The Great Ocean Walk

In March of 2017 the team embarked on walking the Great Ocean Walk along the South Western coast of Victoria starting Apollo bay and finishing at the Twelve Apostles. We had brilliant weather for the trip as well as a new addition to the crew - Ian Barnard. We decided to camp at every camp site along the way and as a consequence had short walking days that allowed us to explore the area along the way.

We started our walk from Apollo Bay on Friday the 31st March 2017 and finished up at the Twelve Apostles on the 7th April 2017.

This was a great walk along a varied landscape that included beach walks, Melaleuca forest walks, cliff top walks as well as visiting some of Victoria's ship wreck coast line. We saw plenty of wild life including the occasional Tiger Snake, Blue Tongue lizard, Koalas, wallabies and many different species of birds and plants.

The idea for the trip was one from Cameron - we have done relatively few walks in Victoria with the main emphasis been on ski touring. There have been the walks in Wilson's Prom and the walks that occurred on failure snow seasons. So this walk was something different - we still had day light savings on our side as well as what turned out to be great weather, allowing for swims in the ocean. The seas were unusually wild as there was some weather event occurring that was generating some fairly big surf. There were some really great high lights along the trip - amongst these included the say at the Cape Otway light house, the approach into the Twelve Apostles, the walk down toward Johanna Beach and the beach house that was tucked away there, Aire River and Parker Inlet. Reading the info boards along the way gave an insight into how hard living in these areas was back in the 1800's.

The biggest disappointment was what we came across as we approach tourist spots - and that was unburied toilet refuge on the walking track. Note to Parks Victoria - if you are going to promote these areas as tourist vantage points (eg Castle Cove) then you need to provide proper toilet facilities.

As is our want we took many many photos - the photos should provide a taste of what the walk was like for us. There was Venturers that I know through my involvement in the movement that did the hike a week after we did - they encountered rainy days for the most part of their walk and that it was also a lot cooler than we experienced. We choose our week well.

Enjoys the photos.

Cameron, Jason, Pete and Ulysses left Melbourne earlyish to meet up with John, John and Ian at Apollo Bay at around midday. After distribution of food, decanting of wines in the wine bladders and a general re-packing of packs we got going at around 1.30pm. Our day was fairly short in that we only had 10km to walk in easy to medium difficulty terrain.

We had planned to leave Melbourne by 9am but instead got away at 10am, driving to Apollo Bay via Geelong and and Colac along the B114.

The walk to Elliot Ridge Camp site was uneventfull. There some really amazing homes/holiday homes perched on the hills sides along the walking trail offering their owners what would have been stunning views across Bass Strait and the surrounding areas. The track itself was very well marked and impossible to miss. There were sign posts along the way that were decision points and were based on what the tide was doing. Some of the track - and this would become a feature of the walk - would cover areas that could become inundated with the tidal flow and ebb.

In typical Dodgey fashion we lost half the party before we even left Apollo Bay - Cam forgot a memory card for his camera and returned back to Apollo bay shops to buy one, taking JB, Ian, Pete and Jas with him leaving JM and I to wonder what the hell had happened.

The walk included some beach walking where the waves looked great if you were a surfer - not looking to be too dumpy with the swell between 1 and 2 meters. The walk off the beach was then into some temperate rain forest  were we eventually reached our camp site at 5.15pm. The camp site was pretty nice and we shared the site with 1 other couple. Dinner was done by 6.30pm and dessert by 9pm. We washed dinner down with some nice red wine - as we did every other night. It was some Zema Estate Cab Sav. We were done and in bed by 9.30pm.

Day 2 started off a bit damp. It had rained overnight and the wind had got up a bit - not that the wind affected us too much in our tents that night. We all had a reasonable sleep and were beginning to get up at 8am for what was a fairly easy 12 KM day down to Blanket Bay.

Cam had some new fangled breakfast that involved "blue berries" that worked really well - however, there was an underestimation of the Blue Berries required that lead to an immediate Blue Berry crisis - a first for Dodgey.

