Elad’s blog

It is common knowledge, that most of the earth is covered by water. However, if you look at a map of the world, you will get a different impression - it looks like there is more land than sea. It once confused me, until I found out that in the maps they generally cut the earth at latitude of around 75 degrees, while there are actually 90 latitudes in every hemisphere; so they actually cut out plenty of ocean from the maps.

For example, between antarctica and australia there is a huge water body - the southern ocean. It stretches thousands of kilometers to the south, and as it contains only water (with no islands or land of any form) huge waves can be created there - virtually nothing stops the winds that blow from the southern pole all the way to Australia. Thus, the sea hits southern australia with grave force. Hence, the erosion of the coast is massive (they actually claim that in some places it reaches 2c”m a YEAR) and huge waves are very common. This is most evident in coastal areas that happen to have weak limestone cliffs, where beautiful landforms are created. Namely, the 150k”m of coast that stretches from Melbourne to the west, an area known as ‘the Great Ocean Road’, which we passed today.

Before describing the GOR, I need to mention two small yet important events related to the previous post (I was so enthusiastic about the book I forgot it yesterday): first, on the way to Mount Gambier we visited the Big-Lobster. As my readers surely remember, australia is scattered with enormous fiberglass statues - I’ve been to the Big Mango, the Big Banana, and so forth; so now I also have pictures of an awesome lobster (they nickname it Lary) that looks over a roadhouse in south australia. Now that we settled this, let’s go back to the Great Ocean Road.

Second, at a coastal area already in Victoria, we visited blowholes (where the sea is supposed to enter under a cliff and than come out of a hole like a whale’s back) - where we saw nothing because the waves weren’t high enough - and a petrified forest, which was more impressive, and included an area where standing trees got buried, turned into stone that was harder than the surrounding soil, the surrounding soil eroded - so now you have a standing forest of pillars in the shape of the trees. Really neat.

The Great Ocean Road actually has two parts. The more western side is limestone cliffs; the eastern part is scenic drive on the coast, where low hills touch the sea through a series of small bays. The two parts are separated by a small ancient rainforest (yes. I know we are very far from the tropics, and I was very surprised to find it there, but it is there - a true rainforest: ferns, large trees, cool air - all the jungle characteristics and other things).

The cliff part is the more impressive. In various places the cliffs eroded (remember, the coast retreats at an amazing annual rate of 2 c”m) and some pillars or small islands remained in the sea; in others, grottos and archs were formed; and the whole area is magnificent. We visited several famous spotts - the Bay of Islands; the London Bridge; the Twelve Apostles; and more.

Two major events visualise the erosion. One is the collapse of the London Bridge. The other is the death of one of the apostles.

London bridge was a cliff that extended into the sea and included two arches. In 15 January 1990 the arch that was closer to the land collapsed. On the second arch, which now became an island, a couple got caught. As it happened, the collapse occured while they were in the middle of making love - a truely earthshaking sex! It was also an earthshaking story, as it happened that one of the participants was married, and not to the other participant; and after they got stuck for a few hours and rescued by a helicopter with all the nation watching in the news, the spouse did demand some hard explanations…

The other big event happened more recently - actually only a month and a half ago: one of the ‘apostles’, a limestone column in the sea, collapsed. So now they don’t have 12 appostles there - doomsday must be approaching… Actually, they never had 12 apostles. You can only see from the shore 8 or 9, and they claim that there are others which are only evident from the air; but you can’t tell. Until hundred years ago the same columns were reffered to as ‘the saw and the piglets’ - I wonder who was the genious that decided that ‘apostles’ will attract more tourists than ‘piglets’; and I wander what was his religion.

After the nice limestone formations we visited the small rainforest (just an hour hike, small and nice) and drove through the rest of the road - really marvelous scenic drive. We arrived at Melbourne in the evening, when I said goodbye to Tony and Emma, and headed to my new hosts - Rachel and Adrian.

Rachel is a cousin of my brother’s wife. I met her briefly in April, when they were in Israel, and they invited me to their place and gave me their phone number. Today, when I called her, she was really happy to hear me (she actually said they wandered what took me so long) and immediately invited me to their place; so I stay now in their appartment, at a suburb of Melbourne. I still don’t know exactly what to do in Melbourne, but I will surely find out pretty soon.

This entry was posted on Sunday, September 4th, 2005 at 17:11 and is filed under Travels, Australia Center and South. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.