The plan for the day was an early rise to catch sunrise over the 12 Apostles and to round off the day with the same venue for sunset with lots of touring in between. We successfully got ourselves and the kids to the lookout well before sunrise of 6.57am, but alas the cloud cover was a disaster and all we got was grey, grey and more grey. That said the view was stunning and this was probably the least crowded we were likely to see the place.
From here we had breakfast, grabbed a coffee and back on the road in the rain to Loch Ard Gorge. When we got the 10km down the road to Loch Ard the sun was shining at last....yay! Here we learned about the shipwreck of the Loch Ard in 1878, the survivers Tom and Eva, and how Eva went back to Eire and broke Tom's heart. We also learned a little about the geology of the area. We did a few walks, visited the cemetery – probably the highlight of the trip for Em – and walked out to Broken Head before returning to the beach of Loch Ard Gorge. Em was hoping to find parts of bodies wash up from the ship wreck but was happy to settle for it being a graveyard of dead crickets. Em and Lachie happily filled their buckets with them, finding the odd “live one” and adding that to the mass grave, while we got to chill out momentarily.
Em spend the remainder of the day asking for the story of the Loch Ard, and the man who “fell over the cliffs at Broken Head and got eaten by sharks”. The gorier the better.
After a quiet afternoon at the campsite with the 2 speed demons on their bikes, we headed back to the 12 Apostles for sunset. It had been a lovely day so we really hoped for clear skies. Alas, again it was not to be and after plying the kids with chocolate eggs to placate them we gave up on the non-event that sunset was and the non-appearance of the Little Penguins back to the beach. A bit of an anti-climax, but at least we tried.
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