The Great Ocean Road is silly busy during the summer season - busloads of tourists, vanlifers, Ferraris and carloads of P-platers and families alike flock to the coast for a taste of the ocean and the beauty that is this beautiful winding road built by returned soldiers after World War One and honouring those that died in World War Two. It's a living war memorial that stretches for 243 miles, passing alongside wild beaches, koala infested rainforests and limestone cliffs where shipwrecks rust on unforgiving shores.

We tend to steer clear in these months, only going down on sun up and leaving by 9 or 10 at the latest. It used to be that we had to at least 11 o'clock, but now the coast is full of sea-changers who too are taking advantages of the early mornings before the tourists that they once were stumble out of bed, organise the kids and make the beaches standing room only. Even the evenings, once still as the beach goers went home to nurse sunburn and enjoy barbecues, are busy. It seems the only gentle times are just before the dawn.

Lorne, Victoria - Summer Madness

Here all things responsive: flesh to the steady warmth of flesh, that all day soaks up sunlight, giving it back now, like the rocks, your body giving of its warm sea salt.
David Malouf

Sometimes, it's hot, and you just crave saltwater - so much so that you brave the midday sun and the crowds and inch your way down a winding bush road behind vehicles driven by imbeciles that drive like snails and refuse the 'slow vehicle turnout' signs and ignore - or don't see - the lines of traffic impatiently behind them. However, If you know where you're going, you can still find a spot where, miraculously, no one goes. It's this knowledge that we rely upon.

Driving past Lorne, Victoria, our anticipation the beach would be hella busy were confirmed. But it wasn't Lorne we were after, really, but a secret spot not far away from this tourist mecca. It's one of my favourite spots to swim when there's no surf and the swell isn't too big, and the tide is just right. There's rocks to jump off into turquoise pools and one particular pool that is small but deep enough to swim in, and the rushing water that comes through the rocks forms a fun 'slide' of water that shoots you into the pool if you time it right. In the video below, I don't time it right - Dtube and Youtube provided - but I couldn't talk my man into standing there videoing the perfect rock pool water shenanigans when he could be frolicking with me.

https://youtu.be/3lFUKFXL430?t=17

We are home now, and it's nearly 7 pm and 34 degrees. We're wishing we were down there still, but then, all good things must end so that they might begin again. We'll be heading down again tomorrow, and the day after that, and all the days until work calls us away. It might not be in this nook, but another, and another - all the nooks that aren't overrun and overcrowded and feel like just for us.

But - oh, you might say - where exactly is it? And what tide is best? And is there parking? What about a shop?

It's not called a secret spot for nothin', you know.

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