The Sow and Piglets

We've spent the past five days camped in the town of Colac, on the land of the Gulidjan and Gadubanud peoples. Colac was our base to explore the Great Ocean Road and the Western Volcanic Plains.

The Great Ocean Road, is one of those iconic natural wonders that every Australian should see at least once. Right up there with Uluru, the Great Barrier Reef, and the Big Prawn. Well, maybe the Big Prawn's down the list just a little. As it happens, the Great Ocean Road, or specifically the section between Princetown and Port Campbell where the Twelve Apostles stand, is the country's third most popular tourist attraction. And it's truly breathtaking.

The Twelve Apostles is a series of limestone stacks standing in the Southern Ocean and formed over millions of years through erosion and really horrible weather. George Bass was the first European to stumble across the rock formations while sailing along the Victorian coast in January 1798.

As we know, those early explorers claimed naming rights for any new thing they found. I reckon George Bass was sadly lacking inspiration by that stage, or maybe he'd had one too many snifters, because he came up the dubious and completely underwhelming name of "The Sow and Piglets". The Sow being Mutton Bird Island, and the Piglets, being the limestone stacks following it.

It wasn't until the 1960s, soon after marketing was invented, that someone in the Victorian tourism industry - let's call him "Scotty-from-Marketing" - gave the Sow and Piglets the new, much grander name of the "Twelve Apostles". Even though there were only nine of them. But, as Scotty-from-Marketing might say: never let the facts get in the way of a good story. The name change was intended to make the area a more appealing to tourists. It worked.

At 9.18 am on 3 July 2008, one of the Apostles (posthumously named "Judas", possibly by Scotty-from-Marketing) shuddered a bit, fractured and then imploded before sliding into the ocean. The nine Twelve Apostles were now eight. Then on 25 September 2009, another of the stacks crumpled in a less spectacular fashion, leaving just seven Twelve Apostles. Or piglets.

This stretch of coast isn't called the "Shipwreck Coast" for nothing. in 1878 the Scottish Loch Ard iron-hulled clipper ran aground and crashed into Mutton Bird Island (the Sow) while nearing the end of her voyage from Gravesend, in Kent, to Melbourne. The clipper sank and all but two of the 54 passengers and crew were lost. Two teenagers,Tom Pearce and Eva Carmichael, managed to drag themselves to the safety of the beach inside a cave which is now known as Loch Ard Gorge. There's a cemetery at the top of the cliff near Loch Ard Gorge, where Tom and Eva's fellow passengers and crew are buried.

A large crack was recently found in the cliff near the Loch Ard Gorge viewing platform so unfortunately the platform's been closed. Nobody wants to lose a tourist (or a Labrador!) off the cliff, so fair enough.

We very much enjoyed our trip along the Great Ocean Road, which we did in two sections. We were delighted to spot a koala - always such a treat to see them in the wild. To be fair, we wouldn't have spotted this one if it wasn't for the gaggle of international tourists huddled under a tree with their necks craned and phones pointed skyward. Not to be left out, I hitched the Labs to a nearby fence and joined my fellow tourists to try and get a decent photo. You can judge for yourselves how successfully I managed this. Another highlight of the week was spending a day with our friends Georgina and Kevin, who we met in Townsville last year. Great company.

There's an abundance of photos below. It was hard to choose, and we wanted to include a couple of the volcanic plains around Colac and Camperdown, as well as the aforementioned koala.