Watch out for that tree! Ziplining in The Otways

I’ve been on a slight hiatus, Jarrod but rest assured I’m BACK, like a coldsore you’d almost forgotten, or another John Farnham ‘farewell’ tour. (Both of which elicit a similar reaction, that being ‘oh Jesus, surely not AGAIN?’) Ready to tell you about one of my latest local adventures, ziplining in The Otways. Being my brother, I would hope you’d remember that I’ve actually done ziplining once before, in Costa Rica back in 2012 #humblebrag. And while it scared me completely witless, it remains one of the most amazing, exhilarating, breathtaking, going to stop with the superlativ-ating things I’ve ever done on my travels.

Quietly terrifed

Here I am before the first of 15 ziplines in CR. I’m smiling, mainly because I’d decided that if this was going to be the last photo taken of me, I didn’t want my family to think I had been fighting back chickenshit tears minutes before my heart gave out on the beginner line. We did 2 miles of cables in all, and as you can see, I became more relaxed as I conquered them one by one.

LIKE A ZIPLINING BOSS!

As you can also see we were up quite high at some points. That little blip is me. I promise.

Decent altitude really…

The piece de resistance though, was the final, ONE KILOMETRE LONG zipline which you could do strapped in prone, so that you flew like Superman. Little sidebar: should you find yourself at this attraction in CR, when they say as they release you “keep your arms close to your body” to reduce resistance, they mean do that initially. They don’t mean keep your arms clamped to your sides for the entire 1km trip. From personal experience, doing so makes for astronomical acceleration. So much so, that as you are approaching the end point, you’re going so fast that you don’t see how you are actually going to stop without your body just shearing right through the harness, like butter through a Kitchen Ninja’s trademark laser sharp blades. It’s not exactly encouraging when you can see the staff on the end who brake you frantically dashing about and shouting to one another in Spanish as you approach at high speed. They kept throwing extra brake lines over the cable and I mentally fast forwarded to the coroner telling my parents it was the first time he had ever documented Cause Of Death as ‘Julienned’ (“Rest assured, she didn’t suffer, Mr and Mrs Mckay… and really, you have to admire how clean the slices are. Crudite?”)

Moving like a freaking bullet

So, *insert elaborate time travel special effect* back to present tense. The ziplining experience at Otway fly costs $114 per adult if you pre-book on line or $120 if you just show up on the day, and it includes admission to the beautiful treetop canopy walk. And it’s roughly 2.5 hours from Melbourne.

Now at this point I need to apologise profusely, normally I would have loads of beautiful pictures to accompany text but I’ve had a back up of files disaster of sorts and they have all gone MIA. Not in the cloud. Fallen mysteriously off the hard drive. I am crushed but there are going to be no stunning pics with catchy quips :'( Just words and lotttts of them

My blog-scursion partner in crime is the lovely Lisa, whom you might remember from The Japanese Bath House or The Babes In The Woods blogs. We don’t have the best track record of navigating our way to attractions successfully so we set off in the morning after breakfasting in nearby Kennett River with (cough, what should be) plenty of time before we’re due to check in. We are nudging the red danger zone on the petrol indicator and I venture that we have time to drive the extra 6km into Apollo Bay to fill up. Lisa gives the appearance of doing some mental calculation about litres versus kms, but for all I know she could be thinking about cheese. She says “no, we should be right…” and outside the car, I’m fairly certain the headlights do a double take.

So we loop up up up up up through The Otways. Here’s a fun tip for you – if you’re a person prone to car sickness on windy drives, someone telling you that you might run out of petrol and get stranded and miss your zipline thus forfeiting your $114, well, that gives you something to focus on and you won’t feel nauseous at all. The petrol light comes on/goes off/comes on a few times just to keep things interesting, but we make it to the Fly complex 45 mins ahead of kick off. We high five and my heart rate returns to it’s usual 85 bpm. Cardio for the day, done!

