Forrest is called the Gateway to the Otways (as in Otway
National Park) and is crawling with mountain bikers. I am not sure who came up
with the idea but they have turned what would have been a non descript broken
down old logging town into a vibrant country village with a pub, called “The
Wonky Donkey” after one of the boys favourite books, a brewery and a number of
cafes. All through the surrounding forest are mountain bike paths and they come
by their hundreds to ride them. The van park must have had at least 100 people
staying there and many permanent vans, together with heaps of small cottages
all through the town, all of them there for the paths. We caught the bug and
the boys jumped on their bikes and we did one of the 2km beginner paths, The
Rollercoaster. De and I had a very enjoyable walk as the boys were always about
20 – 100m in front of us and were delighted to find an echidna just to the side
of the trail.
About a week ago we visited a information centre where the lady
had given Sam a couple of photocopied sheets with some of the local fauna and
challenged him to find as many as he could and he was very excited to ad this
one to his list. We filled the water tanks and headed to our next free camp at
Stevenson Falls, just 10km away. Yesterday Google let me down and Wikicamps
saved me, today Wikicamps let me down and I just used plain logic to find the
site.
After Wikicamps led us to our destination, a waterfall, in
the middle of a logging forest I U turned and took a different road, one that
kept of going down a rather large hill, which for my mind was a pretty logical
place to find a waterfall. After about 15 minutes we found a sprawling free
campsite with about 100 people camped. In the afternoon the boys jumped on
their bikes and we walked to the falls which were pretty spectacular, but the
temptation to go for a swim was less than zero after Erskine Falls!
We headed back to camp and I spent a lazy afternoon listening
to the last session of the test match. Tomorrow we will are off to Apollo Bay
to catch up with Travis who I went to Villa with all those years ago!
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