Great Roadtrip of 2015, Days 1 and 2, Queenscliff

Fall break is a looonnnng two weeks in Australia, and after one week and two seders, the kids and I were going stir crazy.  I planned a week of driving down the Great Ocean Road (that runs along the southern coast of Victoria) to get us out of the house and into the woods.

Joel thought I was nuts, and that I'd get halfway to Geelong with squabbling kids in the back seat and want to turn back.  He said, "it's too much work to take care of both kids full-time outside the house by yourself."  I pointed out that if we were at home, I'd be cajoling and threatening them to get out of the house anyway, or hosting playdates, plus making endless potato kugels, and that it's ALL work. This way we'd see some beautiful scenery and breathe sea air, and I wouldn't have to force them out of the house because we'd already be out.  Argument won (really, why does he ever try to argue with me?), we packed up an Esky full of Passover-friendly goodies, and off we went.

Queenscliff was our first stop on our journey.  It's not part of the Great Ocean Road, instead it's on the very tip of the Bellarine Peninsula.  We'd been camping earlier in the year on the Bellarine, but we never made it as far as Queenscliff.  Queenscliff is on one side of a 3.5 km. opening on the south end of Port Phillip Bay.

Queenscliff is just north of Point Lonsdale.

Our hotel

Melbourne is at the top of the bay.  Because of this, Queenscliff had a very important job historically - protecting the port of Melbourne from invaders during war time, and from gold thieves during the gold rush.  To this end, Australians built two forts on either side of the small opening - Fort Queenscliff on the west side, Fort Nepean on the east side, and they had an elaborate system of lights and mirrors to detect if someone tried to cross the Rip unnoticed.  In WWII, Japanese submarines were detected outside the Rip but never made it in.  Interestingly, among the countries considered a threat, the Australians were afraid of invasion from the Americans in the mid-1800s, due to the gold rush.

The three lighthouses of Queenscliff.  When boats were outside the Rip, they would line up so the black lighthouse (the only black lighthouse in the Southern Hemisphere) was completely hidden behind the white lighthouse.  That would mean they were lined up to enter the Rip safely. The third lighthouse in the back marks Queenscliff Harbour.  It's new, and was designed to look like a screw.

The opening to the bay is called "The Rip" because its currents are so diabolical it rips ships apart.  The reason it's so tricky to navigate is back thousands of years ago when water levels were lower, the bay didn't exist. The Yarra River, which runs through Melbourne and runs into the bay, actually ran all the way to where the Rip is now, and the rest of the bay was dry land.  This carved a sizable canyon in the bay area that still exists, which creates turbulence at the opening.  The other challenge is because the opening of the rip is so small, every time the tides come in, an immense amount of water tries to squeeze into the bay at once, creating really rough currents.  Over 120 ships have wrecked in the Rip area over the years.  Back in colonial times up until today, Queenscliff established a pilot program to help ships navigate the Rip.  Pilots board the ship and guide them in or out of the bay, then motor back to their headquarters.  Below is a diving map for the area, but within it you can see the dark blue canyon of the super deep water that is the ancient Yarra.

When our boat went over the ancient Yarra's path, the depth meter changed from 16m. to 60m. deep in about 10 seconds. 

The orange speed boat is a pilot returning from guiding a large ship out of the Rip.

How did I learn all of this, you may ask?  The kids and I took a fantastic boat trip that took us from Q'cliff harbour down the Bellarine coast, across the Rip (which was a bit scary and rocky even in the perfectly calm conditions we had), up the Mornington coast past Fort Nepean, past the old quarantine quarters for immigrants who came to Melbourne sick, then back across to the harbour.  On the way we saw an incredible number of fur seals and dolphins, working together diving and circling to confuse and corral fish so they all had a really good lunch.  It was a sight to behold.  My pictures are terrible, because the seals and the dolphins were so very quick, but they were less than a metre from our boat, and it was quite a show.   The captain filled us in on the dramatic history of the opening to the bay while we sailed.

You can see a seal breaching on the right, but a whole lot of other fins half sticking out of the water elsewhere in the photos.

A pair of dolphins rounding up the fish.

Alpha seals with their noses in the air, looking for any trouble that might be coming.

The seal stand we cruised by smelled so very bad, but our captain assured us, "That's not seal you're smelling, that's the regurgitated fish on the platform."  Delightful.

We also saw nesting and adolescent gannets and cormorants, and far out near the Rip we saw a shy albatross.

Around the albatross are smooth patches of water caused by cold water coming in from below.  The turbulence is caused by water entering the rip.

Mature gannets

The next day we went to the Maritime Museum, which had all sorts of artifacts brought up from the many shipwrecks, as well as models of the rescue boats and ships and fishermen's houses from hundreds of years ago.  We also toured Fort Queenscliff, and saw its disappearing big gun along with the littler guns.  The kids got to dress up in different Anzac uniforms from different time periods.  The weather was rainy and very windy and cold, so our tour guide didn't take us all around the battery, but we saw a few armaments before the Aussies in the group wimped out.

By far the coolest thing in the fort - the big gun would fire, then swing down through the hole on hinges so it effectively disappeared.  It could fire on ships in the Rip, and they would not be able to see where the shots came from.  The literature says it could fire, drop down and be reloaded in 22 seconds.

The black lighthouse and the pagoda in which security personnel kept an eye out for invading ships until Port Lonsdale took over those duties.  If you look at the black lighthouse, you can see that the right side is wet, the left dry.  The wind was so strong toward the north, that only one side of all the buildings were getting wet.

The small guns around the battery of Fort Queenscliff.

My boy is entirely too enamored with the firearms at the fort.

Ruth in an old diving helmet at the Maritime Museum.

We stayed overnight in the Vue Grand Hotel, which was a popular summer holiday hotel for the well-heeled back in the gold rush times.  The hotel has seen better days, but we loved it, and it had multiple TV channels of cartoons, so everyone was happy.   The afternoon of the second day of our trip we headed to Lorne.  To be continued . . .