Port Campbell, VIC

Mon 16 Feb 1998

Returned to Maits Rest Rainforest Walk for a proper look. There is a board walk for all the difficult bits and one gets right into the rainforest, cool and damp and full of fern trees. There are strangely distorted myrtle beech trees. One had grown up around a big fallen tree now long since rotted away leaving a hole in the base you could walk through and had incorporated into itself another fallen tree, ending upwith a very lopsided tripod base that seemed somehow appropriate for such an ancient entity. My favorites trees are still the majestic mountain ash.

Had morning tea at the Blackwood Gully Craft and Information centre at Lavers Hill. The place was scrupulously clean and fresh and the staff attentive. The view is stunning and the slow burning wood stove makes for a feeling of comfort on a rather cold, wet morning. Altogether a very pleasant place. On the tea tables are discrete notices seeking a buyer for the business. There is a modern monstrosity opposite run by some multinational oil company. Could it be that "the marketplace" has chosen the ugly, garish, and vulgar business over the carefully crafted pleasant welcoming one. An apt metaphor for the Constitutional Convention I think.

As one drives towards Port Campbell, each time the road allows a view of the sea one is presented with a new and different vista which reinforces the impression one has of this wild coast.

The Campbell Bay limestone which gives rise to the Twelve Apostles (of which only eight survive) and other less well known local features like the Loch Ard Gorge, provides a succession of awe-inspiring scenes. One cannot but be impressed with the cliffscapes with sheer drops of 100 metres or more from cliff edge to the pounding surf and the isolated rock piles, which have so far resisted the inevitable erosion of the sea, all showing the regular strata of this ancient sea bed.

The weather was not at its best with constant strong, cold onshore winds and occasional rainstorms dampening the ardour of the most eager sightseer.

One of the graphics erected by the Nation Parks people took my fancy. The original name for Mutton Bird Island and the Twelve Apostles was the Sow and Piglets, a much more appropriate name, I think.

On to Port Campbell, which boasts a very small jetty and one boat, to dry out again and to rest for the night.