Tower Hill Reserve

I've already mentioned the rain on Friday. This put a dampener on the day and I felt that the Great Ocean Road trip had gone downhill after Apollo Bay.

I had enquired about the sea-kayaking at Apollo Bay, but there was no trip scheduled that day as no-one else had booked. In view of hope the weather turned out it was just as well.

As I've already written, I turned off the road at the sign to the Otway Cape Lightstation. After stopping to see the koalas (not a lot of action there as they were asleep, but I got some more photos - see example below) I carried on to the Lightstation. This is the oldest Lightstation on mainland Australia, but was taken out of service in the 1990s and replaced by a solar-powered light. It marks the entrance to the Bass Strait, which was notorious for shipwrecks.

Sleeping koala on Cape Otway.

A whole section of the coast along here - I think the bit from Warrnambool west to Port Fairy, but I may be wrong, it may start at Cape Otway - is known as the Shipwreck Coast. The name is self-explanatory. Warrnambool, where I spent Friday night is actually the capital of the shipwreck coast. Apparently there are 80 wrecks known to be on the sea floor between Port Fairy and Warrnambool and 29 of these are in Warrnambool's Lady Bay.

It was certainly a miserable day on Friday. The rain was cold. It reminded me of nothing so much as a wet day in England. This impression was reinforced when I stopped for a late lunch at Port Campbell. This was like an English seaside town on a wet afternoon. It's not a big place anyway. Most of the eating places were closed and of those that were open, most were only serving coffee or tea and cakes. I wanted a sandwich. In the end I got a pie and a horrible, bitter cup of coffee from the bakery, where the woman serving had a face and manner like a wet English afternoon.

I almost didn't bother to go to Tower Hill as this meant going on through Warrnambool (where I'd rung on ahead to book accommodation) albeit by only 15 km. The information I had about the place - from the tourist brochure - focussed on the activities of the Worn Gundidj information centre. The opening times given said it closed at 5.00 p.m. without making it clear whether this referred to the whole reserve or just the information centre. I'd decided to make a decision on whether to visit the reserve when I got to Warrnambool, which I did, deciding on the spur of the moment to drive on to Tower Hill. It was dry in Warrnambool - the rain arrived in the middle of the night.

It must have been at least 5.30 p.m. by the time I got to Tower Hill. The reserve nestles inside a dormant volcano and you can see the striking rock formations as you approach it from the main road - the layers of volcanic ash have formed twisted striations in the rock. Turning into the reserve, I immediately got the sense of being inside the hollow formed by the volcano. I followed the one-way road through the reserve, down to the Information Centre - a low, circular building in the middle of the reserve (which was, of course, closed) and back out again. The area was declared Victoria's first national park in 1892, but by the 1930s the area was bare and barren with little wildlife remaining, due to clearance by settlers. The revegetation project began in the 1950s and the area is now well-stocked with native flora and fauna.

I'd only been driving for a few minutes when I spotted a small group of three or four kangaroos watching me from the scrub at the roadside. One had a fair-sized joey in her pouch. I stopped the car to try to get a photograph. They watched me get out of the car then immediately scarpered - fast! Eastern grey kangaroos are smaller than the red kangaroos that live in central Australia.

I drove on a bit further and saw another, much larger, mob of kangaroos and decided to park the car and go for a walk up a track to the left of the road. This took me up a hill to a viewpoint - around 30 minutes walk in all. I did get a shot of one of the kangaroos as it leapt away out of frame. On the way up the hill I met a couple of wallabies and got within about a metre of one of them, getting some good photos. Unlike kangaroos, wallabies seem to be lone foragers. Lee, the tour guide on the Phillip Island trip, said that wallabies are more timid than kangaroos, but I have found it easier to get close to the wallabies. I also found a koala asleep in a tree on a hilltop. At first sight it looked like some big fibrous fruit or growth attached to a branch in the treetop. What was odd was that the tree didn't appear to be a eucalypt.

I loved Tower Hill Reserve and being there more than made up for the general shittiness of the day. It's the kind of place where I could happily spend a day just wandering around, although - having said that - there wouldn't be so much wildlife to see earlier in the day as kangaroos and wallabies sleep during the day. After my walk, I drove on the the central area, near the information centre, where I met several emus and saw another koala.

Info on Tower Hill Reserve from Visitvictoria.com

See also the Tower Hill State Game Reserve page on Parkweb Victoria. This page also gives the link to the Worn Gundidj Aboriginal Cooperative who manage the Visitor Centre.