The Great Ocean Road

Holy cow, what an amazing trip!

I'll admit, waiting for Jen and Irene to get home from work on Friday was pure torture. I wanted to get on the road SO BADLY but of course I couldn't until they got home! I picked the car up in mid-afternoon and had all our gear and food waiting at the front door, so when the others finally did get home, we could be on our way in no time flat. Since I was the one to pick up the car, I had to drive - neither Jen nor Irene was on the insurance. Yet. Our plan had been to stop at another Europcar location on our way to the Great Ocean Road and have them put on the insurance so they could help me drive. Well, that didn't work out quite the way we'd planned it! There is a Europcar store relatively close to our house - but it was closed by the time we got there. And although we'd fully expected to be able to find one in Geelong if nowhere else, luck wasn't with us. So in the end, I wound up as the chauffeur for the entire trip. I didn't really mind though - it was a great experience to drive that road, and I'd happily do it again!

Both Irene and I took our cameras, and between us we snapped about eight zillion photos. I put up the best of them on facebook, in two albums - The Great Ocean Road Volume One and Volume Two. Be sure to check them out.

Our goal on Friday night was to make it to the town of Lorne, which is basically at the start of the Great Ocean Road itself. This was about a 3 1/2 hour drive from the city, through rush hour traffic. For the most part the driving wasn't bad, once I got used to merging into traffic backwards and all. And once we were out of the city and on the country roads, everything was fine. Of course, once we reached the Great Ocean Road, the route was extremely windey and hilly and twisty - but none of that mattered. The views and vistas along the way were totally worth it. The only thing I found myself getting annoyed with concerning the driving was the way in which the speed limits were posted. It never failed - first there'd be a sign stating the speed limit was 100km/h, and then within 50 metres there'd be a sign stating I needed to slow down to 40km/h so I could round a corner. Why the speed limit on the entire road wasn't lower was completely beyond me. On the other hand, they also had constructed numerous areas along the length of the highway where slower vehicles could pull over to let other people by. I thought this was a great idea - at no place along the Great Ocean Road is there a stretch long enough (or wide enough!) to put in passing lanes as we know them.

Back to the adventure. We needed to get to Lorne by 9pm on Friday - we had a reservation at the hostel there and needed to arrive before they closed for the night. It was easy to get distracted by the scenery as we drove though! After having the third or fourth beautiful beach roll by on our left, we decided we needed to get down to the sand and enjoy the waters for a bit! So at the very next beach turnoff, that's exactly what we did. And here's what I love so much about Australian natural attractions - there aren't eight kajillion people everywhere! We were the only people on that huge long stretch of beach. I quickly discovered that this stretch of Australia must have quite the cuttlefish population - the beach was littered with cuttlebones. Some of them were about the size of my pinkie finger, and some were as large as footballs! Cool! I collected a few small ones to bring home with me.

Once we'd enjoyed the beach and the surf for a while, we knew we had to get back on the road. It was probably about 7pm by now and Jen and I still hadn't had any dinner (Irene had asked us to stop at a Mc Donald's on the way out of Melbourne - she'd had a really bad day at work and wanted some comfort food). So off we went again down the highway... and after only a few more twists and turns, we came across a whole troop of 25 or more eastern grey kangaroos - munching on the greenery in a field at the side of the road, much like deer do back home! We turned the car around as soon as it was safe to do so and drove back to where we'd spotted the roos (this put us on the right side of the road for some good - and safe - picture taking) - and then we snapped about eight thousand picutres and even a short video! It was amazing. They didn't appear to be at all concerend about us being there, and just went on nibbling away at the plant life around them. A couple of the females in the group had joeys in their pouches, so we got to see them too. It was so incredibly cool! Unfortunately, we did have a date to keep in Lorne, so we eventually had to drive off and leave the kangaroos grazing away. But that memory is going to stay with me for a long time.

We finally arrived in Lorne about 8:30pm, just as the sun was setting, to discover that our hostel for the night was actually a whole series of really quaint little cottages, all nestled together on a hillside overlooking the town. We had managed to get ourselves a private room (hooray! No sharing!) and were looking forward to dumping our stuff and heading into town to find some dinner before all the restaurants closed down. (As a sidebar, that's one thing I'm finding a little annoying about traveling in rural Australia - even in tourist towns like Lorne, the majority of the restaurants close pretty early by Canadian standards!) Well it turned out that our room was basically a loft in one of the cottages - we had to climb an almost ladder-like staircase to get to it! Let me tell you, getting our suitcases up that ladder was a bit of a challenge. Good thing we were traveling relatively lightly!

