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| The 12 Apostles along the Great Ocean Road (on an overcast day) |
| Erin's South Australia Journal 12-12-02 We didn't want to leave Apollo Bay, as our room was so nice and the view so pretty. So instead, we went back to the information booth in town and got some hike maps of the local area waterfalls. First stop was back along the road near the lighthouse turnoff we'd gone down the afternoon prior, to a rainforest walk called Mait's Rest. It's named for a forest ranger who used to patrol here, and this spot was his favorite for the huge birch trees, towering ferns, and the carnivorous snails. Yes, I wrote that correctly - meat-eating snails! Ick! And they're endangered - I wonder why. These things are small, wet and black, and look like forest trash, according to the signs posted about them. We didn't see any, and I was fine about that, as they eat dead stuff on the forest floor. The walk was beautiful, wet, and short. We were back in the car within a half hour, headed on further back up the road to the turnoff for the waterfalls. The road out there turned out to be quite long, as we had to retrace our way through the curvy mountainous road we'd passed slowly the day before, then go a few miles on unpaved roads to get to the trail heads. The waterfalls weren't that hard to get to once you found the car parks though...Triplett Falls was our first stop, and the trail was about 15 minutes downhill to get there. The trek back up was slightly steep, but we were on our way to the third stop in less than an hour. Getting down to Hopetoun Falls was a bit trickier. We were on a pothole-strewn logging road, wet with rain and following blind curves on a one-lane road. Luckily, the rain was keeping most other tourists away, and we got down there at last. There was a viewing platform with a nice view of Hopetoun Falls, but of course we had to take the longer trek down to the foot of the falls for some admittedly better photos. The return climb was very steep, however, and I needed to catch my breath as we drove back along the scary road out. We debated going to nearby Beauchamp Falls, but I'd had enough waterfalls for one day and reminded Glenn that we still hadn't even begun the rest of the trip to Melbourne that day! So we hit the road, and drove straight on toward Melbourne, stopping off in Lorne around 3pm to eat a quick bite in the trendy surfer town. We arrived in the outskirts of Melbourne just in time for rush hour, and our plot to avoid the main highways through town simply put us in the way of more traffic on their way home. Our car practically overheated in the long lines for one particular light near the university, but we were lucky and made it to the suburb of Ivanhoe without burning out the engine. We greeted John and Elaine, friends of Glenn's parents from the long-ago journey to Vancouver on their honeymoon some 40 years ago. They'd been kind enough to offer us a place with them for the night before our trip on the ferry to Tasmania the next day, and we would be returning on Christmas Eve to spend the holidays with them. They graciously gave us our own room and made dinner for us, and we had great times reminiscing about Glenn's parents and their days of driving around the US. |