The Twelve Apostles in Winter

Not twelve. Eight, maybe seven — the Southern Ocean is slowly dismantling them. Limestone sea stacks off Port Campbell National Park, named the Sow and Piglets until 1922 when someone decided that wasn't dramatic enough for one of the most dramatic landscapes on Earth.

Four-hour drive from Melbourne on the Great Ocean Road. In July — Southern Hemisphere winter — the tour buses don't arrive until ten and the cold keeps casual visitors in their cars. I had the viewing platform at eight AM nearly to myself. The wind was ferocious and salt-laden. The stacks rise from the sea like monuments to erosion, banded in cream and ochre recording twenty million years of geological time. Waves hit the base with a sound like controlled demolition.

Walk east to Loch Ard Gorge — a narrow inlet where the clipper Loch Ard wrecked in 1878, killing 52 of 54 passengers. The gorge water is impossible turquoise, eerily calm while the open ocean rages beyond.

Come in winter. I know the guidebooks say summer. In winter the light is dramatic, crowds are thin, and the Southern Ocean throws everything at the limestone, which takes it with the patience of something that knows it'll outlast the century but not the millennium. The Apostles are disappearing. That's their power.