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Published: December 20th 2009
Lorne
I think... It's my first time uploading photos and they're all really small on here.Greetings one and all, and welcome to Blog#3, where two things change. First, I get to assuage my slight guilt at always entering the exact same location for what is, after all, supposed to be a TRAVEL blog. Secondly, and more importantly if many of your comments are anything to go by, this one will feature a few PHOTOS!
Thanks very much to Nina, Stan, Karen and Pete for our wonderful gift of a weekend break in Lorne on Victoria’s
Great Ocean Road. Without further ado then, here is “What We Did On Our Holidays…”:
The Journey
Having started work on Wednesday, I managed to get the Thursday off so that we could make an early start. It’s not as bad it sounds, honestly! Unfortunately the trip clashed with Neill’s invite to join him at an
Aboriginal Smoking Party, which sounded pretty cool. What? Well, ‘ceremony’, ‘party’, it’s all the same, right?
Anyway, with rush hour over we set off west towards Melbourne. It was about an hour to the city and an hour to get out to the other side, which was an education in itself, with me looking at the map the whole time and telling Sarah what
Thongs
Could I BE more English? we were passing, followed by her saying: “I know, look out of the window, it’s right there!”
One eclectic sight was the
Harold Holt Baths, named for the Prime Minister and keen ocean swimmer who disappeared off the Victorian coast while in office. Clear of the city, we turned south west along
Port Phillip Bay and, after brief confusion in AFL stronghold
Geelong, hit the official start of the GOR, at
Torquay.
The road, to paraphrase a song about Homer Simpson, is not ‘great’ meaning ‘large’ or ‘immense’ - they mean it in the superlative sense - and keeps respectfully to one lane each way for all of its 241km. Initially, I also doubted its ‘ocean’ credentials, as the views, though picturesque, were dominated by hills and trees and featured little indication of proximity to water.
Once we passed
Anglesea though (I know, they steal a lot of place names, but if you leave them to it you end up in ‘Warrnambool’, ‘Wonthaggi’ or ‘Dandenong’.) the Southern Ocean exploded into view, and was there to stay. I was driving now, but kept pointing, looking back at bits and shouting ‘wow’, so it’s lucky we didn’t crash.
At this point began
Sign
Hahahahahaha!!! a running theme of our trip. I expressed my childish obsession with the sight and sound of waves crashing on rocks by making sort of ‘PKSH’ noises accompanied by dramatic hand gestures, similar to the mock magic in Horne & Corden. No? Never mind. Anyway, we arrived in beautiful, welcoming
Lorne, checked into the
Mantra Erskine Lodge and started planning our adventures.
Training, Tequila & Tapas
A late lunch was definitely in order so we found a funky burger joint on the sea front high street. I envy Sarah sometimes. It’s so easy to see a menu, instantly eliminate 90%!o(MISSING)f its contents and say ‘veggie burger’. Still, she likes them so I frequently get to tackle the choice between cheese, bacon, cheese and bacon, or some variation on “Seriously, this one’s got all kinds of stuff in and we dare you to take a bite without locking your jaw.” I chose one with beetroot, very Aussie, very messy.
We walked along the beach and dipped our toes in the water, becoming acutely aware that, although the water arrives under baking sun, its journey began amid billions of tons of Antarctic ice so it’s a bit nippy. It doesn’t
Beach
Pretty, huh? matter as I wouldn’t swim in there, what with it containing sharks and me not being an idiot. Instead we had a beer at a bar on the beach, and for the second time that weekend, and not the last, found that light rain can be precipitated by sitting outside because it’s sunny.
Some of you might be shocked by this but I’ve always maintained that if exercise can be accessed without packing a bag or considering the weather, I’m all for a piece of the action, so my next stop (having exchanged the thongs that facilitated beach walking for some comfortable shoes) was the running machine and pool for a workout. Maybe it’s getting best value out of a hotel; maybe it’s being near a gym with no brother-in-law belittling my efforts: either way, Neill’s just bought a rowing machine so if my theory’s right I’m about to lose some weight... and so to the bar.
Big screen, magazine and Dave serving half price cocktails - this is why Sarah’s predilection for napping will never bother me. She finally arrived as I polished off something fizzy and blue called an Erskine 1864; we went old school with her Pina
Me on beach
I haven't worked out how to rotate yet! Colada and my Tequila Sunrise, and headed out to find, initially, a starter - a glass of wine and amuse bouche while we chose where to eat…
I guess once I pointed out that it never represents good value to buy two glasses of wine when it’s sold by the bottle, the die was cast. The ensuing tapas odyssey included a continuation of The Great Calamari Debate. Regulars will read with interest that this effort was deep fried in a particularly crispy way, and a high batter:squid ratio allowed extra chewiness without offending the palate.
The Spanish place had won us over for the night, and we turned in relatively early, but this was for the best given what was to come. After a hearty breakfast - fry up for me and blueberry pancakes with ice cream for Sarah, we continued west, guide book in hand, on the
Great Ocean Road.
