Back on the road today and enjoying the diversity of change.

Our first stop was a return to the Bay of Islands on the GOR and a walk along the headland to marvel at the array of mini islands separated from the mainland due to ongoing erosion from the ocean.

The Bay of Islands marks the end of the Twelve Apostles, possibly one of the most magnificent ocean coastlines in Australia, if not the world.

After a short inland drive we arrived in Warrnambool, an early aboriginal community, now famed for its hot springs and beaches.

As luck would have it, we managed to visit both.

After a brief sortie to the beach, we made our way to ‘Deep Blue’ hot springs and 2hrs of sanctuary experience.

This was a new experience for the both of us and involved dipping in and out of hot springs out in the sunshine. In total there were ten ‘pools’ ranging from 32 up to 42 celsius, save for one ice bath where the water dipped to just 12 Celsius, which is pretty much the norm for sea water back at home!!

I must say, the hot water was very soothing and made us feel incredibly dozy and chilled. Not a bad way to spend an afternoon.

After regaining some strength we made our way out of the town and to Tower Hill Reserve, the site of a defunct volcano where we walked around the outer crater and could see down to the now water filled core.

The reserve is also home to wallabies and koalas, of which we saw both in their natural habitats.

The views around the crater were spectacular and made us feel like we were on the film set of some Aussie outback movie, such was the solitude and quiet in amongst the scrub.

With a few hours left of the day, we pushed on to Port Fairy, which proved to a lot prettier than we remembered from our last visit about 10yrs ago. It’s a quaint seaside town awash with a sandy beach and a Victorian Main Street and houses to match.

We are trying our best to free camp every other night, and tonight we had with the help of an App called WikiCamps we had found a place in Mount Clay State Forest. After an uncertain last couple of miles we came out the woodland retreat miles from anywhere, which had also been ‘discovered’ by another 25-30 other camper vans and caravans like ourselves. Whilst these places are basic, providing just a piece of land to park and a nearby toilet, they are well looked respected and you meet some interesting people.

Tomorrow we head on to Portland and into South Australia, which oddly is on a time zone 30mins behind Victoria.