With such a big day with a wet morning at Port Campbell National Park, a long windy drive to the Otways and back to Gibsons Steps and the Twelve Apostles for sunset, I have split the blog with the Otways having their own page.

There is about 60km of winding road from the coast to our destination at The Redwoods in Great Otway National Park.

Grey nomad positivity: “I am not over the hill, I am just taking the scenic route.”

The small town of Beech Forest has carved trees showing stages of life in the area from First Nations people ….

to timbergetters…

…. to farmers. The rich wildlife in this area is also a feature.

Access into the national park. The Great Otway National Park has the greatest amount of precipitation days in mainland Australia (219.4 wet days per annum) and today was one of them. My co-pilot told me we had a 40% chance of a rainless day. I replied, “Don’t tell me the odds!”

Hopetoun Falls access through temperate rainforest with tree fern understorey

Yellow robins were active. This one on an access gate.

Scrub wren

Mountain ash forest

Yellow robins are a delight to watch.

Hopetoun Falls plummets 30 metres into the Aire River in the Great Otway National Park.

The creek at The Redwoods

Tree fern fronds uncurling

Moss growing up the tree trunks

Brown thornbill

The local recycling centre

Californian Redwoods (Sequoia sempervirens) were originally planted in 1936 by Victorian foresters for experimental purposes.

Redwoods are a conifer.

The lack of plants underneath is in sharp contast to the fern-filled surrounding forests.

Bassian thrush with a meal – looks like a takeaway.

The Redwoods along with the local Mountain ash are the tallest tree species in the world.

These redwoods have grown to 80 metres high and are still going upwards!

They are believed to live to 2000 years old.

The track meanders through the redwoods past a creek and across a gully for some distance.

On the return

Track in temperate rainforest

Swamp wallabies were common on the roadside

Lavers Hill – Drift Sculpture with weathervane

Immature male Superb fairywren

Gellibrand River flats near Princetown

We return to The Twelve Apostles area and view the spectacular sea stacks either side of sunset. (See second half of Day 30 – Port Campbell coast)

For more on the Otways from a previous visit: https://imagenau.com/2015/07/16/south-australia-victoria-2015-day-19-the-great-ocean-road/