Ocean and City: The Trip to Melbourne

Ocean and City: The Trip to Melbourne

The Great Ocean Road

With only a few hundred kilometers between us and Melbourne we decided to get an early start on our drive with the hope of making it all the way to the second largest city in Australia by bed time. Our first couple of hours was consumed with driving from South Australia into Victoria and on to the driving highlight of the day, the Great Ocean Road. This 200km stretch of road is considered on of the most scenic drives in the world on the list with drives like the Road to Hana in Maui.

We stopped for breakfast in Portland and arrived at the start of the Great Ocean Road by about 12:45pm. This allowed us to take our time driving through the twisty, windy and slow stretches of coastline road. We stopped a number of times to enjoy the scenery and take pictures.

With huge limestone cliffs and green/blue water all up and down the coastline, the Great Ocean Road follows up on its reputation as a celebration of some of the best scenery the world has to offer. The most important stop on the road is called the Twelve Apostles - twelve rock outcroppings that each stand 300 feet tall as a testament to the power of the ocean’s ability to erode pure rock. So many international tourists come to this natural phenomenon that the Aussies have gone out of their way with signage to remind drivers to stay on the left. This is the only place we’ve seen over the last two weeks where these warnings can be seen.

We stopped for a late lunch in a small town along the coast and took advantage of an internet café to ensure that we had lodging in Melbourne. The Aussies have a long weekend holiday for Easter and they take advantage of this break to travel. We were concerned that we’d get to Melbourne and not be able to find lodging. With a hotel booked we could take our time on the drive into the city and not worry about spending a huge amount of time stopping at multiple hotels in order to find a room.

For a couple of reasons it turned out to be fortuitous that we pre-booked our lodgings. First off, the next 200km of driving turned out to be the scariest and slowest of the whole day. With so many Aussies on the road, mostly heading in the opposite direction from us, the Great Ocean Road became a much scarier place to be. All these weekend travelers had gotten off of work and started their vacations by speeding down this twisty road with huge campers behind their SUVs. Aussies love campers of various shapes and sizes and many of these campers were perilously close to colliding with us as we drove toward Melbourne.

Throughout the day we had heard on the radio about the Victoria Police’s warning/pleading to drivers to take it easy on the roads this Easter. Easter accounts for the highest number of driving related casualties on the roads every year. Within 30 minutes of issuing this statement a man was killed when he fell off his bike into a major road and was hit by a truck driver. By that night when we were settled in our comfy room in Melbourne 5 people had been killed in Victoria alone. Scary!

The second reason it was good that we pre-booked our hotel was the streets of Melbourne. Driving in any unknown city can be scary and usually creates more than a little apprehension for me. This was the first time I had driven on the opposite side of the road in a major city and the first time we had driven in an unknown big city without a GPS device, just a good ole map. To make matters even scarier Melbourne has a ubiquitous tram system that takes over the middle two lanes of almost all of its city streets. The Lonely Planet is very explicit about watching out for these trams because they will hit you if you aren’t careful and they will crush you because they are bigger and stronger than you are. This adds an interesting dimension for the Melbourne novice. If you need to take a right across certain streets you must pull all the way left and wait for the light to turn red and then cross the street by turning right. Wild! Thankfully I didn’t have to do this on the way in and have now seen others do it which has increased my understanding of this seemingly opposite method of crossing a street.

We arrived at almost 8pm so we settled for light food for dinner and retired to our room to rest. I was exhausted after driving 9 hours during the day and welcomed the rest. With a few more nights in Melbourne we had more than enough time to see more at a later date.

Exploring on Good Friday

We really enjoyed sleeping in and having no immediate agenda. With no alarm set I expected us to get up really late but instead found us up at about 9am. This is truly a sign that you are aging, when you can’t sleep late anymore you are growing up. Kel took some time to call her parents and I read about Melbourne. After taking a slow morning we didn’t really get started and out of our room until 11ish.

Since it was Good Friday we figured we’d wander and not really plan anything specific; a lot of things are closed here on Good Friday. We spent the next hour or two wandering the streets of the town and getting a classy lunch at Mickey D’s (I had been craving McDonald’s French fries). We wound up down on the river and decided to take a river cruise to see more of the city.

Unfortunately the one hour cruise turned out a little disappointing. These are situations when I wish that the Lonely Planet was a little more directive. With only facts listed and very little opinion, the Lonely Planet opens you up to waste your time and money doing things that aren’t very good. These are the reasons that I wish Rick Steves did guides for more than Europe. I wouldn’t have taken the cruise if there was a Rick Steves guide to Melbourne because he would have told me not to waste my time. Curses on guide books that won’t give you good advice.

When we finished the cruise we spent the remained of the early afternoon walking up and down the riverside. Melbourne is a much more eclectic city than Sydney. While Sydney is well laid out and beautiful yet slightly sterile, Melbourne is full of life and activity and a mix of many styles of architecture. Walking through Melbourne you are immediately impressed with the vitality of this city due to the huge number of restaurants, pubs and music venues. In downtown Sydney there isn’t nearly as much to keep you busy after dark while Melbourne offers a scene that rivals giants like New York.

Later in the afternoon Kel and I returned to the hotel. Kel wanted to rest a bit in the room while I went back out to work on some photography. I wanted to get a couple of hours to take what I hoped would be cool artsy photographs. I'll let you be the judge of the Artsy Fartsy pics which I’ve added to the blog. Hopefully you think they’re cool too.

When I returned we got ready for dinner. Our choices were fairly limited due to Good Friday so we asked the hotel to help us. They made a decent recommendation which was a little expensive but pretty good food.

Now I’m writing this while Kel watches TV. Hope life is treating you well and your holidays are going well! Happy Easter!

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