Helen and Randall on the road

Early start today to catch the sunrise over the Twelve Apostles – although the sun doesn’t actually rise over the sea, the light catching the landscape and the limestone cliffs and stacks is quite lovely:

Despite dire warnings (the – probably apocryphal – story is that last time one of the limestone arches collapsed leaving two stacks some tourists were marrooned on the far stack and had to be helicoptered off) we bunked through some safety netting to get to the headland for the best view:

After a while we headed back to pack up our cabin…:

…and head off down the road for breakfast in Warrnambool where we had been told there was a laundrette, stopping on the way to check out one of the remaining arches:

Warrnambool seemed like a bit of a one horse town but after getting very friendly directions we found the laundrette which was handily near a really lovely coffee shop so we had a great brunch reading the newspapers at the huge wooden table while waiting for our laundry:

as well as picking up camping supplies from the Aldi next door.

The drive from Warrnambool to Halls Gap in the Grampians where we were meeting Jason and Natasha was a bit fraught…we planned to fill up on petrol in Warrnambool but forgot. Thinking there would be a petrol station in every town on the way we didn’t really worry about it. This was a mistake. After the third small town with no petrol station and having driven the last 30km with the fuel light on we asked in the General Store in Caramut only to be told that the nearest one was 25km away. Luckily we coasted in on fumes to this rather sweet self-service in Penshurst:

After which it was another hour’s drive through this kind of territory:

before meeting Natasha and Jason in Halls Gap, from where we drove up a dirt and gravel track to the start of the Hollow Mountain hike, which was *very* steep and involved some slightly hairy bouldering at altitude but was utterly spectacular:

After charging down again we had time for the short walk to an Aborigine cave painting site nearby with children’s handprints. The overall impression was that although the local Aborigines maintain the site, no-one really knows what the significance of it is because the oral traditions were lost so long ago.

The drive back on the dirt road was made rather exciting by the sudden appearance of an emu which shot into the road in front of the car to our shock and my delight (I wasn’t entirely convinced that they were actually real animals)…fortunately we didn’t hit it as it was huge and I’m not sure who would have come off worse…

Back at the campsite (thanks for pitching our tent Jason!) we saw some kangaroos hopping around in the headlights of a car while we were building the fire (in a steel drum and concrete fireplace) for campfire dinner that was made especially exciting by the visitation from a huntsman spider.

I first saw the spider as a shadow from the far side of the plastic bag, with the torch shining from behind it, so was convinced that it was at least the size of a dinner place. Fortunately this was not the case…