The Great Ocean Road

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I finished work at the State Bank a few days before I was planning on leaving Melbourne for a tour round Australia. Everyone there was really good to me and had a collection with which they bought me a tee shirt. We then all went out in the evening to 'Le Pub' and then afterwards to a club called 'The Underground', for which we had free tickets of course.

Before I left Melbourne, I went on a two-day tour to the Great Ocean Road where there is some pretty spectacular coastal scenery. This was a real backpacker's tour in a mini-bus with no set itinerary. We worked our way along the Great Ocean Road, stopping wherever the main sights were or wherever it took our fancy.

The weather was awful, but that made it all that much more spectacular and I ended up running off three or four rolls of film.

The two main sights are the Twelve Apostles, but there are now only nine, and London Bridge, which is a large arch that you can walk across. A few months later, whilst I was still in Australia, the arch of London Bridge collapsed and a helicopter was required to rescue the tourists that were left stranded on the island which was no-longer linked to the mainland.

In the evening, we went down the pub for a while and then took a load of take-outs back to the hostel in Port Campbell where we then had a bar-b-q and played loads of party games whilst getting wrecked. The hostel was a homely sort of place with a log fire and we had it all to ourselves, so we could make as much noise as we liked. It was a great evening and a great two days, and I would recommend these small tours over the big, organised coach tours any day.

The following day we saw some more of the Great Ocean Road and then we stopped off at a rain forest and a waterfall on the way back to Melbourne. We were all nursing hangovers and some of us found the long journey on the mini bus more than our stomachs could handle.

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Photos

Twelve Apostles
The Twelve Apostles on the Great Ocean Road

Tour Group
Our tour group by the Twelve Apostles

London Bridge
London Bridge, back when you could walk over it as it collapsed just after

Great Ocean Road
More along the Great Ocean Road

London Bridge
London Bridge from another angle

Waves
Waves crashing along the Great Ocean Road

Great Ocean Road
More of the Great Ocean Road

Temperate Rain Forests
Rain forest near the Great Ocean Road

Rain Forest Trees
Huge trees in the rain forest