The cockatoos woke me first or was it the daylight streaming in. Either way I turned the alarm off before it rocked the hut too much. I say that as every movement from downstairs made me think the hut was going to roll down the hill.
First to a couple of local attractions. The Erskine Falls were, one presumes, a touch down on their peak, today offering the sort of delicate flow that let the stream at the bottom appear to be still. Teddy's Lookout is nice but not too inspiring. The Ocean Road belies its name and runs inland for a good portion including via Melba Gully with its rainforest and Big Tree. The Big Tree was claimed to be 27m in circumference, 9m in diameter. In fact that's a measurement round the splayed root system and is a bit of a con. It's no kauri. Via Mait's Rest, another pleasant bit of rainforest to the coast again and the section of the Great Ocean Road you'll have seen most photographs of with the eroded limestone pinnacles etc..
The main attractions, the twelve apostles, has a swanky new all but empty visitor building and an access way underneath the main road, the rest have small car parks to see the various stacks and arches and grottos formed by natural erosion. Dramatic changes still happen "today" when in 1990 the landward arch of the two arch London Bridge collapsed into the sea (cue the "London Bridge has fallen down" information board) leaving a couple stranded on the seaward arch. These are arches the size of, well, London Bridge so it was a big lump of rock that went sploosh. Of course the tale grows in the telling about the couple: in flagrante delicto?; married but not to each other? All good for tourism.
After that the Great Ocean Road becomes the Usual Inland Road and peters out without you knowing it. If you do carry on on the A1 you'll come across Tower Hill State Game Park which is a great little one-way drive down, across and out again of an ancient volcanic crater. Reminiscent of Ngorongoro (not really, but its name came up) it hosts emus, roos, koalas etc.. At the visitor's centre on trip #2 we stopped for the emus mulling around the car park and a local woman got her lad to show us the koalas including a little fella in the nearby trees. The emus don't seem to take much notice of you though they purr (or grrr) which is a bit off-putting when you can't see them. These koalas seemed a bit more active than the last lot generally stuffing their faces.
Then a long drive (180km) to Mt Gambier for our room tonight in The Jail. Somewhat gimmicky, staying in the cells of an 1860s prison, there's a certain veracity to life as it was in use as a prison until 1995. There's a copy of the October 1991 regulations in each cell as well. We're in a "long termers" cell so have our own toilet, though the toilet room doesn't have a light. [The other cells had the toilet in the single room cell.] We'll have to do the self-guide tour tomorrow.
Cell #21, The Jail, Mt Gambier S37.83253 E140.77339 Elev. 39m
Copyright 2003 Ian Fitchet. All rights reserved.