After dumping our gear and pulling out our sweaters (we're finally getting used to how it cools off here at night), we headed into Lorne to find something to eat. True to form, most of the few restaurants still open were way beyond our price range. We settled for a tiny little take-out pizza joint, where we ordered personal pizzas with all sorts of strange toppings. I don't know quite how I managed it, but I ended up ordering a pizza with anchovies on it - and I don't like anchovies. On the other hand, by the time the pizza arrived, I was so hungry I just ate it anyway. I mean, really. There we were, sitting at outdoor tables, sipping lemonade and eating pizza, under a full moon in late November. Who cares what the toppings on the pizza were?

The next morning, we woke to find that the hostel had apparently been invaded by the local parrot population. There were tons of white cockatoos in the trees, and also scarlet rosellas and king parrots, to name a few. One of the king parrots was obviously not afraid of people at all and it flew over to check us out and see if we had any food! The parrots also joined us for breakfast, as we ate on the patio outside the hostel's kitchen. Fortunately here the parrots stuck to the fig trees and pretty much left us alone. Craziness!

We took a short side-trip up into the hills behind Lorne to go and investigate Erksine Falls. There are lots of waterfalls to explore along this part of the Great Ocean Road and we knew there'd be no way we'd be able to see them all; we decided on Erksine Falls mostly because it was closest to our present location. The walk down to the bottom of the falls was down a long set of steep stairs which my knees didn't like much, but the view from the base was worth it. I love the lush rain forest that grows in the valleys here in the southern part of Australia; every time I descend into it, it feels like I'm stepping back in time.

After the falls, we were originally going to drive straight out of Lorne and on to our next stop at Apollo Bay... but then we found the trampolines. Yep, as we rounded a corner of the Great Ocean Road on our way out of Lorne, we came across a family recreation park like no other. It was right on the ocean (as everything is here), and there was a playground, a swimming pool, a skate park, and, you guessed it, about 16 trampolines that you could rent out to play on! Jen and I paid our $2.50 each so we could bounce for 10 minutes, just to say that we'd done it. It was totally awesome - and those trampolines had pretty good bounce, too! We also enjoyed giggling at the ducks who had taken up residence in the outdoor swimming pool... the pool itself was closed but the ducks didn't seem to care that there were no lifeguards.

So then we wandered down along the beach at Lorne and just soaked up the sun for a bit before driving away. We didn't have all that far to go to get to Apollo Bay (only about 50kms), so we took our time and enjoyed the stunning scenery along the way. The road took a lot of concentration to drive, since there were so many twists and turns - so I appreciated the lookouts where I could also enjoy the view for more than a split second at a time. We found ourselves laughing at the road signs that were posted everywhere - "In Australia, drive on the left" - obviously there have been problems here with tourists who don't know what they're doing. Interestingly enough, by now driving on the left was beginning to feel pretty natural and it was only when I had to park the car and then reverse out of a parking spot that it felt strange at all. We stopped at another random beach for lunch - and again were the only people to be seen on it.

Apollo Bay turned out to be a funky little town with yet another glorious beach - and an incredible hostel! The hostel itself was only two years old, and it had been built as a completely eco-friendly building. We snapped lots of pictures of the interior, as it was such a beautiful place. Everything about the hostel was designed to save energy. There were big windows and great ventilation, to let in lots of natural light and also good air circulation. All the taps, toilets and shower heads were water-saving. They had a huge rainwater tank that collected water to service the toilets. There was a worm farm in the garden and an herb garden that we could use to add flavor to our cooking. It was just a fantastic place.

We'd arrived in Apollo Bay mid-afternoon, so we spent some time exploring the shops in town and also the visitor's center. There we learned about a place to explore in Otways National Park (basically all the forest along this stretch of the Great Ocean Road is part of Otways) where we could go and find koalas and glow worms! How cool is that? And FREE, too (we also found information on glow worm tours for $30/person, but figured that we could find them on our own). So after enjoying a 45-minute power nap on the beach, we ate an early dinner, went back to the hostel to put change out of our shorts and grab our sweaters, and then it was back in the car to go looking for koalas.

We had to drive about 30minutes back in the direction we'd come from earlier in the day, then took a rough forest access road deep into Otways National Park. The directions we had said to drive about 2kms down the road and then park and look up in the trees for the koalas. And that's exactly what we did. I couldn't believe it - seriously, every other tree had a koala in it, or sometimes two or three koalas - all sleepily munching away on the eucalyptus leaves or just snoozing. It was incredible. We wandered along the road grinning like little kids, pointing out the koalas to each other. They were all way, way up in the trees, but eucalypts have these long snaky branches with only tufts of leaves at the very ends, so it was easy to spot the koalas. We even spotted a mom with her cub! And who knew that koalas made sound? At one point, a parrot of some sort landed in a tree, I guess too close to one koala, and the koala started making this crazy grunting sound that reminded me of an angry camel. It was echoed by other koalas in the neighboring trees. Wow.

