Awake from 4. Worried about All The Things. Including my chrysanthemum plant at home, whether we left some cheese opened in the fridge at home, that we aren't eating all the cheese we brought with us. Then I got hungry. And my spine was sore. Sigh.
Had breakfast and got ready and out the door just before 10:00.
Our first top was just north of Warrnambool at Wollaston Bridge, a cute little wooden bridge over the Merri River.
Drove round the back of Warrnambool after that. Even in regional Australia they're building huge houses on tiny blocks of land. You may as well just be living in a city suburb somewhere.
Next top was Tower Hill. This is an old volcano crater with a lake in the middle and an island (sort of) in the middle of that. Very cool. Parking was a little bit chaotic because all these people were milling around looking at koalas in a tree in the car park. And there was an emu right there. We just would have needed to see a kangaroo for the trifecta. Took some photos of the koala then I wandered off to go climb the peak while Stu sat around bird watching. The view from the top was pretty good but too many trees in the way for a 360. Stu made a friend (Mark) and they were comparing bird watching notes. Saw some more koalas before we headed off.
Drove around the northern rim of the crater which had some pretty good views.
By this time it was lunch time so we decided to go back into Port Fairy and have more fish and chips from the same shop. It was pretty good again. And again we saved a few chips for the end to get cool photos of seagulls in flight.
After lunch we went down to the battery in Port Fairy to have a look.
Then drove around a few blocks in town to look at all the nice old buildings.
Along the way to Portland we stopped at The Crags, like a petrified forest of roots. As with all of Victoria, the best places to see things have been blocked off, and now you can just see a little bit of it if you stretch.
We also stopped at the Codrington wind farm viewing point. They advertise it a few kilometres up the road, but when you turn into it it's all STOP, NO PUBLIC ACCESS. WTF!? Turns out there's a little platform off to the side with some info boards. But you don't get any better a view than you do from the road. Lame.
We also stopped at a little lookout north of Portland which had a nice view over town. The Seabourne Sojourn was docked in town (Portland is the only deep water port between Melbourne and Adelaide). I wonder what the shore excursions are out of Portland. Grampians maybe? Maybe Great Ocean Road but it would be a bit of a hike to get there and back in a day.
Went into Portland and had a look at the battery near the docks.
Then got some petrol at a BP west of town. This was a truck stop petrol station as well, but there's no actual shop. You have to prepay your petrol before filling up at these little booths. Somewhat confusing!!
We may have gotten ice creams from the road house next door.
Continued to head west, stopping at the South Australian border for a photo of the sign (which is completely different to the sign in 1994). Turned my camera and phone back half an hour then declared a half hour ban on photos so the order doesn't get mixed up when I rename them with the date and time. Fortunately it was still half an hour to the motel.
So yeah the motel. My expectations were pretty low. While the room has been refurbished and feels relatively new, it's not super clean. The carpet is quite stained in places. There were bits of *stuff* around the place like they hadn't vacuumed properly. The shower screen was covered in soap/lime scale. Even the face washers both had black gunk on them. Gross.
Headed out again to go get some photos while it was still sunny.
We stopped at the Apex lookout first.
Then several other lookouts.
Then up to Lions lookout over Valley Lake.
And then I climbed all the way up to Centenary Tower.
We were both pretty tired by this point so we dropped into the Scottish Restaurant to try the bearnaise angus burger. A burger by itself was $13.95!! Ridiculous!! And they were super slow. Took like thirteen minutes between ordering and getting our food. And they woulnd't shut off the damned food alarms. It was miserable.
Came back to the room and had dinner while watching Seinfeld, and went to bed.
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