As has become tradition, we again headed for Port Fairy for the annual folk festival. This time we decided to use the Sorrento-Queenscliff ferry to avoid all the Melbourne traffic and break the journey in both directions with 2 sets of 2 days Lorne.
On the second day of the 1st Lorne visit we went for a hike in the Ottways. Whilst it started well, it later turned into the hike from hell, and it got very scary. What was strange about it, was that at no point were we lost. We always knew exactly where we were, we just founded it extremely difficult to move. It was the trail that went missing. At the time that it got really tricky, we were unable to retrace our steps because we had climbed an extremely steep slope and felt that it was too dangerous to try to descend it. The absence of any recognisable trail meant that we had to perform some serious bushwacking. It took us 5 hours to traverse a distance rather less than 2.5km. We persisted because we occasionally found pink ribbons tied to trees showing that we were where the track should have been, and we really didn’t want to descend that slope. The vegetation was most unpleasant, and it was extremely difficult to raise one’s foot because of long creeping grass that threatened to trip one up at every step. Rob’s legs were shredded as you can see in the photo. When we finally made it back onto the very visible Dunse fire track, we were both exceedingly relieved. That’s the track that is featured in the photo about entering at one’s own risk. That track was fine, it was the track that didn’t exist that was bad. We have been hiking together for nearly 40 years and have never had anything like that before. All’s well that ended well but it was a close call and some important lessons were learned. That hike was celebrated with 2 jugs of pale ale and a fine curry.
The folk festival was great with highlights from a couple of oldies, Judy Collins and Ralph Mctell. We met up with lots of pals as usual and enjoyed the music. Saturday was a stinker of a day with temperature hitting 41C. Luckily some decent planning and foresight saw us spending the day in the only two airconditioned venues. We also did some beach walking and saw several endangered hooded plovers which was good to see. Photos below.
After the festival, we headed back for another 2 nights in Lorne via the marvelous wildlife sanctuary in the caldera of an extinct volcano called Tower Hill. We saw many birds, a Koala and Emus. After a night back in Lorne we travelled the 30 minutes down the Great Ocean Road to Kennett River. There we did the nature walk and also took a drive up the Grey River Road and saw wild Koalas and many birds.
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