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Published: March 22nd 2010
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Great Ocean Road
Olga, Gemma, Franzi & Ste Well, we are in Melbourne now having spent nearly a week on the road to get here. Once we got to Adelaide we spent a few days here catching up with two friends from Williams and also doing a little sightseeing. Although the weather wasn't great, cooler temperatures and rain, it was actually a nice change from the scorching hot desert heat we had just come from. We spent one whole day at Cleland Wildlife Park which is a wildlife centre in a conservation park in the Adelaide hills, so not too far out of the city. We spent the day feeding wallabies and Kangaroos which was amazing in itself. Not to mention we got to see a wombat, a first for us and they are about four times the size we thought they were going to be and we saw a few Tasmanian devils which was awesome as we never thought we would get to see them. They are cute, crazy and hyped up little creatures and live up to their cartoon namesake Taz from Looney Tunes or should that be the other way around? The best part of our day was holding a koala - just amazing! They are
Adelaide
Gemma holding her new best friend!!! so cute and cuddly, and we actually wanted one as a pet. Anyway, we spent our time in Adelaide walking around the city taking in the sights, the annual arts festival was on and because of this there was a lot to see. We spent a while out in the seaside suburb of Glenelg where our friends Franzi and Olga were staying. But the time came where we felt we had had a long enough break from driving so we started out towards Melbourne.
Franzi and Olga rented a car and joined us for trip in which we would be taking in the epic Great Ocean Road. The first few hundred kilometres of the journey is not on the ocean road itself and was nothing spectacular. We travelled through a lot of deforestation areas which was surprising but there was re-planting and we saw big squares of forest with fir trees at various heights. We stopped the night in Mount Gambier and took in the picturesque Blue Lake which is an extinct volcanic crater. It is a colour changing lake; we saw it when it was a deep blue but it changes depending on the time of
year. We also went to the Umpherston Sinkhole, a large sinkhole within the town itself. It has a beautiful secret garden hidden in it and we opted for a night-time visit which turned out to be a great idea, we got to explore by torch light and we even saw a few possums come out to play.
It took us four days to get to Melbourne which was plenty of time. The last two days we were on the actual great ocean road itself and it is a fantastic drive and as beautiful as we have been told. The twelve apostles were just outstanding. We saw them twice, late afternoon as we arrived into the viewing area and at sunrise the following morning. We stayed in a great free campsite in the rich Victorian bush, a spot near Johanna in Cape Otway National Park. We even had access to a little beach. Sunrise was magical, just as our outback sunrise at Uluru was. It was so peaceful and quiet with only the sound of the waves breaking below as night turned to dawn and the silhouettes of the great apostles appeared out of the darkness with the sky
Melbourne
Sunset.... note the shark to the bottom left of the picture. (only noticed it afterwards) turning purple and then orange and finally the sun appeared to start a new day.
We made the most of our early start and followed the coast road east of the twelve apostles which gave us spectacular views. We stopped in pretty Apollo bay for lunch which was a beautiful little town, and you can't beat fish and chips by the seaside. We finally arrived into Melbourne late afternoon. We stayed on the outskirts in a rest area on our final night with Franzi and Olga; they were staying in a hostel for a final few nights before travelling on to New Zealand, not before they celebrated St Patrick's Day with us though.
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