Edna (our new camping wagon) required some last-minute attention before we could hit the road. The mechanic to whom we took her spotted a cracked inlet manifold and dodgy thermostat, which were duly replaced. Then we bade our fond farewells to Melbourne and the Bowers clan and jumped on the Princes Freeway heading southwest. The road met the coast at Torquay, where it became The Great Ocean Road. At the outset, the scenery was rugged yet serene.
Our first night in the new accommodation was spent in the small seaside town of Apollo Bay. It's the first town along the coast that is sufficiently far from Melbourne so as to be spared the commercialisation that comes with weekend mass-tourism. Indeed, an evening stroll revealed the beach to be nearly deserted.
As we continued along the Great Ocean Road, the serene seascape gave way to furious waves savagely pounding at a scarred shore. At around Princetown, we came upon The Apostles – the much-photographed megaliths that stand stubbornly in the surf, receiving a relentless beating for their troubles. As the name suggests, there were once twelve Apostles. Perhaps unsurprisingly, given their unending punishment, there now stand only six.
But don't weep for the loss of the Apostles. As is the nature of such things, new ones are being born all the time. For instance, this formation known as “London Bridge” was until recently joined to the land by a second arch. That arch fell in 1990, leaving two alarmed tourists to be rescued by helicopter from the newly formed island.
Not all of the sea's erosive handywork is obvious from the shore. Around 100 metres inland from London Bridge is this huge blowhole. It was formed by a roof-collapse in a section of a tunnel that has been carved out by the waves. We were told the tunnel stretches 200 metres inland from the sea, with this being the only open section.
Along the way we took a brief sojourn in Warrnambool to repair a heater pipe elbow that was leaking coolant.
Further west, our passage through Portland coincided with a stock-car and sprint-car race meeting. The racing happens on a well-watered speedway track, so that we (and Edna) received a decent caking of mud as the cars sped around the arena. The racing was surprisingly competitive and professional, considering we out in the sticks.
The next day we took a drive out to Cape Bridgewater. Among the standard jumble of ruggedly beautiful coves and headlands that we had by now come to expect, was a rock formation that the guidebook described as a “petrified forest”. Puzzlingly though, the formation consisted of clusters rough, hollow, vertical tubes, which little resembled trees. In fact, these rather unprepossessing structures turned out to be a bizarre phenomenon known as “solution pipes”. An info panel informed us that a pipe is formed when an acidic solution puddles at the base of a plant growing in limestone sand. The acid then seeps downwards, dissolving minerals as it goes. This mineral solution then cements the sand to form a hard trunk-shaped pipe under the ground, which becomes exposed when the surrounding sand is eroded away.
As we continued along the Prince's Highway, we stopped to ponder the improbable blueness of aptly named Blue Lake, located in a volcanic crater in the town of Mount Gambier.
At Canunda National Park, we encountered our first taste of Australia's truly wild coastline. Though lacking conventional attractiveness, we came to appreciate that the scrubby, arid shore, with its giant (almost impenetrable) sand dunes and pungent salt lakes has a magic all of its own.
Passing through Kingston Southeast, we just had to stop for a photo with Larry the Lobster.
After blasting north past Adelaide (in case you hadn't noticed, we're not really "doing" the cities on this trip), we found ourselves in the Southern Flinders Ranges. Away from the coast, the weather is pretty bloody hot, to be frank - well into the 30s celsius. So we took a short walk through narrow Alligator Gorge, before heading back to the coolth of the coast.
At Port Augusta, we took a pleasant stroll through the recently opened Arid Lands Botanical Garden. To be honest, to our untrained eyes the garden resembled much of the surrounding countryside. Funded by major polluters and land-users in the area (like mining companies), the garden has a strong conservation mission. The collection is attempting to preserve the exquisitely adapted scrubland plants from all over Australia that introduced species and development are rapidly wiping out.
At Port Augusta our route turned south into the Eyre Peninsula. We stayed a blustery night at the appealing seaside town of Arno Bay. 
In the morning we battled high winds to take a stroll on the boadwalk through the nearby Mangrove forest. Mangroves grow along the brackish water where streams meet the sea. They are able to tolerate daily tidal immersion by projecting pneumatophores (the twig-like structures in the photo) up from the roots to "breathe" above the water's surface. They cope with the high salinity of their situation by exuding salt from special glands in their leaves (we couldn't resist a lick!). Often considered as wasteground good only to be cleared for industrial plants or shrimp farms, mangrove forests actually perform important ecological functions such as sheltering juvenile fish and stablising coastal land. Thus, widespread destruction of mangroves (particularly in Southeast Asia) has contributed to collapsing fish stocks and coastal erosion. Some scientists even suggest that the destruction wrought by the 2004 tsunami would have been significantly less had mangrove forests not been cleared from vast stretches of the affected Asian shorelines.
Of course, a week in the wilds of Australia would not be complete without spotting some wee beasties. As well as emus, wallabies and kangaroos, we spotted a number of these bobtail lizards in Coorong National Park, south of Adelaide.
We also spotted some cuddly-looking koalas along the Great Ocean Road, though they apparently didn't want to come down for a hug (I apologise for the crappy nature photograpy, we only have 2x digital zoom!).
Our next leg will take us past many a familiar-sounding town (Donington, Sleaford Bay, Louth Bay, Boston...) to Port Lincoln.
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