Great Ocean Walk (Apollo Bay->Johanna Bay) Dec 27, 2023

[stevage]

Did the first 5 days of the GOW in 4 days, with a partner last week. The itinerary was mostly constrained by booking availability.

Day 1: got dropped off at the caravan park at the end of Apollo Bay as I didn't particularly feel like the suburban road-side path. It drizzled pretty consistently for the few hours it took to get to Elliot's Ridge. Some nice short bits of beach walking, and fun rock pools to explore. Pleasant scenery but nothing too spectacular. We both managed to pick up some pretty juicy leeches on our ankles. The campsite was pretty damp and gloomy, but didn't get too waterlogged. Excitingly, we saw a couple of koalas close to our tent, but very high up.

We got our first dose of the rather confusing and unhelpful "DECISION POINT" signs at every point where the track intersects the beach. They're meant to give you advice about choosing between walking on the beach or taking an inland track. My gripes with them:

- there are subtle differences in wording, like some say "we recommend you take the inland path", some say "take the inland path". There are phrases like "water very occasionally/occasionally/regularly washes over rocks", so you're trying to remember what the last sign said, to make sense of this one.
- in some cases, they say it's not possible to reach the next point along the beach, so it's not really a "decision" is it?
- they (almost?) all say "only continue at low tide and low swell". Firstly - what is low swell? The waves looked pretty rough the whole time we were walking. Second - is it even possible to time the walk so you hit every beach section at low tide? In many cases, we were walking on the beach close to high tide, with what I would guess was maybe medium to high swell. So we quickly lost faith that the signs had any useful advice to give us at all.


Day 2: double day through Blanket Bay to Cape Otway. I really enjoyed the foresty section at the start, though I gather it has a bad reputation. We saw more koalas. The track was pretty muddy, and we were glad for hiking poles to keep our footing. It never got up to ankle depth, but slowed us down a bit. Lots of butterflies and a few birds.

After Blanket Bay, I was struggling a bit - not really in condition for a 20+km day of hiking. Also, I had previously walked parts of this section, so a bit less novelty.

At Cape Otway, there was someone flying a drone 50m from a "no drones" sign. He took it well when I pointed it out to him.

We were very confused by the tent site booking system. Each camp site had a "group area" and individually numbered sites. We thought that since we didn't have an individual site number in our booking, we had to stay in the group area. But after talking to a few people, it seemed that no one did, so from that point we just picked whatever site we liked best. Here we found a site (3?) well past the toilets in a very sheltered little clearing. It was great! So many birds.

Day 3 to Aire River. Some good cliff top walking. The sun came out which was nice, but a long stretch (~2km) of beach walking was a bit roasty as a result. We experimented with eating random berries that we came across - not really sure what we were thinking to be honest. The berries from what I think is "beach spinach" (tetragonia trigyna) were pretty tasty! A bit sweet, a bit salty.

We got a swim in Aire River. A bit chilly, but we were able to stay in for a few minutes.

Day 4 to Johanna Beach. More long sections of "green tunnel" that had me feeling a bit claustrophobic. We met a wallaby and quite a few birds. The cliffs towards the end of the day are pretty spectacular. At one point I was excited about the possibility of a nearby cafe (The Bend Cafe, Glenaire) but just before exiting the trail we discovered it had closed.


All in all, the hike was nice enough, but I think it confirmed that I'm just not that excited about coastal scenery in general. I missed having big views and big climbs, and I felt a bit bored and hemmed in by the sections of dense coastal scrub. We had drizzle at some point of every day, but didn't really get too wet. I'd much rather the cool damp weather than roasting hot sun, in any case.

[Baeng72]

Nice effort.
It sounds like it's a lot of bush walking and not a lot of 'Great Ocean Road' type scenery.

[paidal_chalne_vala]

Walking at Sea level between Nov. and March can often be hot fly blown slog.
Now you know about walking at sea Level in summer.