Followers

Monday 6 June 2011

Day 39: The Twelve Apostles (08/03/2011)

Today is Pancake Day!

We celebrated by buying a plastic spoon from the supermarket to eat our cereal, having lost yet more cutlery along the way.

After the savage but greatly under reported Coffee Tsunami at Otway Light Station, the camera was laid to rest, cold coffee still leaking from its innards. Of no lesser significance was the loss was the orange and carrot cake that was also engulfed by the brown tide that surged across the table, mere nano-seconds after the waitress turned her back.

The casual observer may have attributed the disaster to my poor motor control, as my reaching hand spasmed at the critical moment unleashing hot caffeine hell. The more astute will recognise the malign confluence of The Two Backpackers of the Apocalypse, as we have now been labelled, and the Furry Lieutentant of the Dark One (aka Wombat Terror).

Bearing this in mind, and pausing only to accept a free replacement from the waitress who inexplicably felt responsible for the spillage, we headed for the Twelve Apostles to seek absolution from whatever unspeakable sins of a former life that were responsible for these Marsupial machinations.

The Apostles are limestone stacks eroded from the cliffs beyond Otway and before Port Fairy. The Twevle are merely a few of the formations that litter the coast line for ten miles. Their beatification is a recent occurence, having previously been known, less pleasingly perhaps, as the Sow and Piglets. There are really only eleven now since a recent collapse. The spectacular fall of London Bridge arch just down the coast, stranding terrified hikers, illustrates the dynamic erosion that created the formations and which is continuing the process, with no respect for the requirements of the tourism industry built upon them.

After exploring the strange enclosed bay of Loch Aird Gorge where 57 perished in a nineteenth century maritime disaster, we passed the Bay of Martyrs, a mini-me version of the Apostles, before leaving the coast and heading a short distance inland to the Tower Hill State Game Reserve. Emu and Kangaroos lounged lazily in the roadway, unconcerned by our presence, in a way that made the behaviour of the animals at Wilson's Promontory seem capricious.

Arriving in Port Fairy, we booked into the Ashmont Hotel, discovered the manager had lived a mile from us in Bristol, chased crickets across the threshold, missed the famous pie dinner at the Irish Bar due to the chef's mysterious incapacity, and settled for noodles at the Kung Fu Kitchen while the local dive team complained about sharks at the next table.

All appeared to have been forgiven.

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