Day One: Great Ocean Road

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After an hour of thoroughly but accidentally exploring downtown Melbourne in our rental car, we made our way to the coast of Victoria! And a huge Kudos to our driver, who managed to keep cool while trying to navigate a foreign city, where they drive on the left, with directions that were a bit dodgy!

The drive started out a bit dull, since we still had to make our way to the coast, but quickly improved as the afternoon approached. Once we made it to the coast, the drive was spectacular and picturesque, and we stopped at several scenic look outs.

Our first stop was at Bells Beach, which had a beautiful black layer of sand on top of red. As the waves crashed violently against the shore, wavy lines of red were revealed. It reminded me a lot of the negoro lacquer style I read about in the Melbourne museum. After staring at the ever changing sand art for a few minutes, I made my way down the beach.

There were all kinds of interesting specimens here - squid casts, tons of algae (brown, reds, corraline) and I even found some sea glass. It was unique to be down at a beach with tall, looming, and crumbling sand stone structures surrounding you.

After the beach, we headed off to a light house. The scenes were beautiful, and the light house was surrounded by butterflies and dragonflies. It was nestled against limestone cliffs, and I enjoyed traipsing through the paths and watching the waves smashing below. The weather in this part of Victoria was quite dry, and the earth had the cracked and hardened looked of baked clay.


We stopped in Apollo Bay for the night, and checked out the harbor and Mariners summit to catch the sunset. The harbor had a playful seal jumping around. While climbing the summit, I got a bit hypoglycemic (low blood sugar). Spending the day munching on junk food from every small town that looked interesting caught up to me. By the time the sun had set and we went back to the town, I was getting dizzy and tired. We enjoyed delicious pizza, mine covered in meat and vegetables to negate the sugar and caffeine I had consumed that day. Of course, everything tastes delicious whenever I have a hypoglycemic spell. I was much more careful the next day not to eat too much sugar. Nonetheless, Apollo Bay, although a small town, was quite amiable and had a decent selection of food shops.

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Photos

Lighthouse
I'm not sure which light house this is, but it's near Bells Beach.

View from the cliffs
The Indian Ocean (although I've heard it called the "Southern Ocean" too). The structures are made of limestone.

Apollos Bay Harbor
Me enjoying the harbor. You can see the base of mariners summit behind me.

Mariners Summit
View of Apollo Bay from the summit. The road along the shore is our route through town.

Comments

[anonymous]

Cool
Loved the pictures and the way that you describe Melburne journey. You have a knack for that, you know, Beautiful country and glad to see that great smile of yours. Leslie

[Deidre]

So awesome!!!
I love lighthouses and that one is really beautiful. Well kept. Did you get to go up in it? You are so lucky to have those experiences. Looks like a place I would love to go. Thanks for the updates!