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Published: July 17th 2007
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The road trip this weekend was a success, and except for a short rain on Saturday afternoon, the weather was gorgeous! I left work early on Friday and made my way towards Lorne. It took a while to get through traffic and get on the other side of the city, and the road closer to the coast was pretty curvy (a lot like driving through the mountains back home), so I didn't make it to the hotel until about 8:00, a little later than I would have liked. But, I got checked in to my room overlooking the pier, got some dinner, and relaxed for the rest of the night. The hotel where I stayed, the Grand Pacific, was the first coastal hotel built in Victoria (late 1800s) and was originally only accessible by ship. My room overlooked the pier, and I got to watch the sunrise over the water on Saturday morning.
On Saturday morning I was ready to embark on the next leg of the journey between 8:00 and 8:30 but didn't know that the hotel office would not be open for check-out until around 9:00, so I decided to drive around Lorne a little. This turned
out to be a really good thing because on the way to driving up to a lookout point, I happened to come across three or four kangaroos just hanging out and eating grass in someone's front yard!! I was able to get the car pretty close to them and got some good photos - it was so cool to be that close to them out in the wild! On the way back down to the hotel, I stopped at a beach and watched some surfers for a little while. By that time, I was able to check out of the hotel and start making my way along the coast.
My first stop (not counting the many times I pulled over and jumped out of the car just long enough to admire the beautiful scenery and snap some photos) was at the Cape Otway lighthouse, the oldest surviving lighthouse on mainland Australia. Next, I drove inland some to stop in the Otway National Forest and experience the Otway Fly Treetop Walk. The treetop walk allows visitors to walk along platforms suspended among the treetops of the Otway rainforest. It was a pretty cool experience - I never would have imagined
I could walk through a rainforest in Australia!
By the time I finished the treetop walk, it was early afternoon, and I wanted to make sure I had plenty of time to see the Twelve Apostles before dark. So, I headed straight for Port Campbell. only making a few stops at lookout points to take some quick photos. The photos I had seen of the Twelve Apostles were what originally inspired me to drive the Great Ocean Road, and people at the office suggested I take the whole weekend instead of a day trip to have plenty of time to get there and back. I'm so glad I followed their advice and was able to get all the way to Port Campbell because the Twelve Apostles were DEFINITELY worth the drive! They were by far my favorite part. I was driving along, wondering how much further I had to go, when I rounded a corner, and there they were! Sooo beautiful!! They were given their name because there wer orginally 12 of them, but a few people have told me there are only about 8 left because some of them have fallen (I forgot to count while I was
there). After the Twelve Apostles, I drove on to Loch Ard Gorge (named after the Loch Ard, a ship that crashed there and left only 2 survivors), London Bridge, and the Bay of Islands. London Bridge was named because it used to have a rock formation spanning like a bridge from the coastline out to another rock tower. Someone from the office told me that people used to be able to walk across and out over the ocean, but the bridge fell one day while people were out on the rock tower offshore (thankfully they weren't on the bridge itself at the time, and no one was hurt, but they had to be rescued by helicopter - talk about an interesting vacation story!!)
I spent Saturday night in Warrnambool and explored the town a little on Sunday morning. They had a local Sunday market, but it was very small, and I didn't see anything that caught my fancy. Warrnambool is famous for its whale viewing - during the winter months, Southern Right whales migrate from Antarctic waters to deliver and nurse their young. There is a whale viewing platform at Logans Beach in Warrnambool, and I got to see
one or two whales!! They were too far off the coast to get any photos, but you were able to see spouts of water from their blowholes and a little bit of their backs when they surfaced.
I left Warrnambool and drove a little farther to Port Fairy, a small fishing village. I was pretty disappointed because all of the brochures and tourism information made it sound a lot bigger and a lot more historic looking/quaint than it was. So, I just ate some lunch at one of their restaurants and then made the drive back home. All in all, I had a GREAT weekend and would definitely recommend the trip for anyone who has the opportunity to visit southern Australia!
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David
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Awesome trip
Looks like an incredible and beautiful trip. Such blue skies! See you in about a month.