Apr 3, Great Ocean Road, the 12 Apostles

Our first stop was Gideon's Steps. We weren't sure what it was, but we were excited when we saw rock stacks and steps down to the beach. This area of the coast is limestone that has been worn by waves and wind. As the limestone erodes around it, the harder stone remains and tall pillars of rock are stranded on the beach. We took the steps down to get a feeling for the enormous size of the rock stacks.
Further down the road was what they call the 12 Apostles. It was a group of 12 rock stacks at one time, but now I think there are only 7. Still very beautiful.
Then we drove to Loch Ard Gorge. It's an area where the ship, Loch Ard ran aground with only 2 survivors who washed up in the gorge, a long narrow cut in the cliffs.
Next was the Arch, a rock formation that has been shaped into and arch. Then, we went to London Bridge, which was a rock bridge on the beach that fell down in 2009.
We had to drive to each of these sights, then take a hike to see them. More sights were the Grotto and the Bay of Islands, with lots of smaller rock stacks where birds nest.
The water that come on shore here come uninterrupted from the Antarctic, which accounts for the power of the wave action on the cliffs. The whole area is beautiful, with great waves crashing against the rocks, making fantastic formations.
The Great Ocean Road ended in Allansford, but we're still driving along the coast. We stopped at Tower Hill, an animal reserve that has been reclaimed after quarrying destroyed most of the vegetation. It is at the site of an ancient volcano, so we drove down a steep hill to get here and saw emus near the road on one side and kangaroos on the other.
We parked and went for a hike. There were koalas in the trees. We started on one trail and then decided to do the rim of the crater. We hadn't gotten very far when we heard some people yelling. We rounded a curve and there was an emu on the trail between us and the other people. I think we distracted it long enough for the other people to go on, but we couldn't continue. The emu kept looking at us and making deep gutteral sounds, not reassuring. We backed up, hoping the emu would go off the trail, but it stood there watching us. Then it started eating, but if we moved its attention went back to us. It went off the trail a bit and we thought we might be able to go around, but it didn't go off enough to forget about us. Finally we turned and headed back down toward the visitors center. On that trail we passed another emu, but we walked by quickly and it headed after us, but lost interest. Emus are really big.
We came back to the camper and while I cooked, I could see kangaroos eating grass in the picnic area in front of us.
Pictures - Samson with rock stacks, some of the Apostles, the Arch, Jeanne and the Grotto, kangaroos, emu