My friend Ian said I had to see the Great Ocean Road. It's awesome, he said. Like all Australians, Ian treats distance in a quite different way from Europeans - though it has to be admitted that Ian is only an adopted Australian,
having been brought up in England. But he's learned Australian ways and thinks little of driving huge distances. For him the three hours it took to reach the coast south west of Melbourne was just a short outing.
We stopped off for lunch in Colac, a typical Oz road town, with low rise shops, each nestling under its arcaded front. Traffic rumbled past as we sat outside, an endless stream of cars, utes and huge trucks. One hauled three enormous trailers, yet this is still smaller than a road train, which can drive on up to five sets of axles and seems to go on forever.
From Colac, the scenery changes to rolling hills, unrelentingly brown, mostly farm land from which the trees were culled years ago to make grazing land for milking herds. Our destination was Port Campbell, a small settlement, now a
holiday town, strategically placed on the Great Ocean Road. The road was built directly after the First World War by returning Australian soldiers. It was a classic piece of job creation for men who might otherwise have had nothing to
do. They hewed out mountainsides to create incredible corniches high above the sea, providing stunning views of cliffs and heaving surf pounding on the sandstone rocks below. A monument and arch over the road commemorates their achievement.
It is the sea that has created this coast, carving the soft rock into strange shapes, exposing layer upon layer of compacted sediment. There are a series of lookouts, giving onto bizarrely sculpted shapes, with names like "The
Twelve Apostles", "The Razorback" and "London Bridge". This latter is a massive arched rock, detached from but close to the land. Apparently it was connected by a second arch until 1990, when that fell into the sea. Unfortunately, two
sightseers on the remaining arch were marooned by the collapse and had to be rescued by helicopter many hours later.
We had a motel in Port Campbell for the night. It is the end of the season now so there were hardly any tourists, which lent the place a slightly melancholic feeling.
The coast along the road is notorious for shipwrecks and at various points there are plaques telling of individual disasters. Perhaps the saddest is the wreck of the Loch Ard, a three masted clipper which had set off from England in 1878.
Three months later it was approaching Melbourne through the Bass Strait, when in thick mist it foundered on rocks during a party to celebrate landfall. In these treacherous waters, only two people made it to land alive, Tom Pearce, the
ship's apprentice, and Eva Carmicheal, an 18 year old Irish girl, one of a family of eight Irish immigrants. Tom saved Eva's life but it is not recorded whether or not this led to a romantic outcome. I rather hope it did.
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