After an ordinary night’s sleep, we got up and packed early. There was some early morning drizzle and the Mountain Ash tree we were near exuded/leaked an incredible eucalpyt tea / liquid resin / sap fluid – the car might recover but the tent is likely to be permanently stained (it’s a bit cool looking actually and we might send a photo to BlackWolf tents for their next camouflage tent colour design).
The backpackers, during their middle-of-the-night arrival, had just about parked us in and the manouvering to get out involved a lot of revving, getting in, getting out, door slamming, more door slamming, at one point just when my door was near a sleeping head in the car. It was unfortunate that they were trying to sleep but it was unavoidable and well deserved.
We got back on the GO Rd, past the Apostles, Loch Ard Gorge, London Bridge and all the spectacular cliffs and pounding surf. Hitting the road early meant we avoided a lot of the crowds that occur at the lookouts when tourist buses arrive and we got easy parks.
We continued on to the end of the Great Ocean Road at Warnambool and stopped briefly for some shopping and water refills. We drove through Port Fairy which has the best old buildings throughout the town. It was very windy and we did a “drive-thru” tour and then headed north-ish to Budj Bim National Park (Mt Eccles). There’s a ranger station that was deserted and no one else around. We decided on a campsite and were surprised to find hot showers were provided with water pumped from the volcano crater lake. Camp set up, all showered and in a very pleasant quiet spot we settled in.
JALC-OZ-2018 