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Published: October 8th 2012
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Sorry for the delays here...internet is expensive, and we are so busy!!Today was the big first road trip, we had initially planned on hiring a campervan but late planning and the cost of everything in this country resulted in a change of plan. One little car for 2 days and a lot of road to cover! The plan was to try and reach Port Fairy on the first day, a small town on the coast about 1 hour's drive before the start of The Great Ocean Road, and then drive the rest of the way on the second day. Now if you were to go off distances this seems perfectly reasonable if a little long, covering 600km the first day and 400km the second....slightly more difficult than it initially appeared!
The drive to Port Fairy was nice and easy, long country roads, the only risks coming from passing kangaroo's or wombats. We stopped in a town called Keith - great name for a place - for lunch. Then we continued our drive through vineyards and rolling countryside, farmland and more Kangaroo's. We finally pulled into Port Fairy about 6pm after a long day, we had set off at about half
11. This was to be our first hostel experience and we were heading for the YHA. In asia, the most we spent on a room was about 22 pounds a night between us, and that was splashing out. In Aus it seems we can't even get a bunk bed in a dorm for less than $30 each a night. We were pretty lucky with the hostel, as it was really quiet and we were put in an 8 bed block with its own bathroom all to ourselves, a good introduction! We cooked some tea, drank some of our Maclaren Vale wine and watched some TV, pretty chilled out night all round!
We asked the lady running the YHA how long just driving from there to Melbourne down the Great Ocean Road without stopping would take and she said 3 hours. So we thought brilliant, no rush, car has to be back by 5pm so we got up at 9, went for a walk round an island just off Port Fairy to get some exercise, this was lovely, all wild surf and pretty beaches, and then we set off just after 10.
Weatherwise it wasn't a great day, windy
and cold and building up towards rain, but we think it added something to the stunning scenary we saw! The waves were really crashing onto the beaches. There are lots of places to stop along this iconic road, so thinking we had lots of time, we stopped at all the land marks. Various rock formations such as the Grotto, a very cool arch and cave with waves crashing so hard they sent foam into the air. London bridge, which was linked to the mainland by a rock bridge, until it collapsed and stranded tourists there! There were many more things to see before we arrived at the famous 12 Apostles. Actually we thought some of the others were more spectacular, but this may have been more due to the hundreds of people vying for space on the view points! Its pretty hard to explain all this, so hopefully when I can get pics on they will explain it better! At this point it started raining. We sat and had our lunch and a quick look at the map.
This is when we noticed that despite the fact we had about 200km left to drive in 3 hours on 100km/h
roads, the guide suggested that the 45km sretch between Apollo Bay and Lorne would take an hour....this was going to be tight! The road for the first half of the day had been nice, wide, straight and a bit back from the water, though as soon as we began to pull out of Apollo Bay the road became tight, narrow and very windy as it hugged the edge of the coastline.
To make things harder we got stuck behind various caravans and 4 wheel drives, and the road was like a race track...the sort of road you would see them drive in top gear. It was undoubtably stunning but maybe ruined by our rushing! We realised as we hit the traffic heading into Melbourne at 5.30, the car was not going to be back by the time the shop closed at 6( the very latest we could take it!) So we had to give up, park it for the night and take it back in the morning. Luckily for us, at no extra cost!
It was a really brilliant drive, we do wish we had taken a bit more time though, so James could enjoy more scenary and
less speedy driving! The moral of the story, everywhere is far away in Australia, fast roads are rare and don't trust people to tell you how long it will take!
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