Great Ocean Road: Spelunking and wine spillage

Our first day’s drive out of Adelaide was to get us down toward the start of the Great Ocean Road. Our destination was Port Fairy, where a B&B awaited.

Driving out of Adelaide took us through scenic hills and one long tunnel. We could have taken the scenic coastal highway south, but the southeast road was more direct and got us to Naracoorte National Park around lunchtime. We drove through a series of small towns with ridiculous names: Tintinara, Woolmoola, Sedgie. They weren’t much different than small Texas towns, except the football fields had Aussie-rules goalposts at each end.

Naracoorte proudly boasted on its welcome sign that it was “Australia’s Tidiest Town 1994.” What the criteria were for this we weren’t sure, but I only spotted one piece of trash as we drove through, so that’s something. But - let me repeat - the WHOLE COUNTRY’S like this.

The national park was a few km south of the town. It’s most prominently known for its series of caves, into which we were about to make our second spelunk of the trip.

For a half-hour we wandered through the underground, learning all over again about stalactites, stalagmites, columns, and straws. A few formations were really amazing, though. One ceiling collection of straws reflected perfectly in an absolutely still puddle of water, and with the provided lighting looked like a castle sitting upright. Another group of straws hung up to eight feet in length. Several of the rooms were big enough that we wondered if they were rented out for parties and weddings.

Our spelunking desires satisfied, we drove south out of Naracoorte, hitting a wine country almost as expansive as Barossa Valley. Lunch was in a town called Penola with a cute main street. Aussie prices strike again: sandwiches and potato wedges for $40. We still had enough in the piggy bank, though, for a trip to the chocolate store a few doors down. To our great surprise, they had chili chocolate for sale. To our even greater surprise, it was actually hot. Like, scalding aftertaste hot. Very nice.

As night came on, we crossed into Victoria (and moved our clocks ahead a half-hour) and approached the coastal town of Port Fairy. I emphasize “coastal town” cause up until now, we hadn’t seen one bit of ocean all day. Even five km from the town, we were trying to figure out if the ocean was just a fake tourist gimmick.

Port Fairy was your typical adorable widdle coastal town, population: tourists and people catering to tourists. It had another nice little downtown area. We drove up and down the unlit street a couple of times before finally locating our destination, Daisies by the Sea.

Daisies is a big pretty house subdivided by our hosts into living space for them and two rental units. Our hosts showed us into our room, which was about 10 times nicer than we’d been expecting, jacuzzi tub and all. Very much a pleasant surprise. They even opened the seaside door for us and sure enough, 20 feet below, there was an actual ocean.

For dindin we drove back to the city center to a place called the Victoria Hotel, with fancy restaurant attached. A fireplace crackled and a live jazz band played. The atmosphere was great. Our nice (of course) waitress brought wine for MB and Coke for me, got our dinner orders, and as she walked off with the menus,

[tip]

[spill]

[crash]

Mary Beth’s jeans were covered in red wine and her glass lay broken on the floor.

Our waitress, mortified, dropped the menu with which she’d hit the glass and got to work on cleanup. Mary Beth tiptoed her soggy leg to the bathroom, to discover that like most Australian bathrooms, there weren’t paper towels, only blow-dryers. She procured a towel from the kitchen and sopped up most of the wet. We sat by the fireplace for a few minutes to let the stained jeans dry out further.

And that, my friends, is how we ate free in Port Fairy.

Fortunately the food itself was excellent - worth paying for, even. When we got home, MB took to soaking the jeans, and got the red mostly (but not entirely) out. Since these were her favorite jeans, she’s a little disconsolate. But at least we managed to come in under budget on food for the day.