Loch Ard Gorge

We camped on Tuesday night at a remote show ground campsite, quite busy, quite exposed, just 100m back from the sea and down 800m of corrugated road.

We have slept in Bertha during some heavy rain storms, thunder and lightening etc, but this night it was windy. The wind was 50kmh (30mph) with just much greater. Laying bed was a bit like being at sea. If we’d been on an African safari I would have said that there was an elephant trying to push us over. Fortunately, 3.5 tons stays fairly well put, some of the tents didn’t fare so well. There was some debris in the hedges just past us. One of the large steel rubbish containers was turned over.

We didn’t have much hope for the weather on Wednesday, but it was bright, although very windy. A we set off to continue along the GOR, we could see the sea crashing against the rocks. I could have spent all day watching the waves such was the size and ferocity of them. No photos do them justice.

The GOR is a motorhome motorway, so many RVs along the way and meeting the same people at each site along the way. We stopped at Loch Ard Gorge and then walked on to Thunder Cave.

We went on to Port Campbell where we had some soup to warm up, not even all of the layers were keeping us warm.

Next stop London Arch, formerly London Bridge. ”London Arch (formerly London Bridge) is an offshore natural arch formation in the Port Campbell National Park, Australia. The arch is a significant tourist attraction along the Great Ocean Road near Port Campbell in Victoria. This stack was formed by a gradual process of erosion, and until 1990 formed a complete double-span natural bridge.

The span closer to the shoreline collapsed unexpectedly on 15 January 1990, leaving two tourists stranded on the outer span before being rescued by police helicopter. Prior to the collapse, the arch was known as London Bridge because of its similarity to its namesake.”

Bay of Martyrs came next, getting a bit bored with rock stacks in the sea now. The waves are great though. “There is a fascinating history surrounding this part of Victoria, which is alluded to in the place names of other bays and lookout points – Massacre Bay, Massacre Point, Bay of Martyrs. According to stories that have spanned generations, Europeans killed a large group of Karrae-Wurrong Aboriginal men here. They did so by running them off the cliffs, whilst the women and children were supposedly killed in a swamp that is close by.

However, there are many contradicting stories and, more importantly, no written evidence of what happened. All that is known is that the population of Aboriginal people dropped from a few thousand to almost none. Some theories believe this was caused by mass migration, but local folklore has other ideas.”

Lastly, Port Fairy known for being “voted as one of the world's most livable cities with a population under 20,000 after winning the 2012 International LivCom award” - it didn’t impress us much, but the waves on the beach were huuuge.

We continued along the GOR until it ended at Allansford. We wanted to push on as far as possible before stopping for the night and ended up in a small campsite next to Yambuk Lake where we found hot showered to warm us up.Read more