Holiday Down Under 2.0 - Part 2: Apollo Bay

After spending time in the Mornington Peninsula, the rest of my trip was in various places along the Great Ocean Road. The first stop, Apollo Bay, which oddly enough was kind of right in the middle of the Great Ocean Road. I planned it like this in due to driving times and getting back to the airport at the end, but we'll get to that in a post or two from now.

After leaving Frankston, it was about a 3 hour drive to get to Apollo Bay. There were a couple of options to get there, the first being to go back towards Melbourne, drive through it and along the bay down to the Great Ocean Road, but after the difficult time I had the first time, I decided against that option. Instead, I went to the ferry that crosses the bay. Going by ferry added a bit of time to the trip, but it was worth it! Soon after getting on the ferry it came across a pod of dolphins! There were a lot of them! I tried to take some pictures, but I can't say that it worked so well...Also, it was my first time to ever go on a ferry while driving a car too!

Waiting for the ferry to arrive

There it is!

Dolphins! There were a lot more than this but they were going in the opposite direction and they were kind of fast going around the ferry.

On the way to Apollo Bay, I didn't make too many stops, because it was one of the first sunny and relatively warm days since arriving, and I wanted to spend as much time outside as possible. I did pull over a couple times to try to grab a photo or two though...

The area around Apollo Bay really reminded me a lot of the North Island in New Zealand, because it had a lot of big, green, rolling hills with sheep and cow grazing around. But, I suppose if you haven't been, maybe that's kind of hard to make the connection. You'll just have to believe me.

Finally, I arrived, and the first thing to do after checking in to my accommodation, was to go check out the beach, which was about a 5 minute walk. Apollo Bay is a small town, basically all of the stores and restaurants are on one road, (the Great Ocean Road), and are all directly across from the beach. Just to give an idea of how small it is -- it doesn't even take 10 minutes to walk from one end of the stores to the other.  The beach was beautiful! The area for sitting was kind of narrow between the water and the dune behind it (but it turned out that was because it was high tide time, at low tide, much, much more space). I was able to spend an hour or two before the wind made it feel a bit too chilly to sit comfortably.

These two were interesting, they just ran up and down the beach on their own, without any humans...

After leaving the beach, I wasn't quite ready to find my dinner just yet, so I decided to go up to Marriner's Lookout to see what kind of view it had. At my accommodations, they told me if I wanted to go up there, I should probably take my car because it gets to be quite steep. I decided to walk it. At first, I was thinking to myself, what are they talking about, this isn't steep at all. And it wasn't, for the most part. Aaaand then there was the last little bit. For that part, I did understand why they said a car would be helpful. It was fairly steep. But! I did it on my own without any trouble. And if I had taken the car, I would've missed out on seeing some of the animals that I saw.  I actually heard some grunting sounds on the way down but couldn't see anything, and (based on my experience in Japan) I wondered if there was a boar type animal in the forested area. But...and I found this out later....apparently the animal who belongs to that particular sound in this part of the world is actually the KOALA! Who would've guessed that they made that kind of sound?

Partway up...

Marriner's Lookout - view to the north-ish

Marriner's Lookout - view to the south-ish - you can see the entire town of Apollo Bay

On the way back down -- so like NZ! Hard to tell, but there were sheep and alpaca on this hill 

More birds! They were noisy! 

The next day, I spent the majority of my time at the beach as the weather was finally perfect beach weather, around 30℃! That being said, on this beach, it did feel a bit chilly at times because the wind came straight off the water, and it was a bit of a windy day, but I was just happy to get some sunshine time!

Beautiful colors!

That same evening, I decided to go out for a bit of a walk and before I got very far, the owners of where I was staying called me over and told me to go check out a tree across the road. There was a koala!! It was my first time to see one naturally, not on a reserve or in a zoo! I was excited! It was a bit hard to see, but it's there!

Can you find the koala?

Other photos from my walk

The next day was a bit cloudy, and as I had gotten a bit of a sunburn from my beach time the previous day, I decided to go take a drive, and see what else I could find. About 10 minutes into my drive I saw a lump on the road, and was wondering what it was, and it turned out to be another koala! This one intelligently decided to cross the road, and moved too fast for me to be able to get out and snap a picture, but I did see it! The first stop I made was at Cape Otway Lighthouse. It was really crowded and so I took the less travelled path (a bush walk) for a little bit, but decided to turn around after running into a snake or two (plus it wasn't so exciting, so I decided to find other things to do). I actually came back to this lighthouse later on in my trip on a less busy day, so look for more photos in another post...

