So despite thinking we were on the ocean road yesterday it turns out we were actually on the Southern Ocean Drive and we didn’t joint the Ocean road until we got to Allensford but before that about 20 minutes outside of Port Fairy is the Flagstaff Hill Maritime Village which is a living museum built around a fishing village you start at the top of the hill then walk down towards the harbour area, it is really well laid out and the buildings cover everything that would be in a village even a dress maker, I hadn’t realised that for preferred customer they would make a doll and a replica of the dress that they were going to make and give this to the customer so they can see what they are going to get and make any changes they want then the actual dress will be made. Apparently the dolls were then given to the customer who either kept it as a memento or gave it to their daughters to play with. We walked all the way round the village and up to the light house which they had moved to this location so that ships could use the upper and lower lighthouses as navigational marks. This coast was lethal before modern navigational aids were invented as captains trying to ‘thread the eye of the needle’ between King Island, Tasmania and the mainland, there have been over 600 shipwrecks along the Victoria coast. We spent a couple of hours at the museum but managed to go round all of it the continued our journey towards the great ocean road. Our next stop was Hopkin Falls which are one of the first waterfalls we have seen that actually had water flowing over the top. This is a 90 metre wide waterfall which although isn’t very tall is quite impressive all the same, it was formed by a lava flow and you can still just about make out the volcanic lava on the bottom of the river. Once we had looked at this we actually joined the Great Ocean Road and started looking at the rock formations along the coast created because the cliffs are sandstone. We stopped at Childers and Sandy Cove which gave impressive views of of the sandstone rocks. After this our next stop was Bay of Islands which is a series of rock formations that are still eroding, apparently the coast is eroding at 2cm per year although it seems to collapse in large chunks. We stopped at another couple of lookouts which had been recommended by the printer at the Flagstaff museum, then called in to the Loch Ard cove which is actually two areas, one large cove which shows how protected the coves are and how exposed it is on the seaward side. We finally reached the hotel about 5pm and just as we checked in the heavens opened which is really lucky as the forecast had said that it would probably rain for most of the day so the fact we managed to miss it today was a great benefit. We have a great room with a view over the ocean but unfortunately the weather means that it isn’t great to sit outside as it is really windy as well as wet so hopefully one of the days we are here it will be nice an sunny!
