Into the Redwood Forest...

 Yes. California Redwoods!

Aren't they magnificent?

These babies are 85 years old and over 65 meters high.

 And they're growing nearly 13,000 kilometres from home. Just 2 and a half hours drive west from Melbourne.

A couple of weeks ago we went on an overnight trip to find them.  We headed west towards Geelong...

And stayed overnight in a camp site at Apollo Bay on the Great Ocean Road.

 After setting up our campervan at a local council recreation reserve on a wet and windy afternoon, we headed into the hills towards the Otways National Park.

 With amazing views below us.

 Teeny sheep...

After nearly an hour of winding narrow roads through wet eucalypt forests and rainforest gullies filled with tree ferns, this appeared...

Let's go for a little walk.

The whole time I had that Woody Guthrie song in my head "This Land is my land..."

"This land is your land, this land is my land
From California to the New York island,
From the redwood forest to the Gulf Stream waters;
This land was made for you and me."

Looks like the land is pretty big if it's from this redwood forest to the gulf stream waters of the USA!😂

I was lucky enough years ago to see Arlo Guthrie in concert and he performed this song.

We didn't pack a picnic as it was a rainy day. We were sheltered from most of the rain but large fat water droplets still came through. The ground was slippery and muddy.

I could have spent all day here if the weather was kinder to us.
The Aire River meandered out of sight. We jumped into the car and a very short drive away, the river became a waterfall.

But to view the bottom of the waterfall, we had to walk down all of the stairs in the world. Which meant walking all the way back up.

These few photos don't do justice to how many stairs there were. And they were higher than your average step. Which is not ideal for short legs.

I'm not a religious person. 

But if there is a hell, when I die if the odds aren't stacked in my favour, I'm being sent straight back here. It was the worst 15- 20 mins of my life. And after going through a 20 hour labour with Sonofagun No.1, that's saying something....

After the horrendous STAIRS FROM HELL we went in search of the Melba Gully Glow Worms!

Melba Gully is so beautiful!

The pathway follows a stream which probably flows to or from the Aire River. Apparently there are platypusses but we didn't see any.  We were here for the glow worms which are supposed to come out after dark.

There were interesting and curious fungi growing on trees.

And when the sun set, we saw lots of little glow worms with their blue lights. They were quite faint though. Not as bright as shown in photos of the internet.

Do you see that little blue speck in the middle-ish of the black space above? That's not dust on your screen. That's the only photo I could get. It was pitch dark and my little camera held it's opener thing open for a full 16 seconds to capture it. 

So despite the crappy weather, I loved the redwood forest. I wish it was closer to home as I would go rambling through it every weekend. 

 Thanks for visiting!

Louise

Red Haired Amazona