The Cape Otway Lighthouse 

After that, I made a quick stop at Castle Cove lookout, which was absolutely beautiful, my photos don't do it justice at all.

View from where I parked was nice, really wanted to take photos along the way, but couldn't while driving...

View of Castle Cove!

Next stop was a little hike to Triplet Falls. I actually would have liked to have walked more at Triplet Falls, as there was a longer hike it connected to, but the section of path that went that way was closed off and you couldn't get through. That also meant instead of doing a loop around to get to the Falls, you could only go one way, kind of sort of see them, and then turn around and go back the way you came. After that, I ended up in a town called Colac (the weather was really warm there), and it was supposed to have a number of walks around its large lake, but unfortunately I wasn't able to find them, and as it was getting to be a bit far from Apollo Bay (1.5 hour drive) and getting later in the day, I didn't stay long other than to pick up some supplies from the larger grocery store they had there.

So green! 

Triplet Falls

This tree was soooooooo TALL

Quick video at lookout for Triplet Falls. If the video doesn't work, click here to watch.

The next day was a scorcher! 40℃! I was happy!! Beach day! To be honest though, it really didn't feel so extremely hot, because unlike in Japan, the humidity was very low. Every so often though, when the breeze stopped, you could feel a wave of hot air as a reminder that it was indeed actually quite warm. I was also able to make a friend on this day! A dog that came to the beach with his family apparently decided I was lonely, and came over and laid next to me for a while. His humans didn't seem to mind as they didn't call him back or anything. We had a nice conversation and some pets (he was a golden retriever type if you were wondering). Before leaving the beach on that day I went for a bit of a walk, and when I came back, he was still there and came to say hi again and check how I was doing. 💕

Giant change! For my final day in Apollo Bay the weather was HORRIBLE! It was only 13℃! After 40℃ the previous day, it was hard to believe. I had to go back for a long-sleeved shirt. Not to mention it was raining as well, but they felt like little ice shards. Clearly not a beach day. So, I got in my car again and took a bit of a scenic drive through the forest. The road winded and weaved a lot, and eventually I found myself in the town of Forrest. There had been something I wanted to look at here, but the road to access it was not possible to drive on in the little car that I was driving, so I ended up going to Stevensons Falls (which was near Forrest). By the time I got there, the weather was clearing off a bit, and it wasn't so bad to get out and walk (if a bit chilly).

Stevensons Falls. If the video doesn't work, click here to watch.

After that, I got back in the car, and went to find another place to walk. The result was Beauchamp Falls. To get there, I had to drive through another windy road that went through a beech forest. This road wasn't really meant for two cars, so it was a bit of a squeeze if someone came from the other direction, but luckily there weren't too many people driving on this road.

Quiet path to walk to get to the falls

Bird songs while walking...so peaceful.

If the video doesn't work, click here to watch.

View from the lookout.

If the video doesn't work, click here to watch.

View from the lookout and view from the ground...

View from the ground

View from the ground. 

If the video doesn't work, click here to watch.

At this point, I still wasn't ready to head back just yet, so I continued on to a place called Melba Gully, which had another little walk to do.

Not so much to see, but okay for a walk

Then, my final stop of the day was at Moonlight Head. Getting here was also a bit of an adventure, on some steep, kind of scary, gravel roads. I also had to wait for a cow. And a dog. This area has a lookout onto the Southern Ocean. It was almost eerie walking to the lookout from the parking area because all of the plants seemed half dead and it was very, very quiet. If it had been low tide (which it wasn't), I also would have gone down (the 400 stairs) to check out Wreck Beach. Unfortunately, as it was high tide, it was inaccessible.

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Holiday Down Under 2.0 posts: | Part 1: Mornington Peninsula | Part 2: Apollo Bay | Part 3: Coming soon! | Part 4: Coming soon!
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Holiday Down Under (2017) posts: | Part 1: Cairns | Part 2: Brisbane | Part 3: Gold Coast 
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