It’s time to get up its 6 O’clock; it’s time to get up its 6 O’clock. That is what we woke to this morning and being the first words you hear as you wake from your slumber those words kept going through my head for an hour or so later “its 6 O’clock; it’s time to get up.”
Chris stuck his head out the door and said yep I can see stars, clouds too so let’s go for it. We quickly got dressed and jumped into the car and headed towards the 12 Apostles for some sunrise shots we hoped.
The cloud had closed in even more, but we set ourselves up in the gale force winds, no I am not kidding. They has have been an extreme weather warning out along this area to at least Warrnambool for winds up to 100km’s an hr today. So yes it was extremely windy, our tripods were not nice and stable but were moving in the wind, we had to keep the shutter speed up high, any long exposures were blurry shots and I had a few of them. I said to Chris when we got up why do we do this again, he said it’s because that’s what we do and I say why because we find it fun, he said yep after a while out in this awful weather he said to me why do we do this again. Only crazy keen photographers are nuts enough to find them self out trying to take sunrise photos when there is no sun in a gale force warning.
After a while it became obvious the sun was not going to shine on the Apostles for quite some time and since we were freezing and we had to check out of the park and head to Warrnambool we decided to go back to the van. It turned out the morning was the best part of the day as the weather only got worst.
A short distance out of Port Campbell before Peterborough is the Arch, The London Bridge or London Arch as the middle has collapsed. I know why it got that name the weather around here is more suited to London. A bit further is the Grotto, we did get out and take some quick photos at all these places and they look very bleak. The surf was like a washing machine, waves were crashing hard against the sandstone cliffs turning the water to foam, very rough seas and very hard to hold the camera still.
After Peterborough was the Bay of Islands which under a blue sky and the sun shining would be amazing and we would have to say more interesting than the 12 Apostles and a lot less people, ok the weather may have kept the sensible ones inside but they are incredible. It was a very bleak scene today though.
We arrived in Warrnambool around lunch time, visited the local info centre got the info we needed booked into the Discovery Holiday Park for 2 nights cost $30.50 per night which is standard around here. Have to say the sites are nice, best we have had a nice concrete slab, grass on either side of the slab and room to park the Jack up next to it. On either side of the sites are trees and shrubs giving you privacy from the people next door.
After lunch we tracked down a mechanic to look at the Jack. The info centre had put us onto a guy that if he couldn’t help us he would know who could. Well cause the Jackaroo has gas a normal mechanic is not allowed to touch it, has to be someone who does gas installations, luckily Warrnambool is a big town so the guy was able to put us onto a gas installer, the Jackaroo is booked in tomorrow morning, luckily he is near the main street and lots of shops, goodie.