We left camp at about 10.30am for a fairly leisurely walk through the Otway Forest. It was really nice walking. Along the way we meet a bunch of cyclists - mountain bike type - who were out doing a race. With the rain overnight the track had become very muddy and they were covered in it. We found a frog swimming in a pool of water in the middle of the road. All in all nice walking.

We made Blanket Bay camp site by 1.30pm and proceeded to setup camp. We had lunch and found out that the Vita Wheat biscuit packs had reduced the number of crackers per box by about 2 which meant that our rations were a little down. We forecast a Vita Wheat crisis in the days to come.

JB and I decided to do some fishing. The swell was so high that it made lure fishing really difficult and we caught a lot of sea weed, but no fish. With the size of the swell you really had to pay attention to the waves as they came in, so it was no surprise seeing JB get totally enveloped in a wave - really very funny. Pete suffered a similar fate but not quite as badly as JB.

The later afternoon saw us sitting on the beach enjoying the last of the sun slowly sipping on some very fine port. Dinner that night was taco's with re-hydrated meat.

There were a group of walkers that had started from Apollo Bay and walked through to Blanket Bay on the Saturday. These walkers were been supported by a tour group. The camp site at Blanket Bay supports both walkers and drive in campers were as Elliot Ridge only supports walk in campers. When we arrived at the camp site the beach front site was full of the tourist walkers. These walkers only carry a small day pack with their immediate needs for the days walking - lunch and snacks, water, clothing and I guess their personal first aid kits.

Day 3 was a pearler of a day - sun shine, warm and a slight zephyr of a breeze. The previous night we had decided to take the ocean walk along the rocky outcrop between Blanket Bay and Parker Inlet. This was of course predicated on us getting going at low tide which was at 7.55am. A final check of the weather, the wave height and the tide times we decided to walk along the rocky outcrop. The distance between Blanket Bay and Parker Inlet was only about 2.5km - so was not a long time walking with an incoming tide.

That said it was not without its challenges and dangers. Key amongst these was still the large swell - to the extent that John M and I got soaked as a large wave broke over some rocky outcrops about 2 to 3 meters above the sea level sending a huge water spout into the air that unfortunately landed directly on top of John and I soaking us - the others were in hysterics as they watch the event unfold - not to matter though as we were dry fairly quickly. There were wave surges that we needed to time to avoid been stuck in the bottom of a surge channel as the waves came in. There was also the need to climb up in some instances fairly high to avoid flooded surge channels. I was not convinced of the integrity of the rock face, however it held us.

We arrived at Parker Inlet for a talking down to by our Commander in Chief for allowing the party to split up too much. After each doing our 100 push ups as punishment we had our budgie bars for morning tea.

We took the overland track to Cape Otway Light House Camp site which was an uneventful walk arriving at camp by 12.30pm. Seeing that there was a licensed premise at the camp site it was an easy decision to have lunch at the restaurant and enjoy some Prickly Moses beer - a local brewery in the region.

We did a tour of the ligh house area with the high light been the light house tour (pardon the pun) listening to Pam's excellent knowledge of the history of the light house, the keepers and how they used to get supplies to the light house from Parker Inlet. It was really very interesting.

Chis becoming frustrated at watching the antics of a young family trying to take a selfie of themselves with the light house in the back ground rushed to their rescue and took a photo for them receiving a round of applause from the onlookers in the restaurant.

We bid farewell to John M as he was leaving us at this point but not without providing some much needed re-stocking of fine red wine. 

Our challenge that evening was to extract the cork - duh - no cork screw with us, out of the bottle of red that we were going to drink that night. A challenge done with scouting ingenuity.

We had a great sleep that night after having a meal of Butter Chicken.

We had a reasonable start to the day leaving camp at 9.30am for a 10km medium grade walk from Cape Otway to Aire River camp site. Over the course of the trip we have accumulated some rubbish - so JB and I thought that we would talk it upto the tourist centre to see f they would take it as opposed to carrying it for the rest of the trip. The staff at the light house centre were kind enough to take our rubbish which meant a little less weight and bulk in our packs. We caught up with the group at the Light House Keepers cemetery.

