What do you call a road that is by the ocean and is amazing? The Great Ocean Road, of course! Just over an hour away from Melbourne starts the epic drive along amazing scenery, daunting cliffs, major waves, small beaches, quaint towns, with koalas and kangaroos around to complete the picturesque image of Australia. It's an iconic trip and after Melbourne, is the most popular thing to see in the state of Victoria. I'd been on it 4 years ago as part of a surf trip, which was amazing, and yet we didn't see the main sights. This time, it was more relaxed, with lots of stops, lots of sights and some great adventures with 4 people having fun driving on the left and laughing it up.
Via a new car sharing website, where you rent fellow people's cars (rather than have them sit on the street unused), we rented Shaun's car, an older Mitsubishi that was already a bit dinged up, which is perfect for a road trip in Australia. All set to rock with our gear, I drove us off to the Great Ocean Road. Fun driving on the left again, and running the show, and then stopping whenever I wanted. The beaches out here actually have waves and offer both great surf and the opposite of just hellish waves destroying the coast. Fun to look at and we did get in some swimming, although it was on the cold side. Going into autumn these days, and yet the sun was shining and we were in sandals and shorts.
The small towns are pretty cool and made for nice coffee breaks and walks on the beach. The epic scenery of the cliffs and rocks were to come on the second day, so we stopped off in towns, beaches and took our time with good viewpoints and koala spotting. Had probably the best view of a koala in the wild in all my 4 times in Australia. It was smiling and winking the whole time, as it lived the life of a celebrity 5 meters up above, dazed on eucalyptus. In the distance were kangaroos later on, some colourful birds around as well as a porcupine walking across the road. We tried for a sunset at the 2nd most southern point in Victoria, only to walk through 10 ft bushes the whole time with no end in sight for 30 minutes.
Dinner was at the only place around the area (literally 45 minutes from anything) and was the antithesis of American service. Order at counter. Take your cutlery with you. And the answer to can we have some water for the table? "No." Sort of a motor inn/diner/empty place in the middle of nowhere. Entertaining and we managed to laugh it up before driving off in the dark to a free campground to set up the tent.
With 4 people, we had 1 sleeping bag between us (plus random duvets) and 1 huge tent. The tent turned out to be a large 4 person tent with attached foyer, and not the right amount of poles. Quite entertaining to set up, and we had the neighboring Germans help us as well. Ended up with one huge rainbow pole over everything, one end sticking up and no rain cover. This would be a major fault due to the fact that it was mostly mesh all up top, and that it would begin raining in the morning. Pierre, our resident French traveler who had no blankets, slept in the car, while myself with my visiting friend Katrin and other traveler Mollie bundled up in the middle to try to stay warm. Sprinklets of dew would wake us up with wind in the trees. Once it started drizzling, but that stopped so we kept sleeping.
We awoke to our foyer collapsed into the rest of the tent and it raining. Some puddles in the corners and everything a bit damp, so we grabbed what we could to go to the car, and as we exited, the tent fell completely down, poles included. With a few hours sleep in us, and a fogged up car, we headed back to our finest diner for a coffee. Turns out the place across the street was open, with great people, good Aussie service and tasty egg McMuffin sandwiches. Made the morning that much better before setting off for the 12 Apostles.
The 12 Apostles (currently 7 due to erosion) are epicly placed out in the ocean and are massive. Very impressive and are perhaps the most photographed place in Victoria. Definitely worth a trip out there and we snapped away our cameras while being blown around by the wind. We walked along the beach soaking up the view (had stopped raining by then) and after kept moving our way west to see the other main spots such as the arch (an arch), the London Bridge (currently an arch due to the rest of the bridge collapsing in 1990), the Grotto (arch with grotto-like characteristics on the ocean) and the thundering cave (ba-boom! noises).
Some more small towns and that was it, time to turn around and head back to Melbourne through the green hills, past the sheep, into the dry flatlands that is Vicoria and back to the city. Stopped at a rest area to change drivers and helped an Aussie couple change their tire with the jack in our truck and were deemed good Samaritans for the day. Just an all around amazing road trip right before the Easter weekend Good times indeed!
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| Pierre, me, Mollie and Katrin |
