South West Victoria - Caravan Trip

Welcome back to another episode! In this one we head to South West Victoria and stop off at - 
- Stevensons falls free camp in the Otways
- Warrnambool Playground and Beach
- Free camp at Swan Lake 
- Portland & sights
- Port Fairy

Definitely an area we'd come back to in summer, but would stay at Port Fairy or Warrnambol. If you liked this video be sure to like and subscribe to follow along. You can also find us on Instagram Shire.travels and Youtube, search Shire Travels.

Transcript

Welcome back to Shire Travels. In this one, we are heading to southwest Victoria. We did this trip in December last year, and it was one of the first trips we did with our new caravan. We bought a Mars Ranger X family. It's a small 14 foot caravan, single axle lightweight. It's got bunks, an internal bathroom at King size bed, then outside, it's got a huge hatch kitchen and heaps of storage. On this trip, we're heading down to Swan Lake Campground, which is about 20 minutes west of Portland. Now, this is about three and a half hours from Melbourne, and because it's so far away, we decided to stop off at Stevenson's Falls campground in the Otways for our first night. Before we could get there, though, we did did have to make our way across the city. Now we did this on a Thursday afternoon, so it wasn't too bad with traffic, but still, towing through Melbourne CBD is never fun. Our first stop was to a very random playground. It which was kind of in the middle of nowhere. It wasn't really a town. I wouldn't even call it a village, but they had a playground and a sports over. Playground was really good. It had toilets, barbeques, those sorts of things. It was actually quite modern and in really good neck. But there had a way to Stevenson Falls campground. As I mentioned before, our van is 14 foot. and I'm quite glad it isn't any bigger because the road into Stevenson Falls, I think we went off Forest Road was very windy. And if we met a car coming the other way, to be honest, I don't really know what we would have done. If you have a bigger van, it's probably worth checking out to see if there's an alternative way in. I'm pretty sure there is a different way to get there. Stevenson Falls campground is great. It is a free campground. There's toilets for facilities there. They also have picnic benches and fire pits. Because we were there on a Thursday night, it was really quiet, and because we were leaving really early the next day, we didn't bother and hitching, we found it very large bay that we could pull into just off the main track that runs through the campsite. It meant that we didn't have to unhitch, which was perfect. Now, this campground is pretty big. There's probably about 20 sites, I'd say, maybe a few more. They range in sizes, some of them would fit, maybe only rooftop tents or normal tents. Others would fit motor homes. And there's a few where you can fit a caravan. I have seen pictures on reviews on wiki camps of people who have camped there on long weekends, for example, and it is absolutely packed. So just bear that in mind. We thought this campsite was great. It had so much bird life. It was amazing just to sit out in the evening and listen to all the different birds. It's also a short walk from Stevenson's Falls, probably only three or 4Ks. For us with two little kids that was going to be too far. We decided to visit the waterfall early the next morning and you can park closer. Now, this campground doesn't have any sort of power or water. As I said, there are some drop toilets, but that is pretty much it. You will need to be self-contained and self-efficient if you are staying there. There's quite a few trees around, so I'm not sure if it's the best spot to get solar. The next morning we got up early and we drove down to Stevenson Falls. Now, the last time we visited, it was a little bit different. The car park was a gravel pit and it was slightly closer to the waterfall. It's now all been redone. There's a proper roads and parking areas that are set out. Because of this, it was a little bit tricky getting the caravan in and out of there. As I mentioned before, I would not recommend going again in there with a bigger caravan. We did have to do kind of an Austin power style 500 point turn to get it out. It wasn't too bad, though. There was no one else there. The walk to the waterfall itself was fantasticantastic. Now it is pram friendly and it's also wheelchair friendly. There are toilets at the start, and then it's an easy walk along a gravel, flat path. The waterfall also has a couple of different viewing areas and platforms. There's one where you can go up with a few steps and get a little bit closer. We were there quite early in the morning and if you were there around midday, you'd get the sun right on the falls and it would look fantastic. It's a really beautiful spot. If you're heading through the otways or anywhere near the Great Ocean Road, then it's one to check out. On the walk back to the car, we actually took a bit of a sidetrack, up a few steps, carrying the pram, and we did the redwood walk on the way back. It's only a very short sidetrack, but I do have to go up some steps at one end, so just bear that in mind. Once we had eventually turned around, we made our way to Warnambal to have some lunch. We had never been to Warnamburg before and we were absolutely blown away, just how beautiful it was. They obviously have a very good budget for their parks and gardens because the parks around there were just so well maintained. The grass was perfectly trimmed and green. There was lovely flowers everywhere. The playgrounds were fantastic. It just looked so well kept. For lunch, we stopped at Lake Petrobe at Playground. There's actually quite a few playgrounds all scattered around the lake. We