The Otways forest is my home - hectares upon hectares of forest, with beautiful waterfalls, treeferns, bush tracks, lakes and tall trees leading down to the ocean. I'm so lucky to live by it, but to be honest, I've hardly even touched the surface of what it offers. Having an old Series Landrover called Buttercup has changed that somewhat, and we've been exploring different roads over the last few months with a view to creating quite a different map of the Otways for our memories.

Take the drive to the 12 Apostles, for example. From where I live, the drive has always been fairly straight forward. Go west on the Princes Highway til you hit Colac, turn left and drive all the way to Beech Forest, turn right and drive through Lavers Hill towards Port Campbell. Two turnings, and about an hour and a half drive.

But what if we traversed west to east and spent as little time on tarmac as possible? Where would the road take us then?

Turns out some pretty beautiful places - sand tracks with stunning grass trees and their odd flowering spikes, for one. I didn't even know the Otways had sand tracks like that!

It'd also take us through beautiful farming land, dairy farms with stunning views across magnificent grassed valleys.

We had a picnic at Carlisle River rec ground, cooking up a lovely feast of halloumi, tomatoes, mushrooms and asparagus - beats bacon and eggs anyday. One of the cool things about Australia is the free gas barbecues - even in the middle of nowhere! Find a recreation ground, and you'll be bound to find a tap and a free barbie.

Funny thing was, though we had never been there before, and there's only a handful of houses in town and a few beautiful big properties along the river, we actually MET a guy from there when he came over to pick up free bricks I had advertised. He'd bought a 10 acre property for 420K in March, moving in just before the first lockdown. He pretty much sits on his balcony and takes photos of platypus down by the river. Reckons he was bitten by a tiger snake a few months back, called the ambulance who took him to the nearest hospital and he was fine. He also reckons his property has doubled in value since then - everyone wants a treechange out of the city after strident lock down laws, I guess. There's some absolute paradisicial properties out there, river frontages and beautiful views. Still, a bit far out for us!

If you're not pushed for time, I highly recommend zig zagging across country to get back to the city from down the coast - it's worth a day trip in itself. I don't think hardly anyone does it - people like to get to their destination as fast as possible, but you sure miss out on a lot on the way.

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