14/1/16 Tonight we are free camped at Lake Elingamite, in a volcano crater. It's about 40km inland from Port Campbell on the Great Ocean Road. Accommodation: $115, Lattes $104.20 Back on the 11th we took the boat to Melbourne… the same boat that a few days later broke free of it's moorings and was damaged. http://www.abc.net.au/news/2016-01-13/spirit-of-tasmania-breaks-mooring-at-port-melbourne/7087150 but our trip was incident free and very boring except that we watched the new (to us) 007 movie "Spectre". Lesson learned - don't trust Google to know where things are: Searched for "caravan park near Brighton Beach Victoria" and went with the first hit which also had good reviews in Wiki Camps. Turns out Werribee South Caravan Park is an hour the other side of Melbourne. Next time I'll use a paper map… Julie reckons she can see the lights from Brighton across the Bay, but I think she is just being kind… anyway it was a good spot to do the washing (us and clothes - our feet were absolutely putrid from the fine black dirt at Swimcart Beach and our thongs were just as bad, even if we washed our feet 5 minutes in thongs are they were black again!) top up the water and batteries and pantry and even have a paddle. We spent two nights there for the relatively cheap price of $70 but it almost tripled our total accommodation bill! Julie continues to excel in her cooking and managed roast pork with crackling in the camp oven. After leaving Werribee South we headed along the Great Ocean Road and stopped for a swim at Torquay because it was stinking hot, then had a swim at Bells Beach - there was no surf at all. It's pretty tight for free camping sites along the GOR so we headed to Hammonds Road North and had the place to ourselves. It was beautiful, we even missed the storm that hit The Spirit of Tasmania. Today we continued (slowly) along the GOR, stopping for a while at Lorne to actually upload the blog. Had a bit of an issue getting photos in the right place and format but (hopefully) you will see that we've sorted that.. We saw the devastation of the Christmas fires at Wye River and the water bomber still being used to quench fires further inland. Lake Elingamite seemed like the perfect place to fly my new kite as it was really windy. After getting it ready the best place seemed the edge of the lake WRONG… I took one step off the boat ramp onto what looked like dry soil and I instantly sunk to mid thigh. It was so soft it was like stepping on air. I'd probably have sunk deeper if I was more flexible because the foot still on the boat ramp stopped me. Lucky only one leg was stuck and that I was able to support my weight on the boat ramp to get out or I'd probably still be there as Julie didn't know which direction I went.. More kite flying when there is enough space without super soft mud.
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