A spontaneous Sunday adventure

Great Ocean Road from Teddy's Lookout, Lorne

Luke and I made an impromptu visit to Lorne on the spectacular Great Ocean Road yesterday. We had lunch in a little town west of Geelong called Birregurra just for a day out somewhere different, but rather than head back home on the highway, Luke suggested we head south to Lorne since it wasn't that far away. It's hard to say no to zooming along the GOR. 

With our bellies full of lamb snags (Luke) and beef burger (me) supplied by farms in the Birregurra region, we set off. The trip took us from farmland, through the forested Otways National Park to the coast.

Fabulous old petrol bowser at Deans Marsh 

A ghost sign on the building behind the bowser

While in Lorne we took in the view from Teddy's Lookout and visited the lush spendour of Erskine Falls - my first time there. It's not the mightiest waterfall we've visited, but the setting is beautiful. Cool, green and cavernous. 

 Erskine Falls near Lorne

Kookaburra sits in the old gumtree

We dropped into the secondhand bookshop in Birregurra (naturally) and while we were there, the owner dropped a bookstand on the floor near my feet. I picked it up for her and she said that meant I would get a surprise. Apparently that was a thing when she grew up - if someone drops something and you pick it up for them, a surprise will come your way. Country karma, I suppose. My surprise is due on Wednesday. I assume it's going to be a nice surprise. 

It might have come early actually. I thought the interest I pay annually in November for an investment thingo hadn't been debited from my account, but today I realised it had; it was just much smaller than usual. This means nearly all of my tax return can go towards other, more tangible things, like saving for holidays next year.  Yay. Oh, OK; I did buy some shoes too.    

November: day 7

Got my hair did today. I went bright purple all over about two months ago, but today I went back to black on the sides and a darker purple on top.  I like it. (Those are shadows under my eyes not massive dark circles, although I do look how I feel...)

Just after I took this photo a woman came up to me gushing about how "awesome" my hair is and told her 20-something daughter she should get something like it instead of her straight, natural brown hair. Hahaha. (Poor daughter though.) Having random people on the street comment on your hair happens when you go with a bright colour. 

I got my hair done at Razor Dolls on Chapel Street in Windsor, which is not your usual hair salon. All the hairdressers are pretty out there - lots of tattoos (including one facial tatt), ear gauges, piercings, and crazy hair dos. My hairdresser has bright pink, platinum blonde and yellow dreadlocks. I just want to sit and stare at all of them. 

Mirror, mirror

I took a photo of our new mirror today before I sat down on the couch and couldn't get up again (actually, when I got home today I went straight to bed for a nap for a few hours). 

We liked the really ornate mirrors, but we ended up buying a contemporary style since the rest of our decor is modern.  You can't really see it, but it has a nice bevelled edge on the glass.  

I need to rethink the mantelpiece decoration so the bottom of the frame is visible. If the mirror were hung higher we wouldn't be able to see much in it besides the ceiling (and the bare lightbulb, which needs a new light fitting). 

Our Ends are our Beginnings

The other picture the handyman hung for me was this print I bought from the site Section6. It's called Our Ends are our Beginnings by Paradisiac Picture. I love it - the dramatic golden sky, the deep blue ocean and the Parisian-looking city on the sea floor, but also the possibility of feeling as if you're sinking to the bottom, but something new 

This is a bit strange, but sometimes when I'm near the sea or watching a documentary about it, I think how terrifying it would be to fall into the deepest depths of the ocean, and I get a weird feeling in the pit of my stomach like mild panic or claustrophobia, and that's what I initially feel when I look at this. She's falling to the bottom of the sea! But she will be saved! 

(Sorry about the formatting, it's misbehaving and I'm too tired to fix it.)

Not grumpy, deep sea, worst language

I'm in quite a good mood today...or maybe that started after I got home from work? Whichever. I wasn't a grumpy bum all day. That's a pleasant change. 

I am fascinated by deep sea creatures and landscapes so I was interested to read about exploration of the Perth Canyon near Rottnest Island, off the coast of Western Australia. The canyon is about the same length as the Grand Canyon and twice as deep - up to four kilometres deep in places. Four kilometres of dark water teeming with strange creatures! Despite it proximity to the mainland, it has never been properly explored, but a team of scientists from the University of Western Australia is changing that. You can read about their discoveries here. 

