Apollo Bay, Victoria…… Day 41 & 42

5 May 2014

Yesterday, 4 May, we left Mount Gambier and South Australia. We crossed the border to Victoria just before Nelson. Our mobile phones let us know we had moved into a new time zone. Morning tea at Nelson and it was then onwards eastwards. We stopped at Portland for lunch on the foreshore of the bay where we observed a large number of people on the jetty near to us.

We sent John out to find out what was going on……….. and he came back with big news. 4 amateur fishermen going out in a 6.25 metre boat were dumped into the sea after a wave tipped their boat right over. the men were going to go out fishing tuna but decided to turn back when they saw the bad weather. They were lucky to be spotted by another boat and the boat was towed into the jetty where it was then turn right side up. Some very lucky men thanking their lucky stars. Portland has a community tram which takes visitors around the town sightseeing.

We continued on to a tiny place called Yambuk which had a small caravan park on the Yambuk Lake. I was hoping for a sunset photo with the Yambuk Wind farm in silhouette against a setting sun………unfortunately the cloud gods decided to play games and by sunset there was heavy cloud.

The town of Yambuk was established in the 1850s, the Post Office opening 1 March 1859. These days there is a pub and general store. We packed up in drizzle and had drizzle for a large part of the mornings drive. We came to Port Fairy where we were amazed at some of the old buildings we saw. The bay was named by the crew of the whaler The Fairy in 1828. John Griffiths established a whaling station in 1835 and a store was opened in 1839. there is a strong Irish influence here as you can see by the names of roads and businesses. Here is a photo of Victoria’s oldest licensed pub, the Stump Caledonian Hotel.

We had lunch and a bit of a look around at Warrnambool which is also the beginning of the Great Ocean Road. John decided to have a bit of a rest after lunch.

I was actually trying to take a photo of the coast line but the clouds were not helping.

We decided that from Warrnambool to Apollo Bay we wouldn’t stop to look at anything but rather drive straight to Apollo Bay. The road was interesting as we were driving through the Otway Ranges and there were a lot of hairpin corners, not helped with the large tourist buses coming towards us.

Built by returned soldiers between 1919 and 1932 and dedicated to soldiers killed during WWI, the Great Ocean road is the world's largest war memorial.It is indeed a challenging drive.