We had another uneventful day's walking but we did get some spectacular views of the coastline. We did a beach walk for a couple of kms before heading back upto the track. The beach walk was very nice. Back on the track we had some spectacular views of the Aire Inlet as we approached it. Interestingly the inlet was closed at the mouth of the river.

The camp site was divided into sites for drive in campers and a site for the walkers. On the banks of the river there was a small jetty where we decided to go for a swim. The water was spanner water - really very cold, however it was oh so refreshing washing off 4 days of sweat and salt. After a quick dip we explored around and spotted some beautifully marked Koalas.

JB and Chis went fishing and caught some small Australian Salmon, which we threw back. We had a peaceful night with a wonderful Curry Laksa for mains and a not so great Apricot Crumble for dinner.

We were once again treated a glorious start to the day with sunshine and warm temperatures. We had a 14km day ahead of us which was graded as medium. We had an early start to the day again heading off by 9am (that is early for us).

Along the track we saw evidence of roos and wallabies by their foot prints in the sand.

We had the opportunity to drop off the track down to the beach. A great beach with fantastic rock pools. We found abalone, crabs, rock cod - if we wanted a feed then it was there for us. It was really interesting looking around in the rock pools. There were large sort sand stone boulders with many ancient sheets embedded in the rocks. We had a pleasant morning tea on the beach.

Rejoining the track we were treated by finding a large tiger snake sunning itself just on the side of the track. It let us take a couple of photos of it before moving off into the scrub. They do move fast when they want to. It was not too fussed by our presence.

We made our way to Castle lookout - we knew we were approaching a tourist lookout by all of the "borries and bog role paper littering the walking track. It was pretty disgusting. There should really be toilets for tourists us use at some of these sites. We encountered similar situations as we approached the Twelve Apostles.

Leaving the lookout we eventually found ourselves pushing through some more temperate rainforest with great stands of grass trees and several cinnamon fungus control points. The cinnamon fungus decimates grass trees. We eventually made our way to Johanna beach where we had lunch.

The walk along the beach was a bit of a slog as the beach angled up steeply from where the waves were washing in and out and the sand was quite soft requiring a modified walking style. Along the beach the highlight was seeing two hooded plovers of which there are only about 600 left in Victoria.

The final 400 meters to the campsite seemed to take forever, however, once reaching our campsite for the night the views that we had were second to none. We pretty much had the camp site to ourselves with some people arriving much later to setup camp amongst the trees.

We decided to take a walk back down to the beach for a quick swim, been very wary of the undertows and rips. The rips were super evident when watching a couple of surfers catching the rip out to get back into the waves. The sunset views that we had were truely wonderful that night. We had Chiili Con Carne for dinner as well as our usual dessert and pre of soup.

Again a lovely morning to start walking. Not too hot or cold. We got going at about 8.20am for our 14km walk through medium to hard terrain. That said the walking was pretty relaxed and not too hard. The days walking would take us fro Johanna Beach through to Ryan's Den. Along the way there some really interesting features such as the pirate offering clean water to walkers and this little beach house tucked away on Milanesia Beach.

The walk out from Johanna beach took us past some very nice farm land with this great looking designer house tucked away just behind Johanna beach. We saw some large grey roos lazing in the sun.

We followed the road for some way before it turned into a private road called Milanesia Track that before leading us to the beach named after the track. Before reaching the track we found a old wooden boat with its stern stuck in the ground and a rather friendly pirate manikin offering free clean water to travellers. The house behind the pirate was a beautifully designed mud brick house that would have had spectacular views from the coast line. 

The track was a private 4wd drive track, at the end of the road we reached the beach and tucked around the corner on a nice bit grassy patch was an old stone beach house which looked something like you would find in the old whaling days. It was whitewashed and would have had pretty basic facilities being fully self sufficient.

We had a pleasant lunch on the beach and we did some exploring. Cam found a small seal lazing in the sun which then took off into the water after been disturbed. We had about a 4 to 5km hike ahead of use to reach our next camp site at Ryan's Den.

