Victoria, Australia, December 2020
Keeping with my theme of talking about the view from the toilets, Devils Kitchen has the best view from the toilet of all the campsites. The view is pretty much the same as the one from the lookout behind our campsite. Our campsite is clearly better though it doesn’t have any of the smells that a pit toilet does!
For the last morning of our walk, I didn’t pull the tent down around Phil’s ears.. he was actually up and going almost faster than I was – what is with that? But it was grubby, everything was a big damp and dirty. Trying to roll the tent I was ending up filthy. I was pretty happy to have Phil there to help me, well actually to take over as I stormed off to wash the 2cm of mud that had accumulated on my hands when I tried to brush it off during the rolling process.
By the time I got back, Phil had it all packed up and I shoved it all in my pack – one last time. We were then on our way through more rainforest. Because of my book reading we didn’t visit Wreck Beach, but I had a plan to drive down over the next few days and do this as a day trip – but in hind sight, always act on the day when you have the opportunity, after finishing our trip, we stayed at Princetown for 3 nights, and each day (other than the day of arrival and the morning following), we had torrential downpours and in the end opted to ‘start’ a 2,000 piece puzzle that my mum had brought down which was 50% blue sky! By the end of the weekend we managed to finish most of the puzzle (but none of the sky!).
On this day you are greeted to many views of the Twelve Apostles, and the one below was our first. It is amazing to think that it is so close, yet still so far away.
Today all of the hiking groups had taken off at the similar times and so we had many encounters on the cliffs. It is amazing how close you feel to people that you didn’t know a week ago and then you are all chatting like old friends at every turn of the path.
The track is easy and while it undulates, the going is pretty easy on this day as you slowly wind your way off the cliffs and back into the forest with glimpses starting to come through of the Gellibrand River. For us, this was signalling the end of our hike for the day. For everyone else, this would be just over half way on their journeys.
The track turns into a sandy track and the vegetation becomes more and more sparse as we started to descend to the river. I also go out my phone which allowed me to take more photos, including of the plants that were around us.
The walking didn’t take too long and by 10am we had walked through the sandy scrub near the river and along the old coach road past the Princetown Recreation Reserve and were crossing the Gellibrand River.
At this point we bid farewell to all the other hikers that were continuing to the Twelve Apostles and we took a right turn onto the Boardwalk that would lead to Princetown. We hoped this would lead to a thriving general store with coffee and maybe a hot cooked breakfast, and a pub serving fatty pub fare at lunch time.
We were however disappointed, while both camp sites in town were operational, the general store was closed, as was the pub. There was nothing to be done but to boil the billy one last time and make a cup of tea for Phil with the last tea bag and a soup for me with the last cup a soup. We got the billy going, but the owner of the camp site felt for us and brought us a kettle of freshly boiled water. So we chilled out on the street curb until the time came around for us to check into the Otway Coastal Villa’s across the Great Ocean Road from the town. Thankfully we also has our friend bringing us a ‘care pack’ with beer, sausages, eggs etc, so we were not going to starve.
But first… a shower!
9.1km – 2.5hrs
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