Great Western (Stawell)

To say being in Stawell for the running of the Stawell Gift was a bucket list item would be an exaggeration, but it was something I wanted to do.

Emily joined us for a week as it was the school holidays. We stayed down the road from Stawell at a terrific bush camp at the racecourse at Great Western... yes, THAT Great Western, as in Great Western Champagne from the 70s and 80s.

I'd forgotten it was Seppelts Great Western. We did a tour of their underground wine caves and had a tasting and bought a few bottles; something to toast our 365th day on the road with!

Friday night was The Great Western Rodeo. Yeeha! Great fun!

We went to Stawell twice - the heats were on on Easter Saturday and the finals on Easter Monday. When we're old and grey we'll be able to say we saw Gout Gout run.
We also saw Olympian Bree Rizzo win the Ladies' Stawell Gift off scratch, watched Peter Bol run the mile and saw Lachlan Kennedy.

Stawell is in The Grampians and we enjoyed a couple of days walking to some beautiful points. Fortunate with perfect weather. 

On to Daylesford.

Melbourne

We had the chance to stay for a couple of nights with Robyn's cousin, or stay longer and do a house and dog sit in the Melbourne. Since we don't have a house to go home to (we're re-letting for another year) we chose the latter.

Driveway camping :)

Kota needed a walk each day.

We went into the city

and with 80,000 close friends we took in Carlton v Collingwood at the MCG.

We went to St Kilda one morning

The Ackland St cake shops are doing a good trade. We were VERY good!

St Kilda breakfast by the water

The house is in the shadow of Mt Dandenong, so a trip to the top one day.

Hazy, but that's the city in the far background

Robyn's aunt, Wendy, lives in Melbourne, so we caught up with her a few times, including going to the Kabloom flower festival

Was a good chance to catch up with special friends a few times, a couple of lunches and a trip down the bay to Portsea

Next, north to Stawell for The Gift.

The Great Ocean Road

We're including everything from Portland to Geelong in this The Great Ocean Road update.

Portland

We hit the coast at Portland, a fairly large town south of Coleraine.

Near the port was a "Rocket Shed."
Intrigued, we learnt that lines were attached to rockets which were fired to ships in distress. 

Trucks are tipped up to a 60 degree angle to have their wood chips, bound for Japan to be made into paper, unloaded. Super efficient operation

Pine wood chips.
There was also darker stuff; plantation planted blue gum.

A really beautiful botanical gardens.

The Portland Tram is too central to the town to not do it :) 

We drove to Warnambool for the day. Was a little blowy!

Port Fairy is a pretty little town, full of BnB accommodation.
Unfortunately, a fuel spill or similar was clearly evident the day we were here.

Muttonbirds, hunted and eaten in Tasmania, are called Shearwaters here in Victoria and are protected. They nest in the vegetation. 


It's an incredible trek undertaken each year.

Koroit

Near Warnambool, Koroit is known as the Irish town, and given we were here over St Patrick's day, it seemed appropriate place to pull up.

The volcanic rock is evident in all the historic buildings in this corner of Victoria. 

Port Campbell

Port Campbell is right in the thick of the action regarding the iconic GOR images.

I don't know where Victoria is advertising, but whatever they are doing, it's working. 

This is probably the busiest place we've been to in the past 11 months.
Lots of Asian tourists, possibly doing long day tours from Melbourne.

Pretty rugged wharf at Port Campbell!

There's still one place you can walk on the beach, just near the 12 Apostles.
In the past there were more, but I think they are trying to reduce the footprint for the little penguin colonies along this stretch of the coast.

Nice walks here in the Otways.

Camperdown town

Apollo Bay

We stayed at Marengo, a kilometre or two shy of Apollo Bay.

A new record for accommodation this trip. There's no free camping anywhere on the coast, and we didn't want to stay an hour inland, so we sucked it up and paid $87 per night for two nights in a powered site in a caravan park. $87 per night!!

Thank goodness the caravan park was right on the beach, a really nice spot.

While here we drove to Cape Otway to Australia's oldest lighthouse.

V

We drove up to Lorne for lunch. Busier than Apollo Bay, but a great spot nonetheless.

Geelong

After a couple of nights at Apollo Bay, we headed to a caravan park on the Bellarine Peninsula at Marcus Hill, just east of Geelong between Wallington and Queenscliff.

We stayed here near Geelong as we've never explored this area. 

Was nice. We'll more than likely come back.

Off to Melbourne for a house and dog sit.