We headed off early today – an alarm at 7am (well early for us on holiday!) and on the road around 7.30am. We headed first across to Port Fairy for a quick look round. We knew that it would be busy as today is the start of the long weekend and the Port Fairy Folk Festival and, sure enough, even at 8.45am it was heaving with people having breakfast at trendy cafes. The market stalls were all setting up and there was even one busker with an electric guitar looking optimistically for an audience. Wisely, he decided to wait once he had tuned up.
Port Fairy was traditionally called Belfast. I would definitely not recommend the reverse – suggesting to the people of Belfast that their town is renamed Port Fairy! This name apparently stemmed from 1843 when James Atkinson, a Sydney solicitor, bought land in the town. He drained the swamps and then subdivided and leased the land. It was also him who built the harbour on the Moyne River which is now iconic of Port Fairy. He named the town ‘Belfast’ after his Northern Irish hometown. The Port Fairy name had come about previously from whalers and sealers who named the bay in 1828 after their boat – the Fairy. The post office originally opened under the name Port Fairy in 1843, but then was renamed Belfast post office in 1854, before reverting to the name Port Fairy in 1887 when the name was officially changed by Act of Parliament. It hasn’t changed since!
From there we headed to Warrnambool. Given the worst heatwave in many years in Victoria, we had decided that the best thing to do would be to visit some hot springs – if it’s going to be hot you might as well go for it in style! We had booked a session for 10am and got there shortly before, a little uncertain of what to expect. It was all very ‘health spa and wellness’ oriented, but despite that, it was actually very enjoyable. It was basically a series of hot baths in a landscaped area – some formed into caves and some just more open – but all very relaxing despite the heat.
We finished there about midday and then started along what was more recognisably the Great Ocean Road, not least because we started seeing some ocean. We did various stops at the Bay of Islands and London Bridge (well we had to really!) and stood in awe of the wonderful coastal scenery resplendent in the sun. Unlike the scenery though we were melting in the sun with temperatures reaching around 39 degrees, so some of the stops were fairly quick to avoid becoming literally rooted to the spot as the tarmac melted …..
We then ended up with a late lunch at Port Campbell. Once again we made a sensible decision, given the heat – we went for soup, though it was a delicious pumpkin and coconut spicy soup. After lunch we walked slowly (!) to the tourist office at Port Campbell who were really helpful and set us up for the next stage of the Ocean Road, but that will wait for another couple of days as we are now heading inland.
Because of the lack of campsites available on the Great Ocean Road we hunted around further inland and found one called Lakes and Craters caravan park near Camperdown, so we headed there, opened the van as wide as possible and flaked out ……