The Great Ocean Road! (4th-6th August)

So we skipped around Melbourne in a storm. Really the weather was horrendous, stopping only to surprise some relatives of mine, and went on to Torquay, by which time the weather had improved vastly. The drive there had been horrific and not just because of the weather. The weather had been horrible, particularly on the motorway west of Melbourne; about as little visibility through the rain as it's safe to drive in, the rain was so bad. And then, bypassing Melbourne the navman (that's sat nav to you Brits) decided to send us up and down the same bit of motorway about 4 times, through the toll-road each time.

Anyway we made it to Torquay for the night and actually managed to find a caravan stopping area to camp in for the night... and a nice pub/club for a few drinks and a chat with a Kiwi racehorse breeder. Then, in the morning, after a necessary laundry stop, we were on to the Great Ocean Road.

Despite the fact this bit of the drive only took us 2 days, we really were taking it nice and easy. Our first stop was in Anglsea, to let Casey have a bit of fun... playing golf. I have to admit even I found the course incredible, it was covered in kangaroos! 

Even saw a little Joey in it's pouch...

I never really got into golf, as I'm sure you can tell...

Next stop, Aireys Inlet, where thanks once again to the book, we stopped at the lighthouse from Round the Twist, and sea stacks similar to the Twelve Apostles, which will appear later in this post.


And at the end of our first day, a stop in Lorne, where I, in the morning, enjoyed yet another coffee on the beach, from my grumpy mug =)

By day 2 of the Great Ocean Road (which was actually day 7 of the road trip), Casey had really got into the swing of stopping at all the brown signs; touristy stops.

Today it seemed to be waterfalls. First off was Erskine Falls in the Otaway Forest which were really beautiful, probably to do with the deluge of rain in the previous week.

The second falls we decided to go to, we didn't actually make it to. The path to Sheoak Falls was very flooded, though Casey did design an interesting way to cross the flooded path.

So we went to Teddy's Lookout instead. Now plenty of people have beautiful pictures of the Great Ocean Road, but how many people have pictures of rainbows over the Great Ocean Road. The views of the road were amazing.




And later on the Twelve Apostles, beautiful sea stacks.

And London Bridge, which used to have one more arch which collapsed in 1990, leaving two people stranded out on the bridge.

And my favourite, the Bay of Isles, at sunset.

We reached the end of the Great Ocean Road in Warrnambool that night, 2 days later, 252km from Torquay. The most incredible place we found at Warrnambool was Logan Beach.

The seabed drops away straight off the beach creating a deep channel which humpback whales use as a nursery. Despite the closeness to the beach, my camera wasn't quite good enough to take brilliant pictures, but I'm pretty sure these were killer whales.


I'll just continue now as far as Yambuk, a stop we made half an hour after leaving Warrnambool on the 6th.











We stopped for the sole purpose of the 30m slide listed in 'The Book.' and ended up staying most of the afternoon. Casey managed to catch his first tiny fish and I sat on the beach watching the waves roll in straight from the Antarctic, beautiful!