13 FEBRUARY 2016: GREAT OCEAN ROAD 3: GEELONG

On the road again, and headed for our last day on the Great Ocean Road.

More stunning views......

......from more Scenic Lookouts.

Lorne:

'Gathered where the Erskine leaps/Down the road to Lorne': ('Flowers', Rudyard Kipling 1891)

 'the most fashionable town on the Great Ocean Road': (Lonely Planet)

Split Point Lighthouse (Aireys Inlet):

"The keeper at Split Point at Airey's Inlet in Victoria did not exactly sleep on the job but he did not see why he should be deprived of his social life at night. He scratched a small hole in the black paint on the back of the lantern, which prevents the light shining inland and annoying residents. This keeper, Richard Joy Baker, scratched the hole to line up with the Airey's Inlet Hotel. Each time the lenses rotated, the light winked through the hole, assuring the keeper (who had retired to the hotel) that all was well." 

( Gordon Reid 'From Dusk Till Dawn')

Originally named Eagles Nest Point, this lighthouse was constructed in 1891.and was converted to automatic operation in 1919. The original Fresnel lens is still in use but it is to be hoped a replacement will never be needed as the Birmingham factory where the lens was built was bombed during war-time and the essential formula for making the unique lens crystal was lost!

Since 2005 regular guided tours have been on offer but none of us wanted to climb the 132 steps involved but we were all up for ice creams and drinks. Once we made it clear we did not want the tour, staff in the gift shop were brusque and unhelpful, and numerous signs dotting the entrance site, told us there was no right of access to view the light house at all in any way other than the guided tour. A gate and chain attempted, with ultimately no success, to close off access to what turned out to be a public footpath. Such wilful obstruction did not endear us, or clearly the many others there that afternoon, to spending any money in the shop.

Torquay:

In the 1960s and 1970s Torquay was just another sleepy seaside town but it is now the undisputed capital of the Australian surf industry, home to Rip Curl and Quicksilver.

But you don't have to be a surfer to appreciate the beauty of the beaches.

And it has a very good ice cream parlour!

Geelong:

Geelong has always been a 'must-see' on this journey as Louise spent a very happy 5 months here at Deakin University and recommended the area to us. 

It was also an opportunity to meet, for the first time, 2 of the people here who had made her stay so enjoyable and successful: Professor Tiffany Walsh (her PhD supervisor at Warwick and Deakin) and Liz Thompson (her landlady in Geelong). we really enjoyed spending time with them both and it was a pleasure to be able to put faces to names.

Brief history:

The Wathaurong People were Geelong’s first residents and they originally called the bay “Jillong” and the surrounding land “Corayo”. The name Jillong has a meaning similar to “a place of the sea bird over the white cliffs”. Somehow we got it all mixed up and now call the land Geelong and the bay Corio. 

The first recorded European to visit the Geelong region was Lt John Murray, who sailed the Lady Nelson, who on February 1st 1802 sent a party led by John Bowen to explore the region. Murray returned a few days later and claimed the entire region for Britain. But it is thought Murray might not have been the first European to sail into Corio Bay, others including the Dutch, Portuguese or Spanish might have been in the region centuries earlier. 

Matthew Flinders, sailed into Corio Bay on the 27 April 1802. He charted the entire bay, including the Geelong area. If not the first, one of the earliest reported deaths of an Aboriginal person by Europeans occurred in October of 1803 when the First Lieutenant JH Tuckey and his party camped in the area around North Shore.

 In its early days Geelong’s main trade was in wool and the city was important as a port. Much of the Geelong waterfront was surrounded by huge wool stores, some still remain today being redesigned for modern use including the Deakin University Waterfront Campus. Woollen mills saw Geelong’s first big manufacturing industry and in 1925 it became the centre of Ford’s manufacturing facilities with a huge plant opening in North Geelong in 1926. 

