Wet and Wetter

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DAY 128

Although sleeping quite well, I awoke a few times in the night when the ship was doing its best to rock about. It was not a calm night, but it was also not the roughest of seas that we have sailed in. Sometimes you could feel the boat almost come to a standstill when it hit a wave.

Andy was doing his best to disappear around the corner without waking me, he wanted to finish writing yesterday’s blog, I awoke anyway to see him disappear, but I just closed my eyes again for a little more sleep, it must have been about 5.00am.

When I did get up, it was not much later and we discussed the intricacies of sleep. Andy said he got up once to go to the loo and found several people in there suffering with seasickness. Fortunately we were both fine, but the rough sea had obviously taken affect on some.

We went downstairs and grabbed a coffee, we saw the couple that we chatted with in the queue last night, they joined us for a chat and before we knew it we had docked and were being called to the deck to reunite ourselves with our vehicles, great we would be first off again!

Driving off the Spirit of Tasmania at 08.02 we could see a little bit of sun through this very cloudy day. We found our gas bottle and soon we found our way to the M1 and were heading out to Geelong and the start of the Great Ocean Road.

Stopping at Avalon services to fuel up with Diesel, we noticed that the price was $1.14 per litre, the cheapest yet, so Andy filled up both the main and the sub tank, with a price like that who could afford not to? There was a café with this BP station and by now breakfast was calling.

Unlucky for us a coach full of pensioners pulled into the car park and one by one they filtered into the café, I joined the queue, but before long I could feel that I was being jostled from both sides and the two women gradually trying to edge themselves in front of me. I was uncomfortable with this they were not really respecting personal space and apart from that I was not going to let them take my place in the queue.

I said quite innocently “oh, are you all together?” To which one replied whilst edging back, “no, no, sorry you go right ahead dear”, the other just disappeared from the queue altogether. I would not have minded in the least if they had asked to go in front because they were together and only had limited time, but I was not about to be made a mug of.

Andy and I tucked into a well deserved breakfast of bacon, eggs, baked beans and toast, washed down with a nice coffee.

It was very windy and the wind was very cold, it was not pleasant but the sun was out. However heading down towards Geelong and on to Torquay for the start of the Great Ocean Road the weather deteriorated it rained, heavily at times interspersed with sun. It was a slow drive around those bends; occasionally we pulled in for a quick look at the view and a photograph.

We stopped at Aireys Inlet to see Split Point Light Station, nicknamed the “White Queen”, built in 1891 and in service until 1991. This is one of many lighthouses along this coastline. The White Queen has become famous for its roles in the film Mad Max; Literature: Arthur Upfields Mystery - The Clue of the New Shoe and Firestorm; Television: Alpha Scorpio, Dead Mens Float and Round the Twist.

Along The Great Ocean Road we spotted some very modern and some very funky design houses, one or two I might like to live in and one I definitely would NOT like to live in.

I had already identified a possible free camp for tonight, but we were both concerned about how wet the tent was and the need for it to dry out again. However with the current rain, nothing was going to get dry tonight. Our problem being that it was soaking wet on Saturday morning when we left Cradle Mountain and of course it had been packed away for some 36 hours in the damp, and no way to get any air or breeze through to dry it out.

The consensus was that we would investigate the camps and see how the weather was doing, if it was too wet then we could drive back to Apollo Bay to find a Motel or B&B, after all this is meant to be fun and we are not martyrs to this.

Finding the right turn off we turned into Hordern Vale Road, which would take us into the Great Otway National Park. We see also a sign for cottages and with no improvement in the weather the cottages look a good idea, but driving down this road turns out to be the icing on the cake for us.

A few kilometres in, I see something move on a tree and immediately recognise it, my hand goes straight to Andy’s arm as I exclaim “stop, I can see a Koala!” Andy surprised at my comment stops the truck immediately saying “where”? There it was our first wild Koala since Christmas when we saw one at Port Stephens, we look harder and see not one but two of these gorgeous animals.

This little thing started to make its way up the tree, however it became as mesmerised with us as we were with him, it was the Koala with the really fluffy ears.

We were both thrilled to bits with our find, feeling that this more than makes up for the poor weather today.

The cottages were a no go as the place was deserted so we went back to the idea of setting up the trailer and just seeing what conditions were like. We chose the West side of the Aire River Camp ground, Camps 5 reference 678 page 219.

We drove over a low wooden bridge, it looked like it might collapse when we drove onto it, but of course Andy stopped right in the middle to take photos, my mind turned to point loading of the wheels on the wooden decking, which incidentally looked as if it is was about 100 years old. There is a sign at the start of the bridge saying there is a 5 ton weight limit, however the Patrol, the trailer and all of our gear is probably about 2 tons, each individual sleeper moved and seemed to make a tune as we drove over the bridge.
We set up camp, every 10 minutes we had to sit in the car to avoid getting too wet, then as soon as another dry spell hit; we were out and back on it. Andy had a good idea with keeping the tarps over the mattress. We figured that if the tarps are usually used under the swag, which helps, keep the cold and damp out then perhaps the same may apply over the mattress, so we kept them in position and put the sleeping bags, sheets and blanket over the top of them.

Some other people who were camping “the other side of the hedge” came over to say hi, they looked over our trailer set up and said how good they thought it was. John and Jeff and his two boys stood and talked to us for ages, nice fella’s.

John was a “truckie” a truck driver, I asked him if he liked European trucks, he did but they were too comfortable and too complicated, his Kenworth was a good dependable rig, that did the job perfectly well, but was a bit crude and could be easily repaired with anything like a fence post and some twine.

It was 7.00pm we hadn’t even thought about our evening meal, as we were so wrapped up in trying to stay dry and warm, we shot down the other track and ended up towards lavers Hill to try to get a “Next G” connection so we could upload the blog. Once all that was done we returned to the haven of our campsite, it was pouring with rain the wind was blowing it in almost sideways, but Andy still managed to cook us a chicken curry with rice and a Naan.

We sat in the tent with our mugs of hot tea and played what has become our favourite game to challenge each other with. Andy beat me last night, I think he has learned how I like to play the game and therefore seems to pre-empt my moves. Never mind we enjoyed it and it was good to have a laugh when sometimes this camping malarkey becomes a bit trying.

We get into our lovely snug bed, we are warm, it seems that keeping the tarps over the mattress may have helped somewhat keep the warmth in.

Sometimes it pays not to give in to the weather, but you will have to wait for tomorrow to know why.

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Photos

Icing on the Cake
Koala number 2 (in the wild that is)

White Queen
Spit Point Lighthouse on the Great Ocean Road

Not an Apostle
Spit Point

Nice Surprise
Not one but two

Cheeky
The lighthouse keeper scratched the black paint off the back of the light so he could see it was working from the pub

In between rain showers
It threw it down, we were soaked

Wookerty Bridge
This bridge had a 5 Tonne Loaing but groaned when we went over it

Wetlands
This is on the camp ground