The Great Ocean Road, starting at Torquay about 100km southwest of Melbourne, and continuing about 200km west to Warrnambool, is justifiably famous as a scenic drive, built to rival California's road of a similar name (answers on a postcard...). Torquay is also pretty much the home of surfing in Australia, and there was another world-class surfing competition on around Easter at nearby Bells Beach. So, images of sun, sea, surf, and all-round fun in the sun in mind, we set off through the 'burbs of Melbourne (and through the 'burbs of Geelong) on Wednesday morning.
Unfortunately the weather had other ideas. It got cloudy. It got windy. It started to rain... At Torquay it was at least only drizzling (so reminding us of its namesake in Devon) but the cold was starting to bite. One lunch of hot pies (mmm... pie) later and we hot-footed it to Bells Beach to watch the surfers in action. It turned out that the world's best surfers are at least as big wusses as we are, and the action had stopped for the day. Nice view, though... what we saw of it anyway, as we lasted about three minutes before the weather drove us back into the van!
On to Lorne, which looked kinda pretty, except for the hotels, motels, holiday inn (?!)(sorry, excuse the interruption by the Sugar Hill Gang) and the hordes of school children on Easter break. We soon arrived, after driving through pastoral farmland and temperate rain forest, in Apollo Bay. On the way we were lucky enough to see some furry friends dangling from the eucalyptus trees above the road - along with several others we pulled in to take pictures and film the real live and wild koalas, who were not in the least bothered by us!
Campsite secured for the night we wimped out of cooking (the camp kitchen was rather exposed to the chilly elements) and found an excellent 'fish and chippery' to warm up in (mmm, fish and chips...). We watched the sun go down (or rather the daylight fade behind the stormy clouds) at the work-a-day wharf then sheltered in the van until we were tired enough to sleep. Oh dear, those big caravans the Aussies so love suddenly seemed so appealing.
The weather cheered up a little the next day as we drove on to 'the big tamale' (not literally) of the Great Ocean Road, namely the 'Twelve Apostles'. These are big stacks of limestone sat out in the surf - basically stubborn remnants of fast-eroding cliffs - and their image should be familiar to anyone who's ever seen a tourism advert for Australia. They were truly beautiful, and in fact equally beautiful scenery continued practically to the end of the Great Ocean Road. There were so many 'scenic lookouts' at cliff-tops, blowholes, and who-knows-what that by the time we got to the end we were thoroughly exhausted and treated ourselves to scones with jam and cream at a cheese museum. YEAH! We may be 30 but we still know how to have a rockin' good time on a Thursday afternoon...
At Warrnambool we had another chilly night, which helped us decide where to go next. Answer = somewhere warm, for pete's sake!
Robin and Hannah
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