This is an amusing and interesting list of reasons English is "the worst language ever". I'm glad I never had to learn it as a second language. 

The way Americans pronounce "duty" makes me chuckle. Dooty, and sometimes doody. Hahaha. Doody. 

No, I didn't post yesterday because I went to bed as soon as I got home and pretty much stayed there until 8.00 am.  

Road trip: Day 2 - Warrnambool to Robe

We spent the morning of our second day in Warrnambool, a place that I know quite well as I grew up about 70kms away and my grandmother lived there after she retired.  I've never really visited in tourist-mode though.

After a delicious breakfast at a cafe (more gluten-free fare!), we drove down to the breakwater and Stingray Bay. I didn't appreciate before that Warrnambool has such cool place names (it also has a Lava Street). In the picture below the headland in the distance is Thunder Point.

It was low tide so we poked about in the rock pools and spotted a few small fish in the channel in the picture above. I'm living in hope of finding a baby octopus.  

Before leaving we visiting the Botanic Gardens, which were designed by William Guilfoyle just after he finished work on the Royal Botanic Gardens in Melbourne. It's a much smaller, more minimalist garden - perhaps more a park than a garden - but it's pretty. It has some fantastic fig trees - check out the roots on this beauty!

Band rotunda

Willows and waterlilies

Then we hit the road for Port Fairy. Eagle-eyed Luke spotted this ace old Ampol sign on a derelict garage along the way.

I had high hopes for seeing plenty of ghost signs in country towns, but I was disappointed. Oh well. There were plenty of other things I could point my camera at.

Port Fairy is a charming little fishing town rich with history. It was settled in about 1839, although whalers and seal hunters visited the area from the early 1800s and a whaling station was established in 1835, the same year Melbourne was founded. 

The town has more than 50 buildings classified by the National Trust as well of loads of other cute little cottages and beautiful old buildings.

We strolled along the Moyne River towards the beachfront where we saw what must surely be among the prettiest riverfront properties in Australia. Look at them! No doubt property owners are forbidden from erecting ugly modern glass monstrosities. Good!

There was a lone pelican on the river fishing. I tried to get a picture of it scooping a fish into its bill, but this was as close as I got. Haha. 

We had lunch at a combined art gallery/cafe where Luke ate two of the fattest sausages ever made, and then we were off again. We had accommodation booked in Robe, so we had to keep moving.  We stopped briefly in Portland (the oldest European settlement in the state of Victoria) and then again to take photos of the windfarm at Codrington. 

Those turbines are massive and although many say they are a blight on the landscape, they really are an arresting sight on the horizon. The sign on the gate said 'No public access' but the gate was open so...in we went. 

 Turbines and bovines

Next stop: Cape Bridgewater. It has a beautiful sweep of pristine beach and some of the tallest coastal cliffs in Victoria (which I don't seem to have taken photos of. Here's one. I've walked to the top of it before - it's higher than it looks). 

We did part of the walk to the clifftop, but it was well into the afternoon by now so we didn't have time to go the whole way up and back, much to my disappointment. (Note to self: on our next road trip, less driving each day = more time to explore.)

A shack at the foot of the cliffs

Back on the road, we passed over the border into South Australia. 

We stopped in Mount Gambier to look at the Blue Lake...

...and then kept going until we got to the little fishing town of Robe. We had pizza for dinner at a local restaurant - I had a gluten-free one! -  and collapsed into bed. I'd been having trouble getting to sleep for the couple of weeks before we went away, but I nodded off in no time for the second night in a row. Zzzzzz.   

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. 

Street art and the sea

I took this photo on Saturday in Caledonia Lane in the city. It's the first work by this artist I've seen and I  really like it - it's playful, mysterious, but also slightly creepy. Then today - thanks to a link tweeted by Hidden Secret Tours - I found out there are many more works by the same artist in the city and inner suburbs. I'll be on the look out now.

If you're wondering about the words on the bottom of the picture above and the rest of the work, here's another photo and a link:

I see the sea!

I was early for a meeting on the south side of my office building today and while I waited, I looked out the window and I could see the ocean in the distance. I thought "I see the sea!" because that's what I always think at first sight of the ocean - it's what my brother and I used to say when we were kids and the sea came into view as we drove to Warrnambool (I grew up near there).

I could also see a tiny slice of the beautiful old Rialto building on Collins Street from my building.