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Fleet of foot in the mud
• Michael Gebicki
• From: The Australian
• May 01, 2010 12:00AM
Hikers on the Great Ocean Walk near Glenaire. Picture: Michael Gebicki
TRAVEL should be about authenticity. If I go to Iceland, I expect to be frozen; if I go to Las
Vegas, I expect to be fleeced. And since I am trekking on the Great Ocean Walk along
Victoria's southern coastline, one of the wettest places in the state, I can't really complain
about the droplets forming on the end of my nose, nor that my boots are full of water.
When it comes to authenticity, the weather has delivered the goods in spectacular style today.
Next morning, we will hear that 64mm of rain has fallen in the past 24 hours at the nearest
weather station at Cape Otway. You'd have to go back to February 8, 2002, to find a wetter day
here.
I am sampling the Great Ocean Walk, a 104km track that runs between Apollo Bay and
Glenample, just short of the Twelve Apostles. It's the chunk of Victoria's coast where the Great
Ocean Road swerves inland to snake through the northern section of the Otway Ranges. For most
of its length, the walk passes through the Great Otway National Park and it is stirring stuff.
The Great Ocean Walk takes in forests of manna gums with nodding koalas in their forks, sedge
meadows with bounding kangaroos, heaths with beaky echidnas, springwater cascades that leap
from cliff to sea, and Cape Otway Lighthouse, poised on its promontory 100m above a tearing
ocean.
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There are beaches where the rusting anchors of foundered ships lie pinned to the rock and
rainforests where mountain ash, the world's tallest flowering plant, soar from the tree ferns that
ring their bases like lacy green petticoats.
Anyone can put a pack on their back and experience the walk's wonders. There are seven
campsites along the trail at intervals of 10km to 15km but it's a whole lot more comfortable with
one of the walking tour specialists that operate guided trips, especially when you can dine in fine
style and sleep under an eiderdown listening to the rain pounding down on a solid roof rather than
the flimsy fabric of a tent.
I am travelling with Bothfeet, one such operator. It offers several versions of the Great Ocean
Walk, from a three-day taster to a six-day end-to-end walk. The version I am doing is the threeday
Great Ocean Conservation Walk, which is a fresh take on the outing.
Bothfeet has teamed up with Conservation Volunteers, one of the leading exponents of
volunteerism in Australia. Under its Naturewise program, the volunteers have a holiday and do
something for the environment while paying for the privilege.
At Montague Island Nature Reserve, off the southern NSW town of Narooma, for example,
volunteers may devote a couple of hours each day of their stay to assisting with revegetation to
provide habitat for the island's colony of little penguins.
It is a win-win situation for all. Instead of merely admiring Mother Nature's handiwork, you are
doing something to help keep her garden in good order. For volunteers, there's a powerful pay-off
by way of the feel-good factor, and it is valuable work that wouldn't get done otherwise.
After driving down from Melbourne in the morning, we spend the first afternoon among swishing
ferns and myrtle beech trees at Maits Rest in the forests of Great Otway National Park. With a
ranger from the Southern Otway Landcare Network, we are collecting seeds that will be used
for bushland regeneration.
We are transformed from upright Homo sapiens into a browsing forest species as we scan the
forest floor for seeds of the blanket leaf, musk daisy and Austral mulberry.
We shake the prickly currant bushes to loosen their red fruit and whack lustily at the branches of
the privet mock-olive to bring its seeds cascading into a blue tarp held like an upside-down
parachute. That evening, we discover one of the best reasons to travel with Bothfeet. Buried in a
forest clearing on Red Johanna Road, about 15km northwest of Cape Otway Lighthouse, the
Bothfeet walking lodge is the base camp for the company's trips.
The lodge sits just on the rough side of luxury. There are five guestrooms that can be split into two
via a central partition, and king-sized beds that zip apart, thereby catering to single walkers and
expanding the lodge's capacity. It is a boot-free zone. Hiking footwear must be left in the drying
room and exchanged for Crocs. Comfort rules.
The lodge is a modernist, minimalist construction. In four of the five rooms, the big picture
windows at the front face the neighbouring room, which requires occupants to close the blinds if
they want privacy. This is niggling for the women in the group, but the blokes don't seem to mind.
Ha Nguyen, the lodge's chef and manager, welcomes us with a fruity concoction and we've got the
next couple of hours up our sleeve to snooze and dangle our toes in the foot spas before
we reassemble in the glassy lounge and dining room.
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We start with a plate of hors d'oeuvres with four cheeses and figs, followed by a pasta with a sauce
of beef cooked in red wine, finished off with mango sorbet with white chocolate. It's a meal
perfectly tailored to appetites sharpened by a stiff walk and good deeds in nature's garden. Even
those among us who wouldn't normally touch dessert feel a sense of guilt-free entitlement.
The next morning, after a substantial breakfast that features one of the best bowls of porridge with
berries to pass my lips, we are ferried back to Apollo Bay to meet Gary McPike, executive officer
for the Otway Coast Committee.
We are here to deliver shock and awe to the coastal tea tree, an invasive native species that doesn't
belong here.
For the next two hours we hack and tear at the woody stems, reducing flourishing shrubs to
skeletons that will later be poisoned. Finally, after lunch on day two, we begin walking. It's about
8km from Glenaire, where the Great Ocean Road snakes in to tag the coastline, back to our pickup
at the end of Red Johanna Road, most of it within sound, if not sight, of the sea.
It begins in a steady drizzle that builds to a downpour. By the time we hit the western end of
Johanna Beach late in the afternoon, it's lashing down. The drying room back at the lodge is like a
steam bath with the condensation from sopping boots, socks and walking pants. Happily, most of
that day's rain will fall when we are tucked in bed.
The third morning is cloudy but the rain gods have quietened down, which is just as well because
it's our last walk. We begin on the banks of the Gellibrand River and walk 8km across coastal
heath, much of it on the brow of the cliffs with the ocean causing havoc below. It's pleasant but
undramatic until we crest a hill and there in the distance are the stacks of the Twelve Apostles.
The Great Ocean Walk never quite reaches Victoria's scenic stars. It stops short, loping down
across the face of a sedge-covered dune to a parking lot, but standing on our hilltop we have it all
to ourselves . . . cliffs, rock stacks and hungry sea. It has been worth a long walk.
Michael Gebicki was a guest of Bothfeet.
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