By this time the light was fading and we needed to get back in the car so we could find the spot with the glow worms. We had to drive another 5kms into the park, down a very rough dirt road, to a random picnic spot in the middle of nowhere. There we parked the car and wandered around a bit, waiting for it to get dark. We followed a trail into the woods because it promised to end in a lookout - but the lookout just showed more forest, no stunning vista or anything (strange). At any rate, it was time for us to return to the car and wait for dark in a safer spot than the middle of the unknown woods.

According to the pamphlet we had, we needed to wait until dark fell and then walk back along the road, looking at the left embankment to find the glow worms. Glow worms are the larvae of the fungus gnat - their rear ends glow like fireflies do. The worms play out a sticky thread of silk and other insects, attracted to the lights, get stuck on the silk and then the glow worms eat them. Well I wasn't sure what I was expecting to see, but what we found was totally amazing. We walked up the road just at dark and looked at the embankment, and I swear it was like looking into the night sky! There were THOUSANDS of glow-worms - each just a tiny pinprick of light - and they hung down among the plants in sheets. It seriously looked like there was a whole galaxy of tiny stars just hanging there. We walked, enchanted, along the road for a good long way before we realized how truly DARK it was now and that we should probably head for the hostel. So ended our second day of the trip.

On Sunday, we had a much longer drive ahead of us, and the biggest sights of all to see along the way. We headed on down the road around 10am, with the goal of reaching the Twelve Apostles by noon or so. We took a side trip to go and see the Cape Otway lighthouse - this was down yet another long and winding road, where we spotted more koalas - only to find out when we got there that we had to pay to get in and tour the place. We decided that the $13 fee was a little steep and took a pass on that, but we did climb the hills to the lookout (that part was free) and snapped a shot of the lighthouse from a distance. So we lost some time on that trip, but we did get to see more koalas (and we also got to curse quietly at the other tourists who were out of their cars, wandering smack down the middle of the highway, gazing up at the koalas in the trees. I mean REALLY. At least WE had pulled our car over and gotten out of the way of the traffic when we stopped for the kangaroos!)

We made it to the Gibson Steps around 1pm, and since we'd already agreed that we would eat lunch on the beach every day, decided that this was our lunch spot for the day. I am SO GLAD we stopped here. I swear it was the most beautiful spot of the whole trip. Once we’d climbed down all the steps carved into the cliff, we found ourselves on yet another strip of beach with almost nobody on it. With the cliffs towering up in the background, it was almost possible to pretend the rest of the world simply wasn’t there, and it was just us and the ocean. What hadn’t been immediately apparent from the top of the cliffs was that we were really close to the Twelve Apostles, and the first of the rock stacks was very close to where we were. So we wandered over to that end of the beach, plopped ourselves down on some big pieces of rock, and ate our lunch there.

I was totally captivated today by the sound of the ocean. It was indescribable. I love how the surf just pounds and pounds and pounds at the shoreline here – I guess I am used to the east coast of Canada and the US, where the water just laps at the shoreline, except in stormy weather. I was mesmerized by the incredible amount of energy in the waves that were pounding the shore. I loved everything about it – the sharp smell of the sea salt, the rush of the waves, and the way that all other ordinary sounds were drowned out. We took some great photos at this spot – some of which I’m already itching to get framed! Jen tried – for the second day in a row – to wash out some of our Tupperware in the ocean without getting wet herself. Once again she was unsuccessful. Poor Jen!

After a painful climb back to the top of the cliffs, we were off again to see the Twelve Apostles. I hadn’t realized how close we were – the visitor’s centre was literally around the corner from where we’d eaten lunch! But from the viewing platform, we could see many more of the rock stacks than just the one that had been visible from our lunch spot. The weather was perfect and the sun was in exactly the right spot to allow us to snap some really good photos. The Apostles are remnants of receding headlands – as the ocean works to erode the softer rock, sometimes fragments of headland get left behind, as rock stacks. This whole section of the southern coastline is littered with them.

Along with the Twelve Apostles, we visited Loch Ard Gorge, the Bay of Martyrs, and the Bay of Islands. All were formed the same way, and the shape of this land will continue to change every year. For example, we saw a sea archway which was relatively young (the hole in the middle was pretty small), and in another spot we looked at two cliffs which – until ten years ago – had been connected by another arch. I found it a little nerve-wracking to walk along some of the trails at Loch Ard… there were warning signs posted that we were to stay on the trails at all times, as the surrounding land could recede at any moment. I wasn’t entirely sure what that was all about until we went to see the blowhole. Here, the ocean had carved a long tunnel under a big expanse of headland, and hollowed out a canyon/sinkhole into which the water surged and receded constantly. The tunnel was several hundred feet long! That got me to thinking – how much of the ground over which I was walking was also riddled with underground tunnels? As these tunnels erode, eventually the weight of the rocks on top will become too much, and giant chunks of the land will simply fall into the abyss and vanish. CREEPY.

