PHOTO: Great Ocean Road, Australia


This is a photo of some of the limestone stacks known as the Twelve Apostles along the coast of Victoria in south-eastern Australia.

Their name has nothing to do with religion, although it can be a spiritual experience sitting and waiting quietly as the sun sets behind the limestone stacks. The colours, sounds, smells, and sensations make you feel alive. 

The limestone that helped to create the Twelve Apostles is said to have been formed between five to fifteen million years ago. Harsh weather conditions from the Southern Ocean eroded the limestone to form sea-caves beneath the overlying land. Over time, the overlying land collapsed, leaving offshore stacks standing in the ocean, hundreds of metres away from the mainland to which they were once attached. The stacks can reach heights of one hundred and fifty feet.

The area around the Great Ocean Road spans the traditional Aboriginal Australian country of the Wadawurrung, Gadubanud, and Kirrae Whurrong clans and language groups of the Kulin nation. 

When we walk on this ground or swim in this ocean we should be amazed, and we should also feel very humble. Are we not but a small speck in the grandeur of this? Are we also not an elemental part of it?


Image: Twelve Apostles, Great Ocean Road, Victoria, Australia. Copyright - Michael Beaton

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