fog stayed well offshore.

Not very far from Port Fairy is the large town of Warnambool, which has a very good art gallery. We spent an hour or so there, enjoying the exhibitions as well as the coolness. When we came out into the bright sunshine, the small park in front of the gallery was providing a convenient lunching spot for some of the locals.



Jogging briefly inland, we came to the remarkable Tower Hill which is, like Mt Gambier, the crater of an extinct volcano, and was a popular subject for early painters.



In fact, when the local authorities recently decided to restore native vegetation that had been stripped by farming, they relied on a painting by well-known artist Eugene Von Guerard for guidance in what had originally been there.



Back on the coast, we followed the Great Ocean Road, a tourist mecca as we found as we travelled along. Luckily, most of the traffic was coming the opposite way - from Melbourne - and we were not oppressed by impatient motorists, although there were quite a few coming towards us who were cutting the corners and having to correct very smartly as our beast lumbered into their path.

We made numerous stops along the route to see the remarkable landforms rising from the surging turquoise sea, encountering the same people throughout the day who were doing the same thing. The coastline here is so breathtakingly beautiful that it's hard to describe. Even photos, though they may be worth a thousand words, cannot replicate what the eye sees. The following are of the area called Bay of Islands:







We moved slowly along, stopping constantly to visit more viewpoints, and wound up in Port Campbell for the night.