No matter HOW many times I go and see this magnificent stretch of coast in south west Victoria - and I've lost count of how many over my lifetime - I never get tired of seeing the magnificent Apostles, limestone stacks reaching up out of deep blue waters and huge crashing waves. Today was much quieter than usual - wave wise and tourist wise.

The Twelve Apostles draw in two million visitors a year, many of them international tourists. In fact, it's one of the sites we take visitors to see if they're coming from overseas. It has been recorded as getting eleven thousand people a day - 15,000 one Christmas! According to Parks Victoria:

China is Victoria’s biggest international visitor market, with the latest tourism figures showing more than 650,000 people arriving during the year to September 2018, spending $3.2 billion.

There's a kind of poetry in imagining these sentinels standing immobile as the world collapse around them. They won't last forever - in fact, there isn't even twelve, and I do wish they'd revert to their original name, the Sow and Piglets. That covers the huge Mutton Island to their west, and the smaller stacks, some of which have crumbled to the sea. One bridge formation collapsed with tourists on it once, and they had to be helicoptered out!

The Apostles carpark is not the only place to see some pretty amazing coastline - travel further along to Loch Ard Gorge and the most incredible Thunder Cave, watching waves rush into a tiny cove and smash into a cave. Better than television - you could stand there almost an hour, which we did, easily. And the best thing was that there was NO ONE AROUND TO TAKE TURNS WITH!

There were more people at the Apostles lookout, but not as many on the other beaches - the one below, for example, had no one on it and we stood watching the waves for ages. Just magical.

I'm sure when Melbourne is let out next week there will be a lot more people around, but I can't imagine it will ever be as busy as 2019, when people were allowed to travel and the world didn't seem to be going quite as mad. Giant sentinels of the sea, pay no mind to us - we will be long gone by your time scale, no doubt.

Have you ever visited the Twelve Apostles? Drop me a photo of your coastline below for a tip!

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