Two Lighthouses & Some Really Big Rocks
A lot of driving was on the cards if we were to achieve our tourist goals, but the beauty of this trip is that the driving is half the fun. It’s really beautiful, with lots of ‘PKSH’ (see above) and also
Us on beach
Note Tshirt from Helen and Jeremy! a bit like road testing for Top Gear, with lots of bends and bumps. Again Sarah did the first shift, the plan being that I drive back while she engages her remarkable capacity for sleeping in cars despite little or no neck support.
We weren’t alone in enjoying the GOR. On the up side the slow vehicles we followed included four
Wicked Vans - this region’s answer to Eddie Stobart with their distinctive markings; Sarah tolerated my insistence on driving very close to take photos in the forlorn hope that one of them provides a memory for Si and Jess.
We passed
Aireys Inlet lighthouse, used in ‘90s Aussie kids’ hit Round The Twist, which I’ve seen but you haven’t. We had a closer look on the way back, but for now it just whetted our lighthouse appetites - I admit I didn’t know I had one - for
Cape Otway, “The southernmost point on mainland Australia west of Melbourne.” The boast sounds hollow, but only Wilson’s Promontory to the east protrudes belligerently to deny Otway latitudinal supremacy.
The lighthouse, with its big anchor and plaque to a missing pilot, has fewer whistles and bells than the brochure suggests, but
Sarah on decking by beach
The hotel's, like, right behind her. the drab buildings are redeemed by a renovated telegraph station, with maps and tales of a time when you needed ocean floor cables and dots and dashes just to send a text. Driving from the cape through
Otway Forest we saw four koalas. I can’t put into words the sheer quantity of trees over here - obviously that’s what numbers, rather than words, are for…
There was more driving on lovely bendy roads and plenty of ‘PKSH’ before reaching the famous
Twelve Apostles, so called because they’re big rocks and there are about seven of them, depending on the tide. It was very pretty though and VERY windy, with excited amateur photographers everywhere. Job done, we scurried back to the car to head homewards via one more experience, suggested by a friend.
The
Otway Fly is a tree walk among the forest’s huge mountain ash eucalypts, topped out by a 47m viewing tower among the treetops. The trunks used to scale twice that height before logging, but it’s still pretty impressive being up so high and imagining how long it takes to grow that tall. We learnt some stuff about ferns and birds too; well, I did mostly - Sarah’s
Me in sea
Cold toes... a bit of a natural history whiz. The GOR’s tourist highlights had all been ticked off in one exhausting day.
Fish, Falls & Flies
In all the excitement we hadn’t got round to eating more than a bag of crisps (sorry, ‘chips’) since breakfast, and it would be a struggle to fit in lunch and dinner at this late stage, so we opted for a seafood feast from the excellent Lorne chippy. There were no mushy peas of course, and the chips (sorry, ‘hot chips’ - I know!) just weren’t the same as Our Plaice do, but the fish, scallops and prawns were great.
They have different fish here though! Instead of cod and haddock I chose between flake (that’s shark), snapper and barramundi, to name but a few. There will be a blog on food sooner or later, featuring my sometimes confused and often controversial views on such products as vegemite, olives and, of course, calamari. Anyway, seafood, bottle of wine, sunset walk, you know the drill.
After another huge breakfast we checked out of what was an excellent hotel, with beach access and great service, and headed for
Erskine Falls. It was beautiful and rather peaceful, one
Beach art
We liked these of many places over here that make me think “Mum’d love this.” Trees, running water, she’s easy to please. It also has classic Aussie tourist signs, insisting the land is steeped in Aboriginal history in cringingly apologetic tone!
The last stop was
Barwon Heads, used in ‘00s Aussie drama hit Sea Change, which I’ve seen but you haven’t. I discovered soldier crabs, which amass on wet, rocky beaches but quickly spiral beneath the sand when approached. I was also, yet again, beset by flies, the bane of my Aussie life. That’s a whole other blog right there.
We drove home. Well, I drove while Sarah slept, her head lolling precariously towards the glove box. I didn’t realise how tiring the trip had been until we got home and I was asleep by eight, barely getting up in time to witness Villa beat United away for the first time in 26 years. What, you thought I wouldn’t mention that?!
In other news since then, Sarah bought a car today and after Christmas we’re moving down the road to
Mooroolbark for six months, rent free! House sitting is the way forward, you see. I’ll have blogs on that, life as an air
Beer on beach
A couple of Aussie brews. conditioning technician’s assistant, and, hopefully, tonight’s dramatic run chase in Durban, before too long.
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Sally Turner
non-member comment
Very David Bailey
Paul, loving your blogs but Michael is going to email you, a godafther thing, as he thought it would double up on news if we both did it. I will still hope to be on the blog though! Love to your both and so glad all is going well. Love Sally xxxx