Great Roadtrip of 2015 - Days 3 and 4, Lorne, Apollo Bay, and the Great Otway National Park

This leg of our journey actually started the afternoon of day two, when we left Queenscliff.  We headed toward Torquay, which is the surfing capital of the world.  We didn't stop, but saw lots of surf stores and psychedelically painted vans and cars.  Kept driving along the coast through Angelsea to Lorne, where we stopped for the night.

Lorne is a fun beachside town and it was HOPPING on the main strip.  There are lots of cute, pricey stores on the north side of the road, and the beach and a great playground on the south side.  The waves are of a manageable size, at least the day we were visiting, and many were trying their hand at surfing.  I could see it being a lot of fun during the summer, but we had a hard time parking so I'd imagine it's a zoo when it's really warm outside.

Evil Cockatoo

The hotel we stayed at was a bit of a dump, and it was next to a camping park full of tents and camper vans that were noisy until about 11.  In the morning, the cockatoos woke us up.  One came and perched on the rail down from our room, which we thought was charming until about 10 started swooping in on us, getting closer and closer.  There were signs all over our hotel saying "don't feed the birds," but clearly these birds are used to getting fed. It became rather terrifying - these are big birds (about as long as my arm), and we know from past experience they don't mind taking chunks of finger with them when searching for food. 

Erskine Falls

The Great Otway Park starts around Lorne, and continues through Cape Otway, so there were many nice hikes for us to go on on this leg.  The first one was Erskine Falls, about 250 steps down to the bottom of a waterfall that falls about 30 m.  The kids had a lot of fun hopping around on the rocks near the base of the falls.  We also did a nice walk at the top of the falls for about a kilometer, then backtracked to find a toilet.  Driving a little further out of Lorne toward Apollo Bay and we saw Sheok Falls as well.  The two walks were so completely different - Erskine had rainforest climate and was damp and slippery, Sheok had a dry hot climate with plants to match.  Both were quite beautiful in their own ways.

Playing on the rocks below Erskine Falls

 

This hike was called Lemonade Creek.  It had lots of myrtle trees that shed their bark in strips - tons every year - and the bark decomposes and fills the forest floor with nutrients. You can see the strips of bark hanging from the trees as well as on the track in the photo on the right.

One of many spectacular views from endless lookouts on the Great Ocean Road.

Sheok Falls

The walk to Sheok Falls - very dry.

 We did one more quick walk down to the beach and up to the lighthouse at  Airey's Inlet called Split Point.  We had missed the tours of the lighthouse itself, but the kids had a great time playing on the beach below the tall cliffs, then going up the cliffs to see the perspective from the top.  The kids and I were absolutely exhausted by the end of these four hikes.  We were very glad to get to Apollo Bay for the night.

Split Point Lighthouse, on top of the cliff.

The "split" in Split Point, as seen from the beach.There's a dude sitting on a rock in there to give you some size perspective. 

Before we reached Apollo Bay, however, we came to a wide place in the road known as Kennett River.  There is nothing here but a small cafe and a campsite, but it's in all the guidebooks because Kennett River is a fabulous place to see koalas. Not only did we see the koalas, we saw lots of parrots and kookaburras too.  Some enterprising kids from the campgrounds were selling tourists birdseed for a couple dollars a cup, and the parrots would land right on the people feeding them.  My kids wanted to do that, but I am not a fan of birds landing on me.  The parrots are much gentler than the evil cockatoos, but they're still wild animals.

Rosella

Female Australian King Parrot

Male Australian King Parrot

Kookaburra!

Apollo Bay is another beach town, very casual, lots of motels, again with shops and restaurants on one side of the road, beach and playground on the other.  The next day started with a play on the equipment, then off we went deeper into the Great Otway National Park.  We did two short rainforest hikes called Maits Rest and Melba Gully, two of the wettest spots in Victoria.

300+ year old trees

Cool fungi all over - this was my only 

photo that turned out.

Our final activity on this day was a visit to Cape Otway Lighthouse.  Cape Otway is the most southern inhabited point in Australia, and it's the dividing point between the Southern Ocean on the west and the Bass Strait. The lighthouse is considered very important because of the danger of shipwreck along the southern coast.  This was a route many took from Great Britain to Australia, so Cape Otway was often the first land they saw since leaving Europe.  It's also a site of some interesting dinosaur finds and Aboriginal heritage.  We climbed to the top of this lighthouse, explored the telegraph station there, the kids tried their hand at the didgeridoo, and took in the beautiful views.  This was an interesting site, but very, very crowded with tourists. On the way out, we came across a place in the road crowded with so many koalas that people were pulling over on the side of the road to get out of their cars and look at them.  One koala even sat in the middle of the road and wouldn't move until I honked at him.

Southern Ocean from the

 top of the lighthouse

Bass Strait from the top of the lighthouse.

Old Aboriginal boomerangs and other hunting weapons.

Again, some tired babies when we got to Port Campbell.  More on the Port Campbell National Park in part three  . . . thanks for reading!