The Great Ocean Road part 2

We spent two nights in a good motel in Apollo Bay which seemed to be the half way point geologically speaking of the GOR. The first photo was taken from the top of the lighthouse at Cape Otway and Phileas bravely climbed out onto the balcony despite feeling very wobbly! The cliffs here are less marked and once past Apollo Bay the trees come right down to the sea. We took a wonderful walk at Mait's Rest where Fogg snapped these wonderful tree ferns. The rainforest here is full of them and massive myrtle beech trees. The whole place seemed primordial and we expected a dinosaur to appear from around every corner!! The road leading to the
lighthouse was lined with these wonderful eucalyptus trees (gums). The penultimate photo shows the difference in the coastline as we headed towards Torquay, there were sandy beaches and plenty of places where it was possible to walk down onto the sand. The final photo shows a memorial recently erected to the 3,000 'diggers' (ex-servicemen) who were employed on their return from WW1 to build the GOR. They only had hand tools and it took about 12 years to completion. This really was an example of Occupational Therapy as this was not slave labour and the men had good living conditions and the continued camaradarie of their
fellow soldiers. I found the monument very poignant and the understanding that the road itself was the memorial.
Enough from me, over to Fogg. Best wishes, Phileas.
Hi from Fogg.As a footnote to this I found it very interesting to discover that in percentage terms the Australians lost 64% of their men in the First World War which was more than any other nation involved.
We also dicovered on this beach some of the wreck of the Barque W.B. Godfrey travelling from San Francisco to Melbourne in 1891. Another moving moment which bought to mind the

hardship people endured at that time. Happily in this case there was no loss of life. The GOR is a wonderful journey and probably more fun than the journey of the Mars probe that we have just been reading about in Melbourne where we currently are in a fab hotel in the centre of the city.

So our journey continues very well. We will be travelling to Tasmania in a couple of days when we send another blog which will be the last from the Southern hemisphere!

This is Fogg wishing you all well