Port Fairy - Friday 21st August
After a wild and windy night, we awoke to a dark and grey morning. Knowing we're in civilisation, we decided to go out for breakfast! So 150m from the front gate of the caravan park, the local surf life saving club has a cafe - with an awesome view. And a pretty good breakky! After this, we went for a bit of a drive and headed out to Griffiths Island, which houses the local lighthouse and muttonbird colony. We set out to walk to the muttonbird colony but the rain did more then threaten so we had to retreat to the dry of the car. Here's a couple of things we saw on the way:
We drove to the marina but most of the boats were out and it was still raining, so we headed out of town towards Warrnambool. Our first stop was Tower Hill, which is the old volcanic crater. Driving into the crater, one can see the horizontal basaltic rock that now forms the crater wall. As we got closer to the bottom, we almost drove into the lakes that now fill the crater base. There's a wildlife reserve there now so we saw plenty of emus (just in case we hadn't seen enough of them this trip!) and other native animals. Driving out again, we made the steep climb up the crater walls and just around the rim, stopped at this lookout to do a panoramic photo of the whole crater.
After driving all around the rim, we decided to head into Warrnambool. We picked up some lunch and tried to head to the beach to eat but I took a wrong turn and we ended up who knows where! After lunch, we went back and I saw where I had gone wrong so we then drove out to the breakwater. On the way, we stopped at this island, because I was intrigued to see the stairs and boardwalk on the island. As I got out to investigate, two Mareemas were being loaded into the back of a ute. I didn't think anything of it until I read the signs facing the island - ten years ago the local penguin population was declining so much due to foxes and dogs and other predators that there were only 10 penguins left. A local sheep farmer suggested the use of Mareema dogs so now two sisters spend 5 days a week on the island, protecting the penguins. In 8 years, the penguin population has increased to 180. What a great story!
We completed our tour of Warrnambool and then headed back to Port Fairy, where the small town feel is much more relaxing and appealing. We stopped for fuel and at the supermarket and headed back to the van. For our last official dinner in the van, I prepared corned beef because it needed a few hours to cook. I also did some washing and a few other housekeeping tasks, and even managed to fit in some reading, as did Greg.
We really enjoyed our corned beef dinner, and given the last bottle of wine is on the way down, it's a good thing we are heading home......
posted by Tracey @ 8:47 pm
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