found one with a really big car park and there was plenty of places for us to pull up. They didn't have a designated caravan parking area, but because it was quiet, we just parked across a few bays and then we weren't in anyone's way. The playground was great. It had toiletsets, barbeque facilities, plenty of places to sit down or run around. There were also some very cheeky birds there that tried to steal our lunch. We also found a really big, tall metal slide there and hyped up while we rode up to go on it, got all the way to the top, and it was the world's slest side. Honestly, it took about 25 seconds to get all the way down to the bottom. In saying that, though, there are heaps of different playgrounds, always different things on them for different kids. There's even a water play area, there's plenty to do there. Once we finished lunch, we drove about five minutes down the road to Stingray Bay. Now, there's an island there just off Stingray Bay, and that was in the film Audible. That's the movie about the penguins that get protected by the Marima or the sheepdog. It's a really beautiful spot. There's also a very shallow estuary that flows out to the ocean, very family friendly, perfect for little kids, just splashing around, paddling in the water. One thing we notice as well is that there are heaps of caravans around that area, around the Lake Petrobe and Stingray Bay. Area, there were just so many different caravan parks. It's one of those places that we have on our list to come back to in summer. Everything was very easy walking distance and it looks like a great family friendly place to hang out for a few days. After lunch, it was onto our final destination, which was Swan Lake Campground. Now, this Camp railway was a little bit of a random one. When the Victorian government announced the free camping initiative, I went online straightway and booked a heap of different campsites. This is an area that we hadn't exploreable before, so I just thought, yeah, why not? I'll book it. It's free. And I think free was a very fair price for this campground. It only has five sides, a drop toilet, which is a good 200 metre walk from the campground, and that is it. It's a bit confusing as well when you look on the map online as to what site you're going to book, as to where exactly you need to be, and then when we got there as well, it was also very confusing. If you have a look at our footage on YouTube, you'll be able to see what I mean. The campsite also offers it nothing in terms of facilities. As I said, there's one drop toilet, but apart from that, there's no power, no water. It really is just a very uneven gravel pit. Now, when we booked it, it did say that you could drive down to the beach. Now, we couldn't see the track down to the beach. I mean, we didn't really look that hard, but it did say that one one, you can't drive on the beach. You're also not allowed to stray off the track. unless you have a permit from the buggy club in order to drive on the sand dunes. The sand dunes, again, were something a little bit different, that appealed to us, but when we got there, the sign said that you needed to apply for a permit from the buggy club and it took about three weeks to obtain. And so that just wasn't going to be an option for us. The buggy club was also owns a huge campsite, which is just behind Swang Lake campsite. It looked very nice, well maintained, much nicer than the Parks Vit campsite. Now, when I was doing a bit of research for a YouTube video and getting some screenshots of the campground, I had a look at how much the price is for a night. It's one lake campground outside of the free camping initiative. And I was quite gobsack to see that the normal price is $30 a night. Now, it is currently the Victorian government's half price camping scheme, so it's only $15 a night in saying that, though I do not think it is worth $15 at all. As I said, we stay there because it was somewhat close to Portland, but even so, it's probably a good 20 minutes away. It really isn't near anything, and I just don't know how they can charge that much money per night, particularly when all the sitights there aren't clearly marked, it hasn't been graded in a long time. All the bollards and everything in the campsite are all rotting and fallen down. I'm all for paying for campground fees when you can see that it's actually being used to maintain the area, but this one just isn't being looked after. Anyway, we set ourselves up on site three and we rolled in and it was probably about 32 degrees, very hot, trying trying to get ourselves set up, and then we realised that the storage area on the caravan where you turn the handles in order to open it up, something had got itself stuck underneath and we couldn't open the latch. There's nothing like having a couple of overtard, hungry, screaming children yelling at you when it's 32 degrees and you can't get into the caravan. Four hours from home trying to work out exactly what you're going to do In the end, I had to get a crowbar and a hammer and prize the door open and be able to push up whatever was inside. It was a nightmare and we were very lucky that we didn't have to damage the door in order to get into the caravan. Tom has since created a couple of boxes that fit over the latches just to make sure that it can't happen again. Once we finally were set up, though, we we just had some dinner. The kids went to bed and we sat outside. I also flew the drone around and got some really nice footage of the sunset over the ocean and the dunes. It was also a very quiet campground. There was only one other person staying there in a tent. The next morning, we woke up early and the weather wasn't looking great. Typical, Victoria, one day it' 32 degrees next day it's 15. We decided to drive down to a