Our first koala bear sighting!

When we are parked up in the middle of a rain forest and it's a bit chilly at night, it only makes sense when we wake up first thing in the morning to get up and drive... even if it's just for a little bit. This way, we can at least get into the cab of the truck, and it doesn't take long to warm up once the engine is running.

Then, we can hopefully park up somewhere in the sunshine to have breakfast. It doesn't always work out that way, but at least that's the plan!

Sunday morning, we had planned on visiting two different waterfalls I had seen near the old logging road we had been parked at for the night.

So here we were at 7:30am (the sun doesn't officially rise until 7:45am or so!) trying to make our way on these steep old roads. We got to a gate and it was locked shut! Got ourselves turned around, and headed back to the main road. A few kilometers later, we're on another back road taking a different route.

We don't give up so easily!

Parked at the side of this dirt road.

The only thing I had to go by was the mapping system maps.me on the phone. It clearly showed a path that led to the Upper Chapple Falls. But we don't think anybody has used this path for years. The only references I could find online about these falls were from 2007 and 2011. The path was hard to follow, and there were a lot of fallen trees and branches and growth.

Taken just after sunrise!

We made it!

Ruth, modelling the falls. 

Lots of these big fern plants.

We drove down to the Cape Otway Lighthouse. This is the most southern point of mainland Australia. We knew there was a fee to enter the lighthouse, but we also knew that you could do some of the Great Ocean Walk from this point. 

The sun was shining, and it was the start of a beautiful day. So we set out to get some more exercise.

The view from where we stopped for breakfast.

Scenery along the way.

We got to the Cape Otway Lighthouse and saw the gate and fence they had around the property. You have to enter the tourist trinket shop to buy your ticket to the lighthouse. Unfortunately, we don't see the value in spending $19.50 AUD ($18 CAD, $13.50 USD) to climb a few steps up a lighthouse. So you will not be seeing the view through our eyes.

But, you can see the view from the free "after hours" route that we took...

Our free view of the lighthouse.

"I can see the sea!"

We drove down to the Parker Hill Campground in Otway National Park. You have to reserve in advance for this unserviced campground, and it's $26.80 AUD ($24.75 CAD, $18.50 USD) per night. No thanks. I can understand that during busy season, but at this time of year when there was only one occupied site out of the twenty available, it's a little overpriced.

However, we parked and had some lunch, and went for a hike down the 300 steps to the river below.

A beautiful day!

The erosion is amazing!

Amazing what you see at low tide.

Ruth, looking for whales. 

None to be found today!

Weird rock designs.

Gorgeous views on the way to the town of Apollo Bay.

Apollo Bay is an interesting place, and we'll show you some of it tomorrow. It's got the absolutely gorgeous hill and ocean scenery that you see in the three photos above. But then it's also got the influx of Asia tourists. Every second shop on the main drag is an Asian restaurant of some kind catering to the tour buses that come through. Like I said, we'll show you some of that tomorrow.

We stopped and bought some wine, and then it was time to find somewhere to spend the night. Once again, it gets dark by 5:00pm or so, and so we need to start looking for an overnight spot by 3:00pm at the latest.

I had some ideas though. I've learned that if you can follow one of the dirt tracks up into the hills, it usually leads to somewhere that is fine for spending the night.

Way up in the middle of nowhere was this oddball statue.

We drove way up a steep skinny dirt track road. There were a few homes along the way, and about 5 kms (3 miles) into it, we found a nice spot. Right by an antenna tower of some kind.

As we were getting parked up, a dog ran up to me outside, and his owner rode up on a bicycle. 

Where we parked up for the night.

The dog started barking at that big tree in front of where we are parked in the photo above. I looked up, wondering why the dog was barking. 

There was a koala bear up in the tree!

The best photo I could do. 

Sorry that you see more koala butt than you do koala face!

The local said that we were fine to park there for the night, and even suggested a nice walk we could do from here in the morning. He also said that we are likely to see more koala bears then!

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