A Dangerous Business

Date: 15th September 2023

Start: Devil’s Kitchen Campsite

End: Twelve Apostles Visitor Centre

Distance Travelled: 16 km

Song Currently Stuck in Head: The Only Exception by Paramore

Pies Consumed at Twelve Apostles Visitor Centre: one, but it was glorious

Thinking about one’s progress whilst hiking can be a funny thing at times. 4 days ago I was waking up in a St Kilda hostel and now I’m only 16 km away from one of Australia’s most iconic natural landmarks. Meanwhile, Dana and Sam – who I camped with on night 1 – would only be reaching Johanna Beach by the end of today and wouldn’t be finishing the track before I had already been home for 2 days. My two legs have covered a lot of ground this week and I think it’s time I gave them a rest.

But first, I had the final stint of the Great Ocean Walk to complete. It’s the longest section of the trail, but it’s also a lot flatter than the previous two. There wasn’t any rush to get away from camp super early either as the coach taking me to Warrnambool wouldn’t be leaving until 3pm. Even so, walking in the hottest part of the day isn’t very pleasant, hence why I left at 8:30. Tom and James, being the super organised morning people that they are, left earlier than me (seriously, please teach me how to get up early!).

Not too long after leaving camp, there is a side track to take you down to Wreck Beach. At low tide, it is possible to see remnants of a couple of ships that ran aground here in the late 19th century. When I say remnants, I mean their anchors; everything else would’ve been shredded in the countless storms since then. I briefly considered it, but my pack was already causing me some discomfort so I was anxious to get to the end quickly. I really need to work out what the root cause of all the shoulder pain I’m feeling is. It started in earnest a couple days into the walk – eerily similar to what happened on the Carnarvon Great Walk and Tongariro Northern Circuit late last year – and caused a pretty bad acne breakout around the base of my neck. Really can’t have that happening when I’m planning to carry that pack for 4.5 months straight.

The first half of this section doesn’t really provide anything new. It’s the same grassy pathway bordered on both sides by a low canopy forest containing a smorgsboard of creatures. Anytime I heard a rustle in the bushes, it was a guessing game as to whether it was a small bird, a snake, or something bigger like a wallaby. The track is squarely aimed at Point Arnold for most of its first half, marking the mouth of the Gellibrand River.

I took a quick break near the Gellibrand River to get my bearings and grab a snack. It’s a good thing I’m finishing today as I’m running low on scroggin. Princetown is quite close to the carpark and apparently has some light refreshments available, but again, sore shoulders = less motivation to spend more time on track than required. Therefore, I set off, crossing over the river on a “bridge” that was actually a barge with a road deck plonked on top of it.

That left me with only 7 km of the walk to go. Like on day 2, I was given a nice visual marker of how I was progressing on track.

I had left the forest behind at this point, the track becoming more exposed to the elements. Today, the extent of that exposure was thankfully only a fairly beefy westerly breeze which helped keep me cool and blew the flies and midges away. The latter didn’t last sadly, with an ever present black cloud of the blighters orbiting around my head but never actually landing on me. The cool breeze also didn’t keep the snakes away, and I had another close encounter with a nope rope running itself on the track. This time it was what I believe to be a copperhead. Not as deadly as its other brown snake brethren, but still enough hurt juice in its fangs to land me in hospital/morgue if I wasn’t careful.

As the track winded it’s way over the windswept hills, the eponymous rock formations marking the finish line kept getting closer. I really do mean windswept. Now that there was no longer any forest protection, I copped the full brunt of a brisk westerly breeze. Nothing overtly dangerous, but fast enough to basically act as air conditioning for the rest of the walk.

As Gibson’s Steps (the two rocks on the southern side of the Twelve Apostles area that aren’t technically “apostles”) approached, I quickened my pace, like a long distance runner starting the last lap of a race. Thoughts of what I would do once I finished flooded into my head. Throwing my pack against the wall of the visitor’s centre, cathartically screaming into the wind (ignoring all the weird looks from the tourists there), grabbing a big, juicy pie from the kiosk.

The walk from the Steps to the Apostles is a wide, sealed track designed for day visitors, so my hiking boot-wearing, huge pack-carrying look stuck out like a sore thumb. No one stopped to ask me what I was doing, but I like to think that I confused a few tourists who had made the comfortable journey in a car. At this point I was practically running, using every last ounce of energy to get me over the line. At 12:45pm, I did just that, arriving at the visitor’s centre, throwing my pack on the ground and grabbing a meat pie; I decided to forego the cathartic screaming.

Tom was already there, so we spent the next 30 minutes doing what multi-day hikers to best: talk about the trail we just completed. When James showed up, we took a walk – in my case a shuffle – out to the Twelve Apostles lookout. That was the one issue with going quickly on this last section, the coach that James and I would be taking to Warrnambool wouldn’t leave until 3pm. No matter, that gave us more time to admire some pretty sweet rocks.

When the coach eventually arrived, we said our goodbyes to Tom (he was gonna spend the weekend in the area with his partner) and hopped onboard. The coach to Warnambool seems to be designed for tourists, making stops at Loch Ard Gorge, London Bridge, and the Bay of Islands along the way.

Once in Warrnambool, we had an hour to kill before our train to Melbourne left, so I went and grabbed dinner. Having only eaten hiker food for 5 days, I was craving “real food”. So, I got a HSP (halal snack pack). For those who don’t know what a HSP is, it’s meat, chips, and sauce. That’s it. Absolutely glorious. So glorious in fact that I had eaten most of it by the time we boarded the train.

I have already waxed poetic about how much I love V/Line, so I’ll keep my review of this service brief. Warrnambool trains are still locomotive-hauled, although the line is being upgraded for VLocity’s to run on them. As such, we could only run at a maximum speed of 115 km/h, but most of the journey was spent at or close to this speed. It was a very comfortable ride, and it was a shame that it had to come to an end 3.5 hours later, arriving back at Southern Cross station. James and I then went our separate ways, him back to his friend’s place at Melbourne Central and me to my hostel on Flinders St. There, I had a long-awaited shower to wash off all the gunk I had accumulated, and crashed into my bunk marking the end of a simply incredible trip.

Thank you Great Ocean Walk, you’ve been amazing.