Th track was up and down with an amazing set of stairs which would have been about 7 stories high. With our backpacks it was certainly a challenge. Peter and Chis has a small black snake slither between them on the track. The variation in the vegetation was a highlight, walking through grassy areas, through to rainforest and then into Melaleuca forests. The blackberries seemed to be a bot out of control as well as other weeds in this area.

Our camp site was quite pleasant with a short climb to a great look out looking east and west for great sun sets and sun rises. As the sun set when we looked to the East we could see Cape Otways light house ruby light flashing.

We had Chilli tuna a'vec Cous Cous

 Once again we started walking into what was another beautiful day leaving camp by about 8.20 for a 14km walk to Devil's Kitchen. The first 5 or so kilometres were up and down so the going was slow, but we did get some great views back over to our camp site.

We reached a point where the track skirted a farm house. This farm house was built to take in the views of the coast and would have witnessed many great sunsets and storms as they brewed in Bass Strait. From the farm house the track took us through Eculayptus and Melaleuca forest. The tack followed the contour lines of the ridges nicely many for much easier going allowing us to make good time to the Gables that offered views of the coast and the water. The Gables been a structure build out off the cliff face.

Once down from the Gables we walked along the beach having lunch in the shade of a sandstone cliff. We walked along the beach passing the anchors of some early shipwrecks such as the Fiji. The only bits remaining of the shore we heavy anchors and other bits of heavy machinery. The rock pools were very interesting and the flat rock shelves that stretched out into the water we littered with rocks and boulders that were tougher than the sandstone as the sandstone seemed to be eroded around these large rocks.

We stopped off for a quick swim followed by a 1 or so km walk up the hill to our camp site. The camp site was nice. The look out from the camp site was fantastic that showed a great sunset over the water, the goldern orb of the sun slowing descending and disappearing below the horizon. It was a sight well worth witnessing.

JB and Chis decided to go for another swim after camp was setup to wash off the sweat from the water up the hill. That night for dinner we have Beef Bourguignon a freeze dried treat. We also had some cheese, left over dried figs and port as we watched the sun set and also in recognition that this was our last night on the track.

Once again we woke early and were off on our last day's walking of the Great Ocean Walk. We left camp at 8.30am stopping to take in the views of Devil's Kitchen before heading West to the Twelve Apostles. The previous day saw many campers arriving making the camp site quite full. We were glad we got there just after lunch time as it seemed many people did not have bookings.

We had a beautiful clear sunny day ahead of us and it was quite warm. We headed west catching many glimpses of the coast as we walked along. We came across a wallaby on the track that hopped off as we approached it. The walk into Princetown was nice. There had been a lot of rain the week or two before we started and the river that flowed into Princetown and out into Bass Strait was quite full, especially given that the mouth of the Gellibrand River was closed to Bass Strait. We had lunch at Princetown, the picnic ground was flooded, Jason showed his great balancing skills by walking the length of the railing with out falling in.

The final stretch from Princetown to the Twelve Apostles was OK, not brilliant but not bad. Rounding a bend, out of the corner of his eye, Chis spotted a Blue Tongue lizard basking in the sun, he have himself a huge fright as he thought it was another Tiger Snake. The track twisted around and we were treated with ever looming monoliths in the ocean being the Twelve Apostles. At one point we saw some surfers that had been jet ski towed to their location.

We stopped at one lookout to encounter a group of Venturer who were doing their VA Expedition. They also remembered Barny from one of the caving trips that they had been on. It is a small world indeed.

Arriving at the Twelve Apostles centre - it was a disappointment. It was a huge touristy place with large coaches driving in and out with people, mainly over seas visitors, who would walk down to check out the look out, visit the tourist centre and "tick" it off their bucket list. Cam booked a helicopter ride and had a very different perspective of the coast line as only an aerial view can provide.

Our taxi from the Timboon Taxi service arrived to fairy us back to Apollo Bay. What took us 8 days to walk took about 2 hours to drive.

All in all we had a really great walk and we would certainly recommend it to anyone wanting to take in some typical ruggard Victoria Coast line and sensational forest walks.