couple of the local sites and one of them is the petrified forest. We decided to take the dirt, kind of back rows to get down there just for something a little bit different. We saw some emusus running down the track, which was pretty cool. And then when we came out to the main road, we saw a koala that had got itself stuck behind someone's fence. Aside from being a little bit confused as to why it couldn't get through the fence, it looked looked perfectly unharmed, and so we left it be and went on our way. Now, the petrified forest is located right on the edge of the coast, and it's extremely windy there. No surprise then that it is the location of a large wind farm. Now, we bundled ourselves up and made our way over to the petrified forest. It was probably about a five, 10 minute walk. We took the pram with this, and I'd say it would be pr pram friendly, probably wouldn't be wheelchair friendly. The petrified forest was quite interesting. It's petrified or kind of frozen tree stumps, which are in the rocks. It's right next to the cliff edge as well, and there's a bit of a viewing platform where you can have a look out and see the ocean. When we walked back to the car, there was also an area you could turn off to left and see some sea lions. We had a quick look there. Actually, there might have been seals. We had a quick look, couldn't see anything. And so made our way back to the car before we got blown away. We then decided to head into Portland to have a lunch break and I identified a bit of research on Google Maps just to find playgrounds in the area and there was a couple on the foreshore. Now, the foreshore area is directly opposite the large port they have there. That's right, Portland, not just a clever name. And I think the main exp that they have there is some sort of wood chip. Now, what was interesting, at least I found it interesting, was when they bring the trucks in full of wood chips, to get the wood chips out, they have three different platforms that the trucks go up on and they lift them, I'd say about 70 to 80 degrees high up in the air and tip the trucks all the way back so that everything falls out. It seems like a really unneconomical way to empty a truck rather than just having tip the trucks who can tip the wood chips out themselves. But I guess they're the experts they know what they're're doing. It's still quite interesting to see, though, it just hit them a little time to get the truck up on the platform, but you can see it away in the distance when you sit at the foreshort area. We just found a small playground to stop at. And actually when we left, we found a bigger playground that had toilets just a little bit further down the road. The one we were at was nice enough, though. Been saying that the weather wasn't great. While we were sat there, we also saw the tram go go past. This is the tram they have that runs through the middle of the town. I think you can get tickets at the visitors centre and they tell you all about the local history. We then slowly made our way back to camp and had an early night. The next day, the weather was looking more promising, so we decided to drive to Port Fy. This was probably about a 45 minute hour drive from our campsite, and we decided to explore Griffith Island. Griffiths Island is just off the edge of Port Ferry. There was plenty of parking there, and opposite the car park, there was also a playground and toilets. Now, you can walk the whole way around the island, however that desert involve walking on the beach, because we had the pram with us, we just decided to, as you head onto the island, turn the left, and go down to the lighthouse and back, and that was perfectly pram friendly. The waterways in the island there was absolutely stunning, really crystal clear, shallow blue water. There was also some wildlife on the islands, wall wallabies, butterflies, birds. It was a really nice walk. We made our way down to the lighthouse, Typical Melbourne weather, we left all rugged up, and then by the time we got back, we were boiling hot and a little bit of sunburnt. Just be aware that it really isn't any shape on the walk at all. We then headed to the playground for a quick play and then we decided to head into Port Ferry to have some dinner. We just found a random Italian place to have dinner. But one thing that was quite interesting was they had a robot waiter, how why they had it, I have no idea, but the kids thought it was pretty funny. We really liked poor Fairy and it was one of those towns that we had definitely come back to. Do't wrong, Portland was okay, but Port Fairy is just much prettier with a beautiful river running through it, the island, lots of nice beaches. It just has a really nice summer vibe. Back at camp, we really didn't do too much. The kids just played around in the sand at the campsite, and that was pretty much it. When we woke up the next day, it was pouring with rain, which really isn't ideal when you need to pack up. Anyway, we got ourselves all packed up when we started the four-hour drive back to Melbourne. We decided to take the inland roads rather than the great ocean roads, head back to Melbourne. We just know from experience, particularly when it's raining, it can be really frustrating and getting stuck behind a lot of traffic, particularly those damn caravannas, yep, that's us now. This was a really good weekend away. While the campground wasn't anything amazing, it was good to expect explore a couple of brand new places, and Warnabool and Port Ferry are a couple that we can definitely see ourselves going back to in future. If you want to see any footage of this trip, make sure you check out our YouTube channel, Shire Travels, and you can also find us on Instagram at Shire.travels. Thanks for listening and I'll see you in the next one.