It was the end of Autumn, and one of these weekends where the garden turns from a golden symphony of reds and yellows to a mess of sodden rain soaked leaves and bare branches.
When we had gone to Apollo Bay earlier in year we had conceived the madcap scheme of walking some bits of the Great Ocean Coastal walk at the start of winter.
Yes, it’ll be cold we told ourselves, but equally the weather’s often fine then after the Autumn storms have passed.
Looking out on the wet garden the day before departure, we began to regret our ambition, but it was too late to back out now.
So, we were up before the sun, loading the car in the dark, and off by 8.30 in the morning. The weather had cleared more or less, with only the odd smirr of rain, and while cold and blowy, the sun began to peep through the clouds.
Rather than drive through Melbourne, we turned off at Broadford, and heading west via Kilmore made for Woodend, where we stopped for lunch at an unassuming but excellent cafe – more than decent coffee, and one of the best Reuben toasted sandwiches I have tasted outside of New York. J’s rather more prosaic cheese and tomato toastie was also excellent with a decent dash of a strong mustard in with the tomato.
Then on to Geelong heading down through Gisborne and Bacchus Marsh on a stretch of road that seemed to go on forever, and we then followed the upgrade Princes Highway to somewhere west of Winchelsea, where we turned off to Birragurra.
When we had come down in March, there had been diversions, road closures and endless roadworks, but this time we reached Birragurra without any detours, only to find ourselves detoured after Birragurra, with various roadworks on the way through the Otways to Skenes Creek. And the rain came back in great pelting winter squalls to add to the fun.
We had planned to be at the Food Works in Apollo Bay for three or just after but we ended up reaching Apollo Bay just before four.
Supplies bought, we set off on the final rain soaked seventy or so kilometres to our remote destination – the owners had warned us that we needed to bring everything – hence the stop to stock up in Apollo bay. We were conscious that the light would begin to go just after five and we finished the journey in the dark.
Fortunately, the owners had left the heating on and an outside light making finding it and unloading a relatively straight forward exercise.
A couple of glasses of wine, a veggie pasta and an early night, and we were fine.
The next morning we woke to howling rain screaming in off the southern ocean. Other than a family of kookaburras hiding in a tree on the edge of the property there was no life to be seen at all. No seabirds, no parrots, no cockatoos, zilch.
We had our own problems, we discovered we’d forgotten to bring any ground coffee. Fortunately the owners had provided a nespresso machine and a complimentary box of capsules, so while I’m not a fan of capsule machines, thinking them wasteful and the coffee poor quality on the whole, for once I put up with them.
Around lunchtime the weather cleared and we walked down to Moonlight Head in the hope of perhaps seeing an early season migrating whale, but no, no such luck. As we got back to our unit it began to spit with rain suggesting that the rest of the day was probably going to be tea, biccies, and books …
And yes, it seriously rained and blew a gale for most of the night, meaning after a tuna bake and a glass of pinot noir for dinner,we curled up and read books. While there was TV in the unit, we could only get the standard broadcast channels, and nothing appealed, meaning an early night..
By sunrise the next morning, the rain had gone but the trees were still being whipped by the wind, but gradually the wind began to ease, and by mid morning it was simply blowy, rather than a full on gale.
So we set off to Princetown with the intention of following the walking track maybe as far as Clifton beach. In the end we didn’t quite get there but had a pleasant few kilometres of up and down, at first across the boardwalk across the reedbeds and then an extended walk through dense scrub, which while it meant we couldn’t see anything, sheltered us from the wind.
We got as far as Brown Mountain (perhaps a kilometre short of Clifton Beach) before turning back to have a pleasant break on a clifftop overlooking the sea, then back to the car.
We then drove down to Port Campbell for a late lunch, and then played tourists for a bit stopping off at the Twelve Apostles and Gibson’s steps, before heading back to the unit for a cup of tea and some diary writing while watching rain squalls zip over the ocean.
That night, the wind came back and it rained heavily again. We woke to a grey dawn, enlivened by a group of three or four kangaroos grazing on the grass in front of the unit. Having lived in a bush suburb in Canberra it wasn’t exactly an unusual sight to us, but it was a reminder that there was wildlife out there, especially if one got out early enough to look…
After some humming and hawing we decided to try the Wreck Beach walk. Having checked the tides, we reckoned we had a chance of being able to see the anchors of the Fiji and Marie Gabrielle, but no chance, the wind was pushing the waves onto the beach making it foolhardy to even venture down onto the beach. The surge was even worse than when we had tried in 2018, so as in 2018, we had a walk through the scrub to Gable Head and some dramatic views of the surging sea.
Unlike previously, we walked down the dirt road from the Gable Head car park to the Moonlight cemetery under the misapprehension that the victims from the wrecks were buried there. Wrong! the cemetery only opened in 1901 meaning the grave sites are elsewhere, most probably close to the monument to the wreck of the Fiji that is now buried in bush above the wreck site and almost impossible to access – Parks Victoria are building a spur off the clifftop section of the Great Ocean walk, and clearing and refencing the site but as yet there’s no access as such. Hopefully it’ll be a quite reflective place like the Ly-ee-moon site at Green Cape.
Then back along the track to the car park and back to the car and the unit for a late lunch. On the way back to the car the clouds parted for a moment and we had a glorious sunlit view of the surging sea, but then the clouds came in with a hint of rain, suggesting that perhaps games were off for the rest of the day.
The next morning we checked out and drove to Port Fairy, meandering gently with a picnic lunch at Peterborough and stopping to take photos at the Bay of Martyrs and the little visited Childers cove. The sea was still wild and wind driven, and the temperature was only just in double figures.
We’d planned for a walk out to the island, but the cloud was thickening an threatening rain so we wimped out after checking into our motel, and instead drank tea and went for a wander round the town.
That night we went to Blake’s restaurant in town. We’d promised ourselves a decent meal out as a reward for actually doing this mad thing, and Blake’s certainly did not disappoint.
Saturday, and we woke to heavy rain. Breakfast at Bank St &Co – a little too egg fixated for my taste so I settled for fruit toast and a coffee – and then a long drive cross country trying to avoid driving through any major cities and Saturday traffic, so we drove via Terang and Skipton to Beaufort to take the freeway to Ballarat and then cut off cross country again via Daylesford and Woodend to join the Hume freeway heading north. It rained until we reached Beaufort and then cleared to a lovely sunny winter’s day.
Lunch was in Creswick – we’d planned to avoid stopping in trendy Daylesford or Trentham where we expected there would be a lot of competition for tables anywhere decent.
Unfortunately when we got to Creswick it was just after 12.30 and, being country, cafes were closing up. However we had a pretty good lunch at Meg’s Place, which seemed to be the only place open in town – avocado and bacon on toast (D) cheese ham and tomato toastie (J). We’d been there before, before the pandemic, when it was called something else and the management was different.
It was a slightly odd experience – the furniture and the counter were the same, but somethings had gone and other things had replaced them, but the food was good and the coffee was decent, and it did the job.
Then home, arriving after sunset to a beautiful clear moonlit night. We’d bought a home style lasagne that morning in Port Fairy that morning and stuffed it in our esky for the dive home. It was still cold so dinner was lasagne and a couple of glasses of red. An excellent end to an excellent trip.