We'd planned to visit the Cape Otway Lighthouse today, however when we found it was going to be $50 for the family to get in we decided to give this lighthouse a miss. We walked up the bush path to the lookout instead to take some photos. There were many koalas in the trees along this road and many people were stopping to photograph them. In some areas there were hundreds of dead gum trees as the koalas have eaten them to death.
So we still had most of the day to entertain the boys so we set off for the Otway Fly. The short cut road turned out to be a beautiful drive through the beech forest to Beech Forest (a small town). This area is primarily state forest with pine and gum plantations. At the bottom of a forested gully where the road crosses a creek is an amazing 76 yr old Sequoia forest with trees which must be 50m tall. They were spectacular! The forest of was cool and dark and the trees were all the same height and planted in rows. We could have been in a Californian forest. We ate our lunch at the picnic spot and then continued on.
The Otway Fly is a tree top walk through the ancient beech forest. The metal grill walkways gently sway as you walk 25m (but it feels like 100m) above the forest floor and even then you're not quite in the canopy. A spiral tower takes you up to (45m) and this also gently sways. I was OK on the walkways but didn't like the tower. The boys didn't care about the height and had a great time. It was pricy ($64 for a family) but worth it.
On the drive back we almost hit an echidna but Evan managed to swerve in time.
The Aire River East campground (40min west of Apollo Bay) has been a lovely grassy site on the river but we are not right on the water so we don't need to worry about the kids going into the water.
The bridge to the West campground is currently closed to cars (access via Sand Rd) but you can walk across it and there is a rainwater tank there. The beach is a very long walk down the 4wd track next to the river and we didn't make it all the way.
At East campground there is a pit toilet but no water. Koalas live in the trees and it's all free! Thank you Parks Victoria!
The forestry activities are great family fun! If you ever get to Tassie, the forestries there do a different activity in each one. Dismal Swamp (great name, huh!) has a long metal slide to get into it. Another has this sort of metal walkway, and another has flying foxes/zip lines.
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