Or IS IT?

We decide to knock over the canopy walk before our zipline and make the rookie error of neglecting to ask the staff there how long the return trip usually takes. As it turns out, the walk down to even start the treetop walk takes a good 15 minutes. Nonetheless, we climb up and wander about in the treetops. It’s peaceful, still, just downright beautiful, with abundant ferns below seeming to beckon like frondy pillows whispering “jump! jump! Don’t worry, we’ll catch you…” Sadly we can’t really relax and take our time here because we have one eye on the clock the entire time. We head back down the stairs and locate the sign leading back to the visitor centre and to our horror it says that it’s 1.36km. We have four minutes to get there and it’s all uphill. In rainforesty humidity. We commence that ludicrous not-quite-a-jog but not-a-walk-either bustle, the sort of trot you see on someone who doesn’t want to give the appearance of running away. Did I mention the humidity? We’re sweating profusely and the people ambling down to do their treetop walk all look vaguely alarmed that we seem to be fleeing the scene.

But we make it. Just a few minutes late. We’re ushered into a side room and kitted out in our harnesses and helmets and given our safety briefing. These harnesses are different to the ones I used in Costa Rica where you used your hands for breaking. This set up is more like a flying fox where you sit back, hang in the harness for your flight and land on a spot mat to land. We’re gravely instructed NOT to put our hands anywhere up near the line or we may lose fingers. Cue panic on my part that it’ll be a case of old habits die hard. Jesus. When I move from driving my European manufactured Astra to another car it takes DAYS to remember that the indicator is on the other side.

We swagger down to the start point (ha, not because I’m feeling cocky, rather because, as I’ve always maintained, you simply can’t walk in a harness without a swagger), and climb the spiral staircase for the first station. One by one we are clipped onto the line which is continuous, your harness remains attached from start to finish. Time for the first line. You might think having done it before it would be a breeze but no, there is always that moment of unease. You’re up high, not holding onto anything, lifting one foot, then the other so that you’re just sitting in the harness and waiting for a push to send you flying. But after that it’s not scary at all. I’ts really lovely. Flying over ferns, past gigantic Blackwoods and Mountain Ash trees. Approach the landing mat, lift legs up like you’re going to put them into stirrups at a gynos and then quickly propel yourself forward to stand. (That last bit you don’t do at the gynos)

You do 6 flights and traverse 2 suspension bridges over the course of the Fly. The longest line is about 70ms and you do get a bit of speed up on that one.

There’s one line where because of the dip in the middle, you actually slow a bit towards the end. (Honestly, the harness on the line emits a noise like batteries running out on a remote controlled car). Because you don’t have the usual momentum and forward propulsion, you have to reach out and grab a catch rope as you’re coming in to land. Failure to do so means you’ll just roll back on the line and dangle some ten metres from the landing station like a pathetic sock left on a clothesline, and the instructor will have to pull himself out, give you the rope and then pull you BOTH back to the landing point hand over hand. Just a week prior to our visit, the instructor had a 115kg guy miss the rope catch, and physics being the annoying thing it is, he rolled back down the line to almost the half way point. He had to zip out, give him the tow rope and laboriously pull him back to the spot mat at which point said 115kg guy accidentally let go of the rope and rolled back out there. Seriously, I would have gone back out to get him but produced secateurs and cut him loose. All of us NAIL that particular landing. You have never seen faces so grimly determined to catch a rope.

We do have one minor rescue where a chap in our group hits the edge of the landing mat and is pushed back but aside from that we have a contingent of complete champions. It’s a gorgeous afternoon and while it’s nowhere near as dizzying in terms of height or length of the lines in Costa Rica (yes, I know it’s getting obnoxious now…) it’s a great afternoon in exquisite surrounds and we’re left feeling positively zen afterwards.

So, as always, throwing it over to you, Jarrod. The Otway Fly- Jarrod, would you go there?