We did it as a day tour. It was a long day, from 7:00 AM – 10:00 PM. We took a small bus tour with a company called Go West. Our guide did a great job of narrating and providing a music playlist that matched the theme.
We stopped at a beach for morning tea. Then at a place where we saw koalas, parrots, and lots of ducks. Then stopped for a nice rainforest walk where they have flesh-eating snails. Ewww! They’re not big enough to eat humans, and the rainforest walk was pretty.
That was followed up by the three highlights of the trip. The first is the Gibson steps, which take you down to a beach among some sea cliffs.
Next the 12 Apostles, some sea stacks off the coast. Though there aren’t really twelve.
And finally the Loch Ard Gorge, which is the site of a famous shipwreck for which the gorge is named. Of 54 people on the ship, only two survived, basically by washing up into the gorge, staying in the cave pictured below, and then climbing out. It was quite the story.
We stopped for lunch in Apollo Bay at a Thai restaurant, and then had ice cream. Chili chocolate and passion fruit, which were both really good. The ice cream company, Dooleys, has won lots of awards. I can see why. We also made a stop for dinner where we had noodles from this little local Chinese place. Both the teriyaki and the sambal noodles were really good, really cheap, and there were a lot of them.
We made one last stop at a place where our guide said we would see thousands of crazy birds and we did. That was fun on its own. The Go West day tour was well organized, fun, and we had a great time.