Australia 2019 – Day 3 – The Twelve Apostles

I was back on the Great Ocean Road at the crack of dawn, winding my way along the coast, until the road veered into the mountains and started to cross a thick forest of beeches, ferns, and the occasional eucalyptus.

Distances here are much bigger than my crappy map suggests (actually, I have a good map book, but the island-continent is so enormous that it is hard to see it all at a useful scale), so it took me nearly three hours to get to the part of the coast dubbed The Twelve Apostles. In this part of the coast one encounters flat-lying, indurated, limonite-stained conglomeratic sandstones that stand very well against the ravages of coastal erosion, giving way to the waves only reluctantly to form many sea-stacks. I don’t really know if there are twelve of these stacks, but it is a common landform. And because they are yellow-orange in color, they glow like if they were in flames under the morning sun. Very pretty indeed.

A sign at the exit of the parking lot said that it would take 7 hours to get to Adelaide, so I took an executive decision and changed my route to the north, to visit instead the Grampians National Park, which was only 4 hours away. After nearly two hours traversing pretty flat dairy country, I finally saw in the distance the shape of mountains that appear to rise abruptly from the flatlands: They were the Grampian Mountains. As I approached, I saw they were a series of enormous hogbacks, capped by massive tilted beds of sandstone. The sandstone cliffs are surrounded by a thick forest of eucalyptus, through which the afternoon sun rays shimmer in a twinkling mosaic of yellow and orange colors. I took a small country road thinking I might find a good place to camp, but everything was pretty damp. I was just turning the van around when out of the corner of my eye I spotted a small wallaby that was peering curiously at me among the trees.

Later I spotted three large kangaroos, an emu, and any number of white cockatoos, parrots, parakeets, and exotic birds. It is a veritable wildlife paradise here!

I finally made it to Halls Gap, which is the center of this tourist area, where I found accommodations in a very nice commercial campground. I think I will spend a couple of nights here. Tomorrow I plan to go for a couple of hikes, and in the afternoon may soak for a bit in the hot tub.