A nice leisurely start, taking advantage of the onsite cooking facilities. Bliss.

As  I wanted to point out a couple of things to the owners,  i.e. one hob not working and a dodgy shower attachment, I called them. As luck would have it, the lady owner was cleaning the flat upstairs. I offered to try and fix the faulty shower unit, but couldn\’t manage it – too crudded in.

As I exited the bathroom, my foot slipped on the floor and I landed heavily on my backside, cutting my elbow quite deeply on a ledge by the side of the bath. To cut a longish story short, I ended up going to the local hospital to have some stitches put in, plus a tetanus jab. No real drama, and dealt with very efficiently at no charge, but one hopes this is the last time I visit an Australian hospital. This all had to be set up, of course, so the nurse in the 10-bed hospital knew why I was coming. Once formalities had been completed, she phoned the doctor on call and said drily \”The elbow\’s arrived\”. Typical Aussie humour and it certainly lightened the atmosphere.

This, of course, took up most of the morning, so we went for an abbreviated walk round Griffith Island, named after one John Griffith who started a whaling business here in the mid 19th century. Pleasant, with a lighthouse included, some spectacular breakers and unfortunately a bit of rain.

We then took a short drive up to Tower Hill, the site of a volcano that last blasted its way through the limestone in this region some 6,000 years ago, This has been turned into a really nice recreational facility – you can drive into the interior crater and out again on a bitumen road.

There is a well-equipped visitor centre with some well-signposted walks, all for free. We decided to take one of them, along which we were promised wildlife, but all we saw was a solitary emu.

As this is on our route to our next destination, we decided to come back tomorrow morning to undertake another walk.

We then took a road round the top of the outer crater, and were treated to some really superb views, including seaspray in the background:

Then back to Port Fairy and what turned out to be an excellent meal at Conlan\’s Wine Store. So we had to have wine, of course, before retiring to bed.

We start our journey on the Great Ocean Road tomorrow on our way to Apollo Bay.