The 1850′s saw a turning point for Geelong which, with its wool prosperity, was starting to gain a bit of ground on Melbourne, but Melbourne ran a campaign dubbing Geelong “the Sleepy Hollow” which stuck with the town nearly 100 years. There are also stories of a false map put out by Melbourne traders that showed Melbourne much closer to the goldfields than Geelong was. Some believe it was this map that fooled many of the Gold Seekers and enticed them to spend their fortunes in Melbourne. Melbourne won the day and developed much faster than “sleepy” Geelong.

Through the World Wars and through to the mid 70’s Geelong’s manufacturing boomed, but with the change in markets and modern needs much of the industry slowed with many jobs lost. But with new investment and new opportunities Geelong has looked to the future transforming its heavy reliance on industry, thousands of new jobs having been created in health, education, services, retail, business, hospitality and tourism. 

 The historic waterfront precinct has undergone extensive refurbishment during the past decade ..........

......not least with its troop of over 100 colourful baywalk bollards, made out of wharf pylons (many recovered from the Yarra Street Pier that was destroyed by fire in the 1980s), painted by local artist Jan Mitchell. The wood was first sculpted then painstakingly hand-painted. They depict many of the events and people associated with the Geelong area.

Two of several sea captains

The 'Sailor and the Floozy'

12 FEBRUARY 2016: GREAT OCEAN ROAD 2: APOLLO BAY

The plan today was to get to Apollo Bay, taking in the Twelve Apostles, probably the greatest tourist attraction on the Great Ocean Road.

Bay of Islands:

The road was soon dotted with Scenic Lookouts so, just west of Peterborough, we stopped at the car park associated with the Bay of Islands, which gave us remarkable views of this series of tiny offshore islands.

Rock stacks offshore provide nesting sites for silver gulls and for Victoria's only marine cormorant, the rare black-faced cormorant.

Bay of Martyrs:

The place name, together with nearby Massacre Bay and Massacre Point, refers to a strong local oral history which suggests that Europeans killed a large group of Kirrae-Wurrong Aboriginal men by driving them off the cliffs. The women and children were allegedly killed in a nearby swamp. Not surprisingly, there is no written evidence but it seems the local Aboriginal population did drop from a couple of thousand to virtually nil at some point.

We stopped at the Bay of Martyrs car park and took the short and spectacular clifftop walk from the carpark to Point Halladale, relating to the shipwreck of the 'Falls of Halladale' which ran aground here in 1908.

The bay is 2.5 km long, containing numerous reefs and sea stacks.

The Twelve Apostles:

The 12 Apostles is the name given to a collection of natural limestone stacks that rise up to 150 ft. (46m.) from the sea off the coast of Port Campbell National Park. The apostles were formed by erosion of the soft limestone to form caves in the cliffs, which then became arches, which in turn collapsed, leaving rock stacks. Until 1922 the site was known as the Sow and Piglets (Muttonbird Island was the Sow, and the smaller rock stacks were the Piglets). After 1922 it was renamed The Apostles for tourism purposes.

The stacks are susceptible to further erosion (of an estimated 2 cm. a year at the base of the limestone pillars) from the waves. In 2005 a 50-metre-tall stack collapsed into the sea and the Island archway lost its archway in 2009.

The Twelve Apostles are not 12 in number and never have been. 

Stunning and awesome!!

Koalas: 

As we drove eastwards we came to a 'traffic jam' of cars and buses which turned out to be an impromptu sighting of a pair of koalas in a eucalyptus tree.

Cape Otway Lighthouse:

'I have seldom seen a more fearful section of the coastline.': (Matthew Flinders, mariner.)

Cape Otway Light Station is the oldest, surviving lighthouse in mainland Australia. It has been in continuous operation since 1848, having been commissioned after more than 350 lives were lost when the Cataraqui founded on a reef off King Island in 1845. It was built by more than 40 stonemasons without mortar or cement.

Apollo Bay:

Our stopping place tonight was the fishing town of Apollo Bay, midway along the Great Ocean Road.

