Day 18 – Twelve Apostles Marine National Park – Part 2

We’ve worked out with the later tides we don’t need to be up at stupid o’clock, just early, so time for breaky and we’re on the road before 9. Past the 12 Apostles and this time we drive to the currently empty Gibson Steps carpark. 

It’s a super sunny morning, but the winds seem stronger,  rugged up as much as we can, we set off.   While they start off OK, the steps seem to get steeper and narrower as we reach the beach.   The kids count 84 steps to the bottom.  Not nearly as bad as I feared.  While it’s clear the tide has not come as far as the steps, the path ahead is smooth sand with no footprints today.  We make out way though the soft sand to the first headland, this is pretty easy.   Down on the beach, while cold there is not the wind so it better than expected.  Continuing along the beach we reach a really tight spot and just as we approach it, the water comes in a bit further and faster than expected and nearly catches Caitlin off guard.  Past the second headland and we standing in front of two of the Apostles.   Impressive, but as Justine says, maybe not quite as awe inspiring as you’d expect it to be (that could be the cold!).   What is kinda special is that our footprints are the only ones on the beach now.  No one has been here before (on this tide). 

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The kids play between these huge limestone rocks that have fallen.  We take heaps of photos, but we figure we should start to return before the incoming tide makes the narrows a wet feet experience.   In the end it is OK, and while I consider walking to the eastern end of the beach, the sand is that soft and so hard to walk in we figure that a bit too much.  We stop for a while at a green patch on the cliff where this water is coming out of the rock face, a stream is forming in the sand and the kids have a ball (and I have to say an education) seeing the water interact with the sand.  Finally its time to leave.  Those 84 steps seem harder on the way out than they did coming down.  

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We drive the K back to the 12 Apostles carpark.  Justine and I have talked about doing the Helicopter tour, it will be close to $1k, If everything was perfect we’d probably do it.  It’s one of those things.  It’s so much money,   I thought about it while on the glaciers in NZ, then there was the Horizontal falls in Broome.  But in the end today it is the wind, while down on the beach was OK, the wind up here on the plateau is pretty fresh and gusty, so we  figure we’ll save our money.   

We walk out and take another look at the 12 Apostles.  From the lookout, on the beach below, we see these funny marking in the sand, partially erased by the incoming waves.  On closer inspection we figure these have to be penguin tracks or similar.   There are heaps of them where there would be lots of nesting site, and only some where the sites would be fewer. 

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It’s clear that the seas are so much more calmer than they where yesterday.  So much so that while I’d really wanted to go back down to the beach at Loch Ard Gorge,  I feel it will be an anti-climax from yesterday’s visit so we give it a miss.  Yesterday was pretty perfect so I don’t want to be disappointed today.

We get back to the van and after yesterday’s effort I’ve promised the kids pancakes for lunch. I’ve got to say this new flat plate on the weber is one of the best purchases ever.  This beats doing them one at a time in the small frypan.

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From here is it’s a bit of an odd day, we did so much yesterday, maybe too much, that we need to spend today catching up.   You think when you travel it’s just 24hours a day of holiday, but clothes need to be washed, shopping needs doing and today seeing there is a camp kitchen in the van park we take the opportunity to make a batch of spag bol sauce.

Mid-afternoon we take a walk across the pedestrian bridge right next to the van park, part of a larger coast walk.  At the end of the bridge, the track leads up a series of staircases to the top of the cliff.  Justine and I have had our fill of stairs today, but oddly the kids want to walk to the top, “well knock yourselves out”.  176 Steps they count as they return to the bottom.

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We walk along the creek, towards the beach that makes up Port Campbell.  Along the beach and then out to the jetty.  While the seas are heaps calmer today the waves are still smashing the rocks here.  I wish I’d come down yesterday.

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I mentioned the other day that the park is having all this civil works done, I thought it was for drainage or sewage in the park.  While using the camp kitchen we had a good view of the work and it seemed pretty industrial for a van park.  I spoke to the guys as they knocked off and they explained it was nothing to do with the park, but an emergency overflow buffer tank for the local sewerage pumping station.  That makes more sense.

A few more vans arrive in today,  oddly when we checked in they said the place was going to be packed in the coming days, but of the 40 or 50 available site, there would be lucky to be 8 vans here today.