Birthdaytripping

Happy birthday to me (for yesterday)! We had a fun day out in the country. I particularly enjoyed the drive up to Woods Point because it was a very foggy morning, and the forest looked spooky and magical in the mist.  It was beautiful when the sun started to break through. 

On the Black  Spur between Healesville 
and Narbethong 

A little way past the  Warburton turn off on 
Woods Point Road

Most of the road between the Warburton turn off and Woods Point is unsealed. It was fairly smooth...apart from all the parts that were slippery with mud and riddled with potholes and corrugations. Luke did a very good job of avoiding most of the potholes, but some teeth-rattlers did sneak up on him. It's far from the roughest road we've been on, but getting back onto bitumen was still quite a relief. 

We arrived in Woods Point around lunch time, and parked our little muddy hatchback behind a row of even muddier four-wheel drives.  I think we were the only people in town in a two-wheel drive. 

I was careless getting out of the car and managed to get mud on my jacket, leggings (front and back), dress (front and back), my handbag and even my sunglasses, much to Luke's amusement. I had to leave my jacket in the car, but a tissue and bottle of water removed most of the rest of the mud on me. Luke also got some mud on the back of his calf getting out of the car. Fortunately, as we walked up to the pub for lunch, it soon became obvious that nearly everyone had a bit of mud on them. Woods Point is a popular destination for four-wheel drivers and dirt-bike riders, and most of the people in the pub were there for one or the other.   

Waiting for lunch. No 9 on 9 July

The Woods Point hotel is one of the most isolated pubs in Victoria (it's beyond the reach of the internet!), so I was quite surprised to find a young English woman working there. She'd been there for six weeks and was enjoying it - even the lack of internet access wasn't bothering her as much as she expected. I doubt I would cope with the isolation or the lack of net access. I should add here Woods Point is a very small town of only about 100 people. There's a police station, a school, a mining company office, a general store (which was closed yesterday). 

Luke and I both had a chicken schnitzel sandwich for lunch. It was made with supermarket white bread and Kraft Singles cheese, but it was greater than the sum of its non-gourmet parts. It was pretty delicious, in fact (just as well because we waited for more than hour to get it. I don't recommend arriving just after a fleet of four-wheel drives.)  

After devouring our schnitzel sangers in super quick time, we went for a wander. Woods Point is a great place to visit for someone like me who like things that are old, rusty and decrepit!

 Old, rusty, decrepit car

 Old, decrepit service station with rusty bowsers

If you do a google images search for Woods Point, you will see a lot of photos of this tiny service station. It's very cute and I love the old bowers. Here's a shot of the two on the right. 

Diesoleum!

Bowser detail

 Another little shack

 On a lean 

Side view. It appears to be held together with a 

bit of wire, a couple of rocks and a miracle

Before heading home we stopped at the cemetery. There were far fewer graves than I expected, but a sign at the gate explained why: in 1939 the Black Friday bushfires destroyed the town and burnt the wooden crosses marking most of the graves. Only some have been replaced with simple white signs bearing a name and date of death. 

High on the hill

No neighbours

Luke's car after the drive home 

All in all, it was a fun day out. You can see more of my photos here. 

Road trip: Day 1 - Melbourne to Warrnambool

I've taken my time getting around to writing about our road trip in early January. It's a long weekend for Australia Day, so I thought I should get off my butt (or, rather, on my butt) and blog. 

On our first day Luke and I drove along the Great Ocean Road (GOR) to Warrnambool. 

Iconic Bells Beach near Torquay. Not a great day for the beach 

(for us, I mean, not surfers) - it was very windy and a bit chilly

The Split Point Lighthouse at Aireys Inlet

It's a pretty little lighthouse

Although the sky was mostly grey, there were some sunny

 breaks which turned the shallows a beautiful aqua blue 

The lush rural hinterland near Apollo Bay...a dramatic

contrast to what was to come later in our trip

That's the ocean at Apollo Bay in the distance

Our next stop was at Cape Otway. There's a lighthouse there, but we thought the admission fee was a bit steep, so we walked to the little historic cemetery nearby instead.  In the late 1800s it was the burial place for about a dozen people mostly connected with the lighthouse (including several infants) and victims of drownings at sea. 

One of the graves is for a seaman who died in the Eric The Red shipwreck in 1880. The ship had sailed from New York en route to Melbourne carrying exhibits for the International Exhibition.

Another is for Thomas Monk who died in the Blanket Bay disaster. 

It reads: In memory of Albert Griffiths Chief Officer aged 33 years * Thomas Monks aged 34 years * Alexander Mathieson aged 23 years * Who lost their lives in the Blanket Bay disaster 21st March  1896 * Erected on the grave of Thomas Monk by their shipmates and friends

There were tracts of skeletal trees on the road between the GOR and Cape Otway. They were eerily beautiful and reminded me of the trees we saw on top of Lake Mountain in 2012. I don't think they were dead as some were sprouting leaves. I'm not sure what was going on with them. 

