It was a lot quieter night last night, we did have a whiz bang van join us later in the night they were quiet once they stopped playing the guitar. In the morning we had some Crimson Rosellas come and have a bath at the dirty little water hole that was near our camp, it was nice to watch them.
We arrived back in Aireys Inlet about 10am and went to the Spilt Point Lighthouse area. We first went for a walk along the inlet that led us to some rock pools and rock formations, we could of spent hours just photographing them, one of the rocks we thought looked like a ram half sitting up. The rocks are very interesting. A bunch of school kids were on an excursion learning about erosion.
We then walked up to the Lighthouse which has stunning views over the ocean. You can do a tour of the lighthouse but we didn’t as we plan to do a different one. It was several hours before we left this area. We think it is going to take us a while to do the Great Ocean Road.
We passed under the Memorial Arch; the arch commemorates the building of the Great Ocean Road as a memorial to Victorians who served in the First World War, 1914-1918. It is the third arch built on the site. The original was erected in 1939 and was replaced in 1973 when the road was widened. The second one was burnt down on February 1983 in the Ash Wednesday fires. It is special time for Chris and I to be on the Great Ocean Road as it will be 25 years this Nov that we last passed through this area on our Honey Moon.
We stopped at Lorne and had lunch before a quick walk around the town. We stopped at Sheoak Falls and did the walk, lots of steps, only to find there was only a small trickle of water going over the falls. Apparently it has more water in the winter months.
From there we kept our eyes open for a place to stop for the night as we didn’t want to get too far along the coast today. The problem is they aren’t real keen on letting people just pull over to sleep. They are plenty of signs around the place saying no overnight stopping for any vehicle, including cars, motorhome, caravans or any person. There are pull offs along the way that a small motorhome or whiz bang van could stop if they dare as the general rule seems to be you can’t stay at any car park either, so not very RV friendly. So we decided to stay at or near Apollo Bay in a van park and use it as a base to explore the “The Otway’s”. We picked up some info on van parks from the info centre that also had some prices which were out of date. We rang a mid range park in Apollo Bay for pricing but at $35 a night we said no, even the Shows Grounds was over $20. So we are staying at Marengo which is only 3km out of Apollo Bay at the Marengo Holiday Park which is right on the beach. Cost is $28 a night; there are several tracks from the park leading to the rocky pools of the beach. The sites are good size with sullage and water at each site, power of course. The amenities are old but clean, they have painted all toilet and showers doors to look like beach huts with differently colour stripes look great.
