Fairy tales

Not long before I arrive in Melbourne, Margaret emails me and asks would I fancy a little side trip to Port Fairy while I'm with them? That sounds just grand, I reply, so the week after I arrive, we're off down the Great Ocean Road, taking in the major sights along the way, the best known being these limestone stacks, the Twelve Apostles, though there may only be seven. Actually the two I'm walking in front of are called Gog and Magog and the one underneath that is a separated island stack.

Port Fairy has an annual folk festival and that's mainly what it's known for. There's a strong focus on dairy farming in the area and a good smattering of Irish place names. Indeed, Margaret has family that emigrated here from Ireland in the 1840s. She met them at the festival one year and Mick did them a family tree, something he's very good at (our own is a cracker and we all have individual circle charts). Anyway, the town's streets are wide and open and the focus these days is predominantly tourism.
Mick, Margaret and I have a two-bedroom apartment not far from the bakeries, cafes and shops in the town 'centre' above. It's all very swish and push-button with a garage under the flat and free wifi, so the blog can live again. We don't stroll far to eat on our first night, across the road to the Caledonian Hotel, which I think is the oldest in town. It's had a new roof since the 19th century but that's about it. I love it. I order gnocchi.
A wander 'downtown' the next morning reveals a stunning waterfront, which is clearly where the millionaires live. There is also a windswept beach backed by holiday homes that doesn't stop until it gets to Warnambool, the nearest metropolis. The sky is streaked with whips of white cloud.

Mick and I drive to Tower Hill nature reserve, which is close by. Tower Hill was a volcano and the reserve is inside what was formerly the crater. Its visitor centre is a classic, designed by one of Australia's foremost modernist architects, Robin Boyd, and a delight to explore.

We join a group of teenage schoolchildren who are being given an educational tour by a shaggy-bearded gentle giant of a bush ranger. In terms of holding the kids' attention he seems to be a miracle worker. Mick and I are spellbound, too.

We learn all sorts of fascinating facts, from the leaves you can add to your salad, the berries you can munch, and the koalas you should not let near your gum trees as they'll chew their way through them all. He points to one who is having a rest having done just that. The park authorities are trying to move Tower Hill's four remaining koalas elsewhere and this involves flapping a plastic bag tied to the end of a stick to coax the animal down, then bundling it into a sack for transportation. 

Gentle giant also tells us about the kangaroo apple, which everyone is told not to eat when green as it's poisonous. But he goes on to say that one of the early botanists observed Aboriginal women eating them green and made enquiries. It turns out that, among other things, the plant is a natural contraceptive when green. Apparently it is the major ingredient of a type of steroid and is grown widely in Russia and Hungary, which supply most of the world's steroids.  

Gentle giant pulls a clod of bark or something off a tree and opens it to reveal a grub. He asks for a volunteer to eat it and one lad goes for it. 'How did it taste?' asks the ranger. 'I don't know,' says the boy. 'I didn't chew.' We also spot a bush wallaby. Later on Mick and I get right up close to a rock wallaby on Griffiths Island, a wildlife sanctuary just off the coast of Port Fairy, but connected by a causeway. We're lucky to spot it because, while I try and linger a little, I'm also trying to stay hot on the heels of Mick 'The Treadmill' Lyons.

There's a lighthouse on the island. I do like a lighthouse, particularly when they've picked out the woodwork in a pretty contrasting red. On our final day we drive west to Portland, almost at the border with South Australia. Built up around whaling originally, it's the oldest European settlement in Victoria. But we're now fired up by volcanic craters and geological marvels so we drive beyond the town, first to Cape Nelson, where there's another pretty lighthouse, with an exceedingly good cafe next door. It's never too early for sticky date pudding with caramel sauce and ice cream, I reckon. Here I am propping myself up afterwards. At Cape Bridgewater just along the coast we find a petrified forest, trees seemingly frozen in sand. It's hard to get a picture without a wind turbine in it. They've gone for these in a big way around here. Surely in an area of outstanding natural beauty there should be better controls. The landscape here is lunar-like and there isn't much shelter to be had in the ferocious heat we're suddenly experiencing. We move on to long cold drinks at a beachfront cafe and watch a line of backpackers slowly work their way around the shore.
We return to Port Fairy via Mount Eccles, an eerily deserted reserve with a deep crater containing a jade-green lake. There's a dry crater, too, evidence of a lava canal (a channel running out from the cone) and a natural bridge with cave underneath that makes quite a spooky descent and climb. Mount Eccles is heralded as an example of sophisticated Aboriginal farming techniques. They created an aquaculture operation here with eel traps in the streams, which meant the clans were more settled and built stone houses for themselves. Until the Europeans arrived, that is. The Massacre Map I saw in Melbourne was pretty busy around these parts. Thousands were massacred between 1837 and 1844. In Port Fairy there's a half-hearted memorial but it was only unveiled in 2011. We return to Melbourne via more geological wonders – a crater lake in the shape of a shamrock, a place called Red Rock boasting an amazing seven craters and views across the largest lake in Victoria. Lunch is served in the Winchelsea tea rooms, once the town council building. There's a fierce wind blowing and we can smell the smoke in the air. Grass fires are burning nearby.