By the time we’d finished wandering through all these wonders, it was almost 4pm, and we REALLY had to get going. We’d hardly covered half the distance to our last stop at Port Fairy! Fortunately, soon after we left the coast behind for good and climbed up into the surrounding farmland. The last 100km’s or so to Port Fairy went by pretty quickly, and before we knew it, we had arrived in this quaint little town where we would be spending the night. The hostel here turned out to be quite different from the other two we’d stayed at… the building was quite old and the whole place had a very rustic feel to it. Jen and I had to do some convincing to get Irene to agree to stay – compared to the other two hostels we’d stayed at, this one felt rather… um… campy. I’m not sure how much of that was because we had a dorm room this time instead of a private room (which we’d been able to score the previous two nights). Yes, the room was small, and yes, the building was old, but I thought it was a beautiful hostel and it fit in perfectly with the town. And at least the place wasn’t full, so we didn’t end up sharing our dorm room with anyone else!

This hostel was made up of a number of connecting buildings, which I think originally had been a small manor house and its various sheds and outbuildings. Our bunk room was tiny. But what was really strange was that the front wall of our room kinda ended just above the door – there was a space between the top of the wall and the roof (somewhat like the inside of Grandma’s cottage, or the inside of Impeesa cottage at camp). There was a mom and daughter staying in the bunk room next door, and when we arrived to check out our room, the daughter (probably around 10 years old) was sitting on the top of the wall of her room, staring over into ours! Creepy! We made her go away (actually, what I said to her was “I hope you don’t get hurt up there”, which embarrassed her enough that she climbed down). However, Jen also climbed up to the same spot (it was easily reachable from the top of the bunk beds) to snap some silly pictures of us.

Port Fairy is definitely one of those towns which rolls up its sidewalks at 5pm! We had some trouble finding a restaurant that was even open, let alone that we could afford to eat at. While we were exploring the town, we came across another Australian icon – the drive through bottle shop (aka beer store). Seriously! It was set up sort of like a gas station… you would drive your car underneath the shelter and all the fridges etc. of beer were lined up there for you to peruse. Then you would choose your beer, pay for it, and drive away again! It didn’t occur to us to take out the camera though, so we missed taking a photo.

We ended up eating dinner at the local Chinese restaurant. Let’s be honest here – this was not the best Chinese food on the planet. No green tea. Steamed rice was OK but even that was pricey. We all ordered different dishes, but they came served with the same veggies – only the meats and sauces were different. But it was the most affordable food we could find, and our choices were definitely limited.

We didn’t get to spend as much time in Port Fairy as I would have liked… there is a nesting colony of mutton birds on a nearby island that we could have visited, and a charming waterfront too, but by the time we’d finished dinner it was getting dark and cold and we were all tired from the long drive. And in the morning we wanted to get on the road as soon as possible, since we wanted to go back to Torquay (a town on the route way back at the beginning of the Great Ocean Road, before Lorne) to check out the surf shops. We hadn’t had time to stop on Torquay on our way out.

We drove back towards Melbourne via the inland road (the A1), and spent three hours or so passing through countryside that looked an awful lot like home… as long as you didn’t look too closely at the trees, that is! In Torquay we wandered in and out of the surf shops, looking for board shorts for Irene, but had no luck there. Our very last stop was Bell’s Beach, which we’d driven by on the way out. In a phone conversation with her boyfriend earlier in the weekend, Irene discovered that Bell’s Beach is where the movie Point Break was filmed. None of us had seen the movie, but we felt that it was important for us to go to the beach anyway. So we ended our trip with another lunch on the beach! The waves here were huge (it is a surfing beach, after all) and we sat far up in the sand to stay clear of them. Jen, once again, tried cleaning some of our dishes in the ocean – and once again got her pants soaked. Poor Jen! Thanks for taking one for the team though!

So after that we drove back to Melbourne, which was fairly straightforward until the very end, when we ran into traffic. Traffic? Oh yeah – we’d forgotten that it was now Monday, and it was afternoon rush hour! Let’s just say I was really glad to get us safely back home… by this time I was more than a wee bit tired of the driving. After a couple of hours to rest and relax, we took advantage of still having the car to go and do a serious grocery shopping – what a luxury!

So it’s now Tuesday morning and we’re back to the normal routine. Jen’s out working at a new school today, I’ve got to go hang out yet another load of laundry from the weekend, and then I’m off to Vic Market to see if I can find some Christmas presents. It seems strange, somehow, to be back to the ordinary after such a wonderful weekend. Thank goodness for good cameras and great memories!