First you should understand that there are actually not twelve "apostles" here, and there never were - the actual number is currently about seven. However these huge limestone stacks were named the Twelve Apostles because someone felt that sounded better from a tourism point of view than the original "sow and piglets" ! These pillars are in a continuous state of change as the soft rock is worn away or fractures and falls into the sea, so they each shrink and disappear over time. However there is the possibility of new ones forming as the sea cuts into the mainland further along the coast.
In 1990 two tourists were stranded (lucky to survive) when the stone bridge linking one pillar to the mainland collapsed into the sea just after they had walked out across it. They were left standing on the pillar and were eventually rescued by helicopter.
We first stopped at the "Gibson Steps" which form a steep path down the cliff to a beach at the bottom, just east of the first of the Apostles.
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| Sue descends the Gibson Steps |
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| Brian on the beach below the steps. |
We drove on and came across the main visitor centre and carpark for the Twelve Apostles, where there are spaces for hundreds of cars and tour buses. From there it is a walk of about a kilometre out to the furthest lookout, which gives a great view along the coast to the west.
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| Looking west along the coast. |
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| Don't expect to see twelve of them! |
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| Obligatory selfie. |
As you can see the weather was still nice. Cold but sunny. There is a constant circuit of helicopters taking off from the visitor centre, but they seem to fly past out to sea a bit so are not too intrusive for the rest of us touring the site on foot.
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| Helicopter! |
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| The outermost lookout position. |
That selfie (above) was taken from the lookout on the promontory in this photo, which will one day be another pillar but today provides the best vantage point for looking back along the coast. You can see the pile of huge rocks which has fallen off the side into the sea.
We returned to the car and pressed on, now at risk of hallucinating due to the lack of a good coffee. Even the visitor centre didn't seem to provide that, so we decided to keep going to Port Campbell. On the way we stopped one more time at "Loch Ard Gorge" because that sounded interesting. This turned out to be the area west of the Apostles where the land is in an earlier stage of erosion by the sea. It's hard to completely visualise from ground level, so here is a shot from Google showing how the sea is carving deeply into the mainland:
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| Land in the early stages of carving out the future new "Apostles". |
This is on the coast just east of Port Campbell if you are trying to find it on the map. Those cliffs are about 30 metres high, so it's all on a grand scale.
Port Campbell provided the coffee we had been hanging out for, and a delicious brunch! That was the end of the main attraction and we had a couple of hundred kilometres to go to get back to Melbourne, so we turned inland and drove through farmland to join the A1, which took us through Colac and eventually became the M1 heading back into Melbourne. Afternoon tea was on the outskirts of Geelong, and we stayed overnight near the airport and flew home early on Monday morning.