Part of the traditional lands of the Gadubanud or King Parrot people of the Cape Otway coast, the land was originally named Krambruk, which is an Aboriginal word for Sandy Place, then in 1877 renamed Middleton, before in the late 1890s being again changed to Apollo Bay after the schooner Apollo  which sailed here in 1845 by a Captain Loutit to shelter his vessel from a storm. 

Inevitably, we didn't see very much of the town that evening apart from a walk on the beach and a very good Chinese meal in the Dragon Bay restaurant (4A Hardy St.).

Next morning Nic and Sue converted Steve to trying the Burcher Muesli (organic version this time)...

......before having a quick look at the Saturday morning market at the foreshore where there was also a large exhibition of timber Public art by a local sculptor.

11 FEBRUARY 2016: GREAT OCEAN ROAD 1:PORT FAIRY

'In the face of almost insurmountable odds, the Great Ocean Road has materialised from a dream or 'wild-cat scheme', as many dubbed it, into concrete reality.' : ('The Age', 1932)

'Perhaps one of the greatest benefits to the men working on the road was that they were able to stay together after the war.': (Julie Squires)

The Great Ocean Road was first planned towards the end of World War One as part of a scheme to provide work for returned soldiers building roads in sparsely populated areas. Besides being dedicated as a memorial, it was also envisaged that the road would connect isolated settlements on the coast and become a vital transport link for the timber industry and tourism.
Surveying started in 1918, and construction by 3,000 returned servicemen began on 19 September 1919. The soldiers were paid 10 shillings and sixpence for 8 hours per day, also working a half-day on Saturdays. They used tents for accommodation and made use of a communal dining marquee and kitchen, food costing up to 10 shillings a week. Construction was done by hand and was at times perilous, several workers being killed on the job. Despite these difficulties, workers had access to a piano, gramophone, games, newspapers and magazines at the camps. An unexpected bonus came in 1924 with the steamboat Casino becoming stranded near Cape Patton, forcing it to jettison 500 barrels of beer and 120 cases of spirits. The workers obtained the cargo resulting in an unscheduled two-week-long drinking break!
The 243 kms. road between Nelson and Torquay was completed and officially opened in November 1932.

Port Fairy:

We'd allocated 3 days to travel the Great Ocean Road, the plan being that we would not be driving too long each day, so our first overnight destination was to be Port Fairy, chosen initially by Lin for its magical-sounding name.

Probably in 1828 a Captain Wishart, on a sailing expedition in his cutter 'Fairy', became caught in a storm and found shelter for the night in a little bay. At daybreak, he found that he was at the mouth of an excellent river. He named the bay 'Port Fairy', in honour of his tiny ship. A bay whaling station was established on the island at the mouth of the river. So many whales were harpooned in the bay and dragged up onto the island for processing that the supply was exhausted by the mid 1840s and the station closed. In 1843 a town was established and named 'Belfast', but in 1887 the town residents petitioned the Government to rename it Port Fairy. By this time investors had abandoned Port Fairy in favour of other towns and this economic down turn resulted in the preservation of many 19th century houses and buildings ( more than 50 of the town's buildings are National-Trust classified). 

Griffith Island:

Named after John Griffiths who in 1835 had purchased the whaling station.
After checking in to the Seacombe House Comfort Inn (originally dating from 1847) , we decided to get our bearings by walking the causeway to low-lying windswept Griffith Island with its lighthouse (manned until 1956, with two bluestone keepers' cottages then standing by the causeway to the lighthouse) and abundance of wildlife,

....not least a colony of mutton birds (short-tailed shearwaters).

Griffith Island Lighthouse stands 11 metres tall.

The lighthouse was built in the era of sailing ships to allow seamen to locate the bay on what was one of the most treacherous stretches of coastline on earth. More than 200 ships were torn asunder long this Shipwreck Coast between Cape Otway and Port Fairy, 17 alone in the bay and its surrounding waters. The bulk of these disasters were due to ships being driven ashore on East Beach when strong south-easterly winds caused them to drag their anchors.