When we left Halls Gap this morning, it was sunny day with promise. Well, it stayed sunny all day but the promised warmth never showed up and it stayed freezing all day. All day. Windy and a bit warmer as we rode south, but definitely still spring temperatures in Victoria.There had been some frost overnight as it was still on the bikes first thing, but it soon went.
I met a bloke this morning who had worked in the small town where my parents live in the UK. He’d also worked at the same pub as me, and the same golf club, although some years later. And on further investigation, it turns out that my sister knew him. Small world.
The ride down from Halls Gap to Dunkeld was excellent, bush all the way, and various outcrops of rock to either side lining the route. Mount Abrupt was probably the biggest, sticking up out of nowhere and dominating the landscape for miles around.
While we were filling up at Dunkeld, a bloke came up to us and gave us a round of applause. He reckoned he wouldnt even ride around Australia on his 500cc. Funny how people think that only big bikes are capable of doing big trips.
It was a bit of a wild and windy ride down to Port Fairey on the coast, and we were all pretty battered by the time we arrived, but nothing that some lunch and a good coffee couldn't sort out. A couple of people in the town stopped us here too, and asked us about the bikes and what we were up to. Its almost like they know what we’re going to say before any of us answer, and when we do tell them, they seem really pleased that we’re out there looking around and seeing stuff. I dont think its even anything to do with us being from overseas (well two out of the three anyway) but it seems more to do with the fact that we are actually doing something they may have toyed with doing themselves. Maybe its the small bikes and the slow speed, maybe its the relative lack of kit and their perception of what might be required for such an undertaking that makes it seem ‘do-able’ to them. I don’t know, but everybody without exception has been very interested and very encouraging, telling us where they have been in the world, and offering us all sorts from advice to accommodation. And we’re only doing this because we want to; we are not sponsored nor do we want to be, we’re not out to prove anything nor make any records. We are just riding round Australia because its a good place to ride and we want to see it.
As we arrived in Port Fairey there was some sort of incident and the SES were scrambled with the aid of a very loud air horn. That’s how they used to summon the fire brigade in the UK when I was a child and the noise initially made me very edgy, that horrible feeling of wondering whether it was the house of a friend that had gone up in flames. But it turned out to be some sort of road incident, and they dealt with it and cleared up quite quickly.
After Port Fairey, we headed back along the coast on the Princes Highway to Warrnambool, via Tower Hill.
We only chanced upon it after a local man in Port Fairey mentioned it to us as we were looking round his book shop. Its a nature reserve sited in the crater of a dormant volcano. When it first erupted 30 000 years ago, the outer walls were created, subsequent eruptions then creating small hills within the main crater. Various artifacts indicate that aboriginal people were living there at the time, and in the late 1890s, the area was declared Victoria’s first National Park. However, that didnt stop European settlers clearing most of the land for farming and quarrying stone. But then in the 1960’s, restoration started, using a painting by an Austrian artist as a guide to what it used to look like. The regeneration has worked and the crater is now inhabited by emu, koala, kangaroo and wallaby, as well as other things you dont see that often.
With their downturned mouths and fluffy ears, they look like Fozzy Bear. But their fluffy appearance is a front; one in particular started growling and had I not known that the wild grunt growling was coming from it, there is no way that I would have linked the unholy low pitched loud grunting with the cute looking little thing perched above me, wedged between the trunk and a big branch 30 m from the ground. It must have been superglued into position too as it didn’t move despite the tree swaying substantially in the wind that was blowing hard around it, nor did it look even slightly perplexed.
Three emu were hanging around a bit further on too. They really are silly looking things, giant chickens with grey feathers that look like rather worn floor mops. But they do have giant feet and they can run very fast, although today they were just poking around under some trees not doing much at all.
We’re staying tonight in Warranmbool, which is not far from the end of the Great Ocean Road which runs between Allensford in the west to Torquay, just to the south of Geelong. The Twelve Apostles Marine Park is off the road too, (on the water side of course). The Apostles are limestone stacks sticking out of the water, only some have since disappeared, having been bashed once too often by the waves in the Bass Straight and adjoining bits of the Southern ocean and are now underwater.
The Great Ocean Road is also the Worlds largest war memorial. It was handbuilt by soldiers returning from WW1 in memory of their fallen comrades and was officially opened in 1932. In 1924 whilst it was still being laid out, a ship came to grief off the coast; it was carrying 500 barrels of liquor, which the soldier construction workers retrieved, and had a two week drinking celebration as a result. The plan is to ride along some of it tomorrow.
We walked around Port Warranmbool this evening. The coastline is wild and protected as a marine park. It is also eroded quite a bit but the erosion has revealed some really cool stuff like the fossilised roots and stems of prehistoric plants buried in sand.
The erosion has created some small islands literally just metres from the coast. One in particular is home to a colony of Little Penguins, the only such colony in Australia. Just a few years ago, they were all but gone, their burrows being accidentally destroyed by people walking on the sand, as well as foxes and other predators. So now, the island is out of bounds, but to protect the little creatures and stop intruders, a number of sheep dogs live alongside them. Its true!
The Ocean stretches as far as the eye can see too, and its weird knowing there is nothing out there before Antarctica. All that space and all that water, and all that cold wind coming ashore from it.
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