The Great Ocean Walk - Blanket Bay to Cape Otway Light House - Day 3

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.