Some - the ones with more leaves - had koalas in them! 

 This was the first of several wildlife encounters on our trip

Mmmmm... gum leaves...munch munch munch

We stopped at the little town of Lavers Hill for sustenance and I was thrilled to find a packet of homestyle gluten-free melting moments biscuits. They were delicious too - far superior to ones I bought recently from the gourmet mecca of the David Jones food hall. 

Next up was Melba Gully, a patch of mossy, ferny, licheny, fungusy rainforest with some superb trees. 

 This one has a face, a spooky face

 Moss-covered tree

 Above tree, with tree fern

Fungus on a fallen log

Next up was the best-known stretch of the GOR - the bit with the Twelve Apostles and the other rock formations beyond.

 The Twelve Apostles

 The Apostles again

 The Loch Ard Gorge. The open wild Southern Ocean lies 
through that gap in the rocks 

The Loch Ard Gorge is my favourite. It's a secluded cove bound by high cliffs, with a little beach and a cave at the back with stalactites and stalacmites (below).  I like it because it doesn't attract anywhere near as many tourists as the Twelve Apostles and because when I was in grade six I won an essay competition in which I had to imagine I was one of the two survivors of the Loch Ard shipwreck. My story was published in the local paper. I always think about that when I visit. 

The gorge is named after the ship because the survivors came ashore there. The rugged coast in this part of Victoria is known as the Shipwreck Coast because of the more than 600 sailing ships that came to grief there in the 1800s to early 1900s. 

The cave

 Further alone, the Bay of Martyrs in the golden hour

The sun setting over the Bay of Martyrs 

We continued on to Warrnambool, checked into our motel, managed to get a restaurant meal at 9.30 on a Monday night (Warrnambool is quite large, but still a country town). The restaurant also offered gluten-free options. I was impressed...even though I then chose to eat gluten because bread is delicious.  It's nice to have the option, y'know?

We both slept very well. 

Day 20: The Hardy Ash

I visited a couple of remarkable trees when I was in London with the help of TimeOut's The Great Trees of London. The greatest was the Hardy Ash in the  St Pancras Old Church yard in Camden. 

I found my way to King's Cross station easily (the Tube wasn't anywhere near as baffling as I first feared), but I got a little misplaced finding my way to the church. In the end I stumbled across the rear entrance of the churchyard by sheer chance. Phew. 

My first glimpse of the Hardy Ash:

The churchyard has many lovely shady trees, but the Hardy Ash is special because at its base is a collection of tombstones, which were stacked there by Thomas Hardy - yes, the writer Thomas Hardy. He studied architecture in the 1860s and when a new railway was being built through the church graveyard he was given the job of exhuming the remains and moving the headstones. He stacked the headstones against the tree...and there they remain to this day. 

They won't be going anywhere now because the tree roots have taken a firm hold on them.   

Gippsland glee - part II

We woke on the second day of our Gippsland getaway to blue skies and sunshine.  We had a quick breakfast at the Venus Foodtrap (which proved better at word play than food and customer service), then hit the road to Walkerville. 

Walkerville North and South are two tiny neighbouring villages on the picturesque Waratah Bay, accessible only by gravel road. They had their heyday in the early 20th century when lime was mined from the cliffs, bagged and shipped to Melbourne for use in the construction industry. Remnants of the lime kilns remain. 

I don't know what this rock is called, but it looks like a piratey shoe.

 (That's Wilson's  Promontory in the background)

There's a tiny cemetery in the bush between Walkerville North and South. About 15 people were buried there. As I stood there in the sun, listening to the wind in the she-oaks, it struck me as a very peaceful final resting place, but also a lonely, melancholy one. 

There was an information display at Walkerville South which included excerpts of the diary of a man employed in the lime works. I found the entries for 25-27 December amusing (click to enlarge).

(Bonus reflection of Luke and me)

Next we headed to Cape Liptrap. 

On the way - Wilson's Prom in the background again



 Cape Liptrap's old, but still functioning, lighthouse

We stopped for lunch in Sandy Point.

 

And then to nearby Shallow Inlet where we nearly drove into the water. We were following a road that led off the car parking area, but we came to an abrupt halt when we saw that it led into the water. At first we thought it was a boat launching ramp, but when saw this sign a bit later...

No parking

...we realised the road and surrounding area were submerged at high tide. There was kitesurfer on the inlet and when he stood in the water it didn't reach his waist.

And then we hit the road for home, driving inland via Leongatha which was really pretty with lots of lush green hills and valleys dotted with cows.