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Located on the Great
Ocean Road, Port Campbell is a small picturesque
coastal town in Victoria. A long time ago, the
Twelve Apostles, huge rock stacks that stands
offshore near Port Campbell in southeast
Australia, were part of the jagged limestone
cliffs. These stacks have survived thousands of
years of battering by relentless seas as the
rock around them was slowly chipped away causing
them to stand alone and acting as markers of an
earlier shoreline.
 Huge waves continue
to batter and reshape the cliffs, which stretch
for almost thirty two kilometers. In 1990,
London Bridge, a natural pier jutting into the
ocean, with two graceful arches worn away by the
action of the sea had one of its arch broken by
strong winds that whipped up the waves below
causing forty meters of London Bridge, its link
with the land to disappear forever. In time, the
relentless waves will bring down the other arch
as well. This town is an ideal place to spend a
relaxing weekend and it is occupied by visitors
visiting the Twelve Apostles and the Port
Campbell National Park.
All along the Port
Campbell shore, a national park, rocky islets of
different shapes and sizes such as wedges,
stacks, grottoes, chimneys and arches can be
seen rising starkly from the ocean. The ghost of
the now vanished shoreline appears when you join
them up in a simple line. The Twelve Apostles
and London Bridge, with close by formations such
as Sentinel Rock, Baker's Oven and Thunder Cave,
are links in this ancient chain. The Port
Campbell rock is limestone formed twenty six
million years ago when the whole place was under
the sea. Millions of tiny skeletons, from dead
marine animals, rich in calcium accumulated on
the seabed which slowly built up to two hundred
and sixty meters of limestone on top of the soft
clay floor. The rock was exposed when the sea
level dropped during the last Ice Age. The soft
bluffs was then constantly being hit by wind,
rain and waves sending chucks of land dropping
into the ocean. In certain areas, the coastline
has retreated uniformly, leaving no clues to its
original shape but in other places, the weaker
sections gave way first and thus creating the
stacks and arches of today.
The Southern Ocean
is whipped up here by strong winds known as the
'Roaring Forties' and these huge storm waves may
cut ledges in the limestone some sixty meters
above the high tide mark. Near to the Thunder
Cave, The Blowhole demonstrates how the sea
exploits weaker beds in the rock to encroach on
the land. Here the water thunders underground
for four hundred meters along a wave-carved
tunnel and in areas where the roof has caved in,
tourists can peer down a 'blowhole' at the water
churning below.
The scenic stacks
has become a major tourist attraction and
visitors come from all over the world all year
round. For bird lovers, the best time to visit
is during late September when the Tasmanian
mutton bird (also known as the short-tailed
shearwater) come here to breed on the rocky
outcrops of the largest stack, Mutton Bird
Island. Nesting burrows too can be seen here
together with other types of birds such as
albatrosses, gannets, cormorants and petrels.
During winter, southern right whales pass by on
their way from Antarctic to their breeding
grounds off the Great Australia Blight although
a few may choose to breed here.
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