Feb 18

After a good night's sleep, breakfast, and a talk with our hostess at the B&B about sights to see, we set out again. First stop was a fern gully - a lovely walk through a gully filled with ferns of all kinds, right up to 200 year old tree ferns! Also large Myrtle Beech trees and other large trees that provided shade for the ferns. The walk was a little steep at times, but I made it with a little bit of help.

Next stop was another lighthouse, this one the oldest one in the area. We toured the out buildings, and then while the others climbed the lighthouse and checked out an old WWII radar bunker, I had a nice cup of tea. I learned something new - this was the location of the first US WWII casualty, when a ship hit a German mine just offshore six months before Pearl Harbor.

On the way back to the road, we saw what had to be the highlight of the day. Lots of Eucalyptus trees lined this road, and our hostess and told us to look out for koalas in these trees. Sure enough, we found some! And even at a spot with a good place to pull over. The closest one was as fascinated with us as we were with her(? or a small male, the other two were huge!) Everything my shutter clicked, she would turn and stare at me. Then, when a little while went by with no more clicks she would go back to scratching, but if the shutter clicked again, she would stare again. It was so hard to go on, but we still had a full day ahead of us.

Next stop was a treetop walk. Quite a engineering feat, the walk was a steel catwalk anchored by 15 towers. It started, at the edge of the gully, at 15 meters high, the highest point was 33 meters. The forest looks quite different from the treetops! We also got lunch here, Mary had bangers and mash. She is really getting adventurous in her eating.

Another fern gully, I stayed in the car while Bill and the kids went to explore. They were back fairly quickly, said the trail had very steep steps and looked just like the early gully. Back to the coast road, and to the Twelve Apostles area. Hmmm - haven't we been here before? Of course, everything looked different in the mid-day light. The other big change was the number of people. The area had been pretty deserted at sunset the night before, but now was a challenge just to get to the good viewing spots. We did a quick walk to check out the lighting, and moved on. By now, Mike was pretty comfortable driving on the left. He even mastered the art of overtaking on the few stretches of road where it was allowed.

Loch Ard Gorge was an area where the ocean has carved out a gorge in the sandstone cliffs. Less crowded here, we spent a fair amount of time walking the trails and seeing not only the gorge (where the kids went down the steps to the beach) but also a stone arch and a blowhole. The area is name after a ship that was sunk in the late 1800s. The ship's apprentice survived by clinging to the wreckage overnight, and in the morning the tide started to carry him back in. He heard cries, and found a young woman clinging to a spar. He swam over to her, and then swam into the gorge. They spent the night in a cave, and in the morning he climbed out of the gorge and found some local farmers who rescued her. The local, unofficial tale, is that they spent the night in two separate caves, one on either side of the gorge, because they were such pious young people.

Another stop or two along the way, at the Bay of Martyrs and the Bay of Islands (lots more of the stone stacks, and beautiful lighting on the sandstone cliffs) and it was time to head for our B&B. We spent the night in a B&B that was an old flour mill. Bill and I had the top floor all to ourselves, and I'm writing this up on our little deck looking over the river.

In the end, we spent 11 hours to drive about 250km. A full and very enjoyable day.