Day 6 - Port Fairy to Geelong
Today was the day of sun, sea and sandstone. And flies.
Millions of them. Very, very persistent ones. Several abortive
attempts to have lunch in the open air failed as the sandwiches became
completely covered in the things. Finally, swatting the things away
in a crazed dance known locally as the "bush salute", we retreated to the
car to find a relatively insect-free environment.
But
that was after a morning on the Great Ocean Road, exploring the many bays,
coves, gorges, cliffs, beaches, stacks, arches, grottos, and other features
forgotten from 'O' level geography. Mark in particular loved this
part of the trip, and was watched by the others with a combination of amusement
and alarm as he bounded perilously across the unstable sandstone from boulder
to precipice while seeing how much the memory card on his camera would
take. It would take a lot - far too much to be uploaded - but you
can see a few of the snaps here.
At
the end of the process, we found a beautiful sandy beach at the bottom
of a flight of hundreds of steps down the cliff, where the sea broke in
spectacular foaming surf. Time for some more plodging.
And
also time for some more photos. Mark marched out into the water until
it was up to his knees, then turned back to face the shore and lined the
rest of us into a photo pose. "Right," he commanded, as a bloody
great wave came up behind him, "whatever you do, make sure you warn me
if a bloody great wave comes up behind m... - WAAAAAH!"
Well,
it didn't take long to dry off. And so on to Geelong, where the motel
had a small but perfectly-formed swimming pool. Time for more childishness.
All four of us discovered that if you put your belongings at the side of
the pool, they get very wet indeed if you all jump in the pool simultanously.
Mark discovered to his consternation that the water was not nearly deep
enough to do his famed back flip into the pool in any form of safety, and
that Rupert is far too heavy to stand on anyone's shoulders.
Geelong
is a perfectly pleasant port city, in which we didn't do much. We
had a pretty good meal within view of the jetty and the marina, failed
to find the way to an historic ship, and got to the old grammar school
building after it was too dark to photograph it. Some other time....
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