13. Tourist on The Great Ocean RoadTook the train and bus to Torquay and then hitched in the dark getting a ride with 2 young crusties Wolf and Renwick with their funky green caravan to Lorne. Which turned out to be much less hippy than I expected, bit like Toorak by the beach.
| Sat - walked along the "Great Ocean Road" to a hillside viewpoint , then a ride with a missionary student minibus , then I lucky to get a ride with Jimmy Garlic a professional tour guide to the area where the koala bears hang out.
| In Apollo bay saw the local museum. Sun - Walked through Maits Rest one of the few remaing areas of Virgin forest. Huge trees and an altogether different environment to monoculture plantations. Then a 20 Km walk inland through a forest road to a waterfall. old photos showed huge tree stumps, people used them as houses, stables and could even park a car inside them.
| Mon - I decided it was a mistake not to see the Big Tree at Melba Gully so I backtracked 80 Km. In retrospect my original decision was correct there was little traffic and hitching was difficult in the rain and wind. I wasted hours and didn't get to Colac until 3.45pm and was lucky to get to Ballarat at all. The tree looked better in the photo. When I eventually got there I found it was only 300 years old so it didn't seem so big. I couldn't get so close, because the sign 10 feet away from the tree said "Don't come closer". The information plaques along the walk were pretty informative, but I had seen that kind of stuff before. The rest of the day was rushed. Colac seemed like a boring middle-sized industrial town and I didn't have time to see the lake. I hitched out and Dave agreed to take me all the way to Ballarat. |
