Photojournalist David Savage travels Australia on the OZ Experience…
On The Bus…
Our journey from Hall’s Gap continued through a final stretch of the Grampians, taking us closer and closer to the coast. Before reaching our first glimpse of the ‘Big Blue’, we drove into and through a huge extinct volcanic crater known as Tower Hill. Tom, our driver explained that the whole area was created when balsamic magma touched the subterranean water table causing a huge explosion. Millions of years later the result was a crater filled with fertile land.
Then came the Europeans who hunted to extinction all of the koalas, chopped the vegetation down and brought in sheep. More recently, realising the mistake, Tower Hill has been made into a National Park. The sheep are gone, koalas have been reintroduced from New South Wales and from a painting, more than 250,000 trees and plants have been planted to attempt to restore the crater to its former glory. The project is achieving results too. In less than five minutes after entering the crater we spotted our first wild koala, doing what koalas seem to do best, snooze.
From the Crater we reached the south coast of Australia and Logan’s Bay, a great spot for lunch. This was our first look at The Great Ocean Road, a 300km stretch of coastline famous for sandstone outcrops and whale watching. After lunch we travelled on in an easterly direction stopping here and there to view the coastline. Coming around one corner on the road we caught a glimpse of a whale breach the surface way out to sea and soon after we spotted dolphins.
We called in at Port Campbell National Park to take photographs of Australia’s most photographed tourist attraction, The Twelve Apostles. The fine sand coloured rock formations stand proudly out to sea. The best time to photograph them has to be at sunrise.
Cape Otway
Accommodation for the night was at Bimbi Park, (03 5237 9246), in Cape Otway. This is again koala country so heads up. Seeing as the girls had cooked the previous night, I decided that I’d try my world famous Chilli Con Carne out, helped in the kitchen by a few of the other guys in the group. After removing a few slugs off the cutlery we were off, pots and pans strewn all over the place and chilli powder being thrown into anything that could be stirred. Believe it or not, it came out quite well.
After dinner most of the group disappeared back to the bus to be taken to Maits Rainforest nearby for Glow Worm spotting. From what I heard, that little expedition turned into the ‘Conga’ through the rainforest on the way back. I took the opportunity to shower and freshen up. On the way back to the dorm I spotted a koala crossing the path in front of me and climb a tree. I found it again half way up the tree on the other side to the path. I watched it, and it watched me.
This continued for some time and Katy Claxton, another OZ bus Passenger, joined me. I left to make a phone call and when I returned Katy had lost the koala. We looked up and around a few trees for a while with a small torch. Then we heard a strange sound. A kind of ‘BURRRRRRRR’ sound, something like bad indigestion that continued at a monotonous pitch for five to ten minutes. We never quite saw what it was making the noise but we figured it was the koala, laughing it’s head off as we tried to seek it out.
