Thursday 19 February 2015

Well here we are still in beautiful downtown Apollo Bay.  Today is probably the best day weatherwise since we arrived.  Blue sky at least and a bit of breeze.  I had been trying to decide which way to get out of this place on Saturday so we took a drive without the van yesterday along the Great Ocean Road to Lorne.  It was just as narrow as I had remembered and with my limited towing experience I am not going that way.  We will go back through Skenes Creek to Colac.  That road is horribly windy as well but at least there is very little traffic.  Yesterday was a  bit laid back after the zip wire torture of the day before.  Don't think my heart would have taken another stressful day. 
Today was more my scene with a couple of 'gentle' walks through the Otways to see some waterfalls.  To get to the falls you have to go on a narrow dirt road for about 20 k's.  That was fine of course with the jeep but there was a grader on the road  The first one was great, probably 20 metres stroll to the viewing platform.  They were called Hopetoun Falls but probably would look better in the winter with more rain.  Then it was off to Beauchamp Falls.  They looked pretty good on the brochure and another couple in the car park told us it was worth the walk.  Yeh, fine for them, they were only about 25.  The walk to the falls was good, It was all down hill and it still took us about 30 minutes.  Alarm bells should have been ringing because as we all know, what goes down must also come back again. 
At the falls we relaxed for a while and they were quite pretty to look at but then it was time to head back to the car park.  The first hundred stairs at the falls were fine but then it was all up hill from there.  No suitable place seats to rest on and of course no coffee shops on the way.  By the time we got back to the top both Deb and myself were looking for somewhere to lie down.  It was a fairly challenging climb back to the top.  From there we needed a coffee transfusion as a matter of urgency so it was back to the tree top walk to the café there. 
I then decided to go back to Apollo Bay a different way.  The road looked fine on the map but of course the further we went the worse the road became.  There are constant signs warning of the logging trucks which was just great as it became very narrow and had extremely sharp bends all along it.  Was barely wide enough for one car, let alone a logging truck.  Of course we did meet several other cars along the way but Debs brakes and driving instructions enabled us to avoid them.  It would be fair to say that my co driver was just about out of her tree by the end.  Her brakes had been worn out. I think she was just about ready to bail out and walk home.  She believes it was worse than the zip line but of course, nothing is worse that the zip line.  By4now.  See photo of the falls below and of a pesky Cockatoo helping diners eat their lunch at the nearby café. 


     

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