Port;amd, Port fairy and onto the Great Ocean Road.

 I have booked into quite budget motels on my trip - nothing over $140 - and had nothing but good experiences. Clean, comfortable and safe even though some were very vintage: think pink or yellow basins, tiles etc. Last night was the exception! Clean and fairly comfortable but brown! With a noisy fridge and grumpy heating! I woke early and checked out.

I am sure Portland is a lovely city and tourists enjoy it but I didn't appreciate it. I had breakfast out -Eggs Benny - first time I haven't had my own porridge and headed for Port Fairy.

It has changed in the years since I was last there but is still a really wonderful example of a well preserved historical port. Many of the buildings are of bluestone (basalt I think) which is quarried close by. Some of the cottages have bluestone facades and brick or weatherboard making up the rest of the building - cost saving in the 1800s. Others are weatherboard, often with elaborate ironwork or barge boards. Very elegant and stylish.

I walked down to the wharf area which is sheltered from the ocean by a long breakwater. Commercial fishing has been a long tradition here although the number of boats is very reduced, One boat which serves as the shop as well as the fishing vessel had just tied up and was being unloaded - with crayfish! Ten minutes out of the ocean! Can't get any fresher!

 

 

The fisherman said he sells only to the local market - restaurants and seafood outlets in nearby towns. "Don't like the Chinese! Won't sell to them", he informed me. He has a quota of 300 per year! I didn't ask the cost per crayfish but other fish he was selling seemed well priced.

 

There were a couple of big trawlers tied up but most of the boats were pleasure craft or sailing boats. A few were offering trips along the coast or up the river. 

Just by chance after leaving the wharf area I noticed a sign to Griffiths Island and found a great little walk to the lighthouse and a Shearwater Sanctsuary.  Griffiths Island is connected by a causeway and the walking track goes to a lighthouse (it is the ship wreck coast) before looping back to the start - a distance of 3k. 

 

The Shearwaters (Mutton Birds) return each year to Griffiths Island in September with the breeding birds (between 4 - 8 years of age) going to the same burrow they occupied the year before. They generally remain in the same partnership for their breeding life. They breed in November and the female lays one white oval egg which hatches in mid-January. Both parents share the incubation duties and share feeding once the chick hatches. The go to sea and return in the evening feeding the chick by regurgitating food from their stomach. The adults leave in mid-April leaving the young one behind. Hunger soon convinces it to move and it sets off to sea on it's own!

 

Many volunteers assist in research and care of the colony.

The lighthouse on the point was built in 1859, which seems to have been a good year for lighthouse building: lighthouses were build at Port Albert, Cape Schank, Warrnambool and Portland as well as Port Fairy. 

 Did I mention it was blowing a gale today? The wind was incredibly strong but fortunately it doesn't blow like this every day according to the coffee shop staff.

My stop in Warrnambool was nostalgic! My mother was born here in 1910 and lived here until she married and left with my father. I visited here when I was about 7 and again later as an adult so I wanted to retrace a little of what I remembered. 

Warnambool has developed into a huge town and there wasn't a lot that I recalled. My grandfather's house had long gone, my uncles dairy farm seemed to be part of the golf course and the sandy dunes of Thunder Point where my cousins and I played, have been tamed with paved lookouts. The little weatherboard  church I attended has disappeared too.

 

 The view from Thunder Point.

Warrnambool is obviously a thriving holiday destination now and vying for this year's best tourist town. I probably will have no occasion to visit again - time moves on and things change. I know my mother always thought of it as home because her family lived here but almost all of them are gone now.

Fletcher Jones was a huge feature of Warnambool with a large factory manufacturing really quality clothing - their motto was the garment would last forever. And I think they did - my kilt certainly never wore out. There were Fletcher Jones shops all around Australia - even one in Canberra on the corner in London Circuit.

The factory was famous not just for the quality of their garments but for the beautiful gardens which surrounded it. My mother said that my grandfather had helped to establish these and although not as beautiful as they once were they are still laid out and cared for. 

 

The factory now houses an antique market - there are so many stalls selling everything from clothes to china, records to furniture and anything you might want - vintage, retro, antique, modern! A vintage car museum occupies part of the building which in it's heyday took up the whole block.

When Fletcher Jones himself died, his son continued on but apparently he made some errors of judgement and eventually the business closed - the end of an era.  

From Warrnambool I travelled on through dairy country to the start of the Great Ocean Road. I am here in Port Campbell at the very comfortable and stylish Portside Motel. I went to the local pub and had Bangers and Mash sitting at a communal table with a young Scot and older Souh African who are here working on the gas pipeline. Both interesting guys, who have worked around the world on various projects and both of whom were keen hikers, so we had a really varied and interesting conversation ranging over many topics.

 

Martyr's Bay - beginning the Great Ocean Road.

 

PS - Victorian roads are quite awful! They are patched, sunken and very rough, hardly any passing lanes and not at all smooth to drive on. Fill and repair seems to be the go because there are roadwork signs everywhere but not actually appearing to do anything! 

Maybe I was spoiled by the wonderful South Australian roads!