Thursday, September 07, 2017

12 - Australia

We stayed a nice little motel - no air conditioning - and almost no heat either!  One  small heater for a large suite.  Luckily, they did have an electric blanket on the bed!  It got down to about 45 degrees last night.

Woke up to cloudy/rainy skies....but we will not be deterred!  We headed out along the Great Ocean Road - now a little inland.  The terrain changed to hilly green fields.





First destination of the day was Maits Rest for a walk in the rainforest.


 I started out of the car with my little wind-breaker -  this is in front of a eucalyptus tree just at the start of the walk.




But it quickly started pouring rain - imagine that in a rainforest!!! - so we scurried back to the car and got our actual rain jackets.  Very wise since it rained for the next hour.

May be a little hard to see - but I'm standing in front of a huge tree base - apparently a 300 year old tree.



Beautiful peaceful walk.



Shelter in the base of a tree!




Next up was a walk that I had read about - was supposed to be a "short walk" to Rainbow Falls.....turned out to be over 3 miles - one way!!

About 2 miles thru a scrubby path.



Very deserted beach....we had to walk  about 1 more mile to the left along the beach.



The blue color of this half-alive jellyfish caught my eye.  Cool since you don't see that color of blue in nature often.



Walking along some rock - I saw a pile of sponges....just like the ones you might have for the shower!



Duane walking along the rocks towards Rainbow Falls - the ocean was "angry" with lots of sea-foam.



This is as close to Rainbow Falls as we got....it was about 1/2 mile further - and it was clear that there was nothing "falling" from the falls....pretty walk but a little disappointing since I'd read that the sun shimmered a rainbow sometimes from the misty falls.



Back on the Great Ocean Road - more pretty fields.




The sun showed up off-and-on during the day.



Since it's early spring here - lots of daffodils - just like home!!



Duane spied this Wallaby right beside the trail!



A stop by the side of the road....beautiful!



We arrived at the famous Twelve Apostles just as a rain cloud was coming over....this place is very pretty - but it's completely over-run with tour buses!  All the other places we've been have been remarkably deserted.



The sun was out briefly for this shot.



And Duane agreed to be still for a "selfie"....the wind was blowing about 50 mph at this point and chilly!


Back on the road - more flat fields.



And some gentle hills.



 One of the last stops of the day was Loch Ard Gorge.







Pretty quickly, the skies opened up - cold and windy rain.  We decided to skip the last few stops along the way since it was getting late and we'd already logged over 9 miles according to my Garmin GPS watch!

We drove on to Port Fairy to our accommodations for the night - another little "cabin".  Very nice - this one has a really nice heater!


2 comments:

Elizabeth said...

That was a lot of different landscapes, especially in contrast to the north. Very interesting, though. MOM

affectioknit said...

It really is beautiful...and I love all your little cabins...so much neater than hotels...

Love,

T