Early visit to 12 Apostles and Loch Ard Gorge for morning views, walk on beach where shipwreck survivors landed, sleep in charming Port Fairy.
We wake early and bomb back east on B100 to see Loch Ard’s spectacular rocks in the 7 a.m. light. The Loch Ard Gorge is named for a three-masted clipper ship that foundered offshore a day before it completed its months-long voyage from England in 1878. Every one of the 54 people on board, except two people — an 18-year old Eva Charmichael who couldn’t swim and Tom Pearce, a young cabin boy — died when the ship hit Muttonbird Island. He, under an overturned dingy, and she, clinging to a broken spar, were shot by swells through a narrow opening in the coastal cliffs and washed up on a sandy beach surrounded by tall cliffs.
We spend about two hours tramping all the paths that lead to all the lookout points: Island archway, Elephant Rock, Muttonbird Island, Thunder Cave, and Broken Head. The vistas at each are different … all stunning wind-in-your-ears, crashing-surf, roiling-blue-green-waters, towering-cliffs kind of places.
We leave and return to Port Campbell for breakfast and then get back on the GOR and stop at several lookouts as we head to Port Fairy: We see The Arch, London Bridge … we skip The Grotto because we saw one at Loch Ard where the steward found the maiden … Bay of Martyrs and Bay of Islands. It’s become a wonderful blur and it becomes difficult to separate the vistas in memory from one another. We do remember Childer’s Cove because the gal who rescued David’s camera said it was her favorite place. It IS different. It’s small, very intimate, no one is there but another young couple high on a cliff and five herons perched on a craggy promontory. The tide rushes in. We rush out and push on the Port Fairy.
Cynthia would like to stay in Port Fairy for a week. We walk around Griffiths Island and spot a few wallabies and an Australian Ibis and an old stone lighthouse on a point. The island is flat and we walk along its sandy beaches where the smell of rotting kelp, piled high on the black rocks that dot the sand, is sharp and salty and strangely clean.
We stay at a cottage that’s out of Beatrice Potter and have dinner at a restaurant with starched white tablecloths. As we’re about to leave, the elderly matron asks us if we’re walking to where we will sleep and we say no. She’s a bit taken aback because we had split a bottle of wine. In Oz, the police make random checks for DUI and if you blow over the 0.05-limit, depending on which geographic state you’re in, you will pay a minimum of about $575 (in South Australia, where we’re being scowled at by the matron). Elsewhere, you can lose your license on the spot and pay fines starting at $1,000.
We make it back to Beatrice Potter’s place without incident.
Another GOR day in Oz.
Two Tramps 