Driving myself along the Great Ocean Road

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This is just the second half of an old blog. I've seperated them to make space for the photos

While here I really wanted to see the great ocean road but hadn’t really arranged how I was going to do it so you can imagine how pleased I was when it turned out I was going to be able to drive myself all the way along it!

Everybody had offered to lend me their car to get around while I was here and after a quick enquiry it turned out my English licence is completely valid here so I can just hop in anyone’s car and drive. Buzz was more than happy to lend me his car too so I figured it was an offer I couldn’t refuse.

The next morning I found myself travelling down the freeway heading out of Melbourne in Buzz’s car - a white Subaru saloon with 4WD written on the side - towards the great ocean road on my own. Ideally I’d have had a little more time to organise myself and perhaps find some other backpackers to come with me to share the petrol but time was of the essence so I’d didn’t hang around. This meant that I also didn’t have time to clean out the car which is without a doubt the messiest car I have ever seen. Buzz will claim that it’s a highly organised filing system and that he knows exactly where everything is but there were things in there under the many, many layers of rubbish/stuff that had almost evolved into a life form.

After Melbourne I had to pass through a place of no significance called Geelong before I could hit the coast and get onto the great ocean road. It took about 1.5hrs to get there and to my surprise there was a random hitchhiker with a sign saying he wanted to head down to Lorne. I thought it would be nice to have some company and as I might myself be hitchhiking out towards Sydney soon I thought I should do my bit and help. He turned out to be a crazy Israeli guy called Neil. As I understood things he said he had just come from Tasmania. Why that means you would end up in Geelong I have no idea.

Just after Geelong you hit the great ocean road starting from a place called Anglesea (just after Torquay). Lorne, where Neil was heading, is only another hour further along but as it turned out Neil stayed with my all the way up to the twelve apostles.

The road is stunning and cuts right into the cliffs that follow a lot of the coast. Along the way you pass stunning views and great beaches so we stopped off regularly to get out and take a look. At one point the road cuts away from the sea and you drive inland for a while effectively taking a shortcut across a peninsular. The scenery changes from the scrubby coastal vegetation to Eucalyptus forests and even rainforest in parts.

We stopped off in one place to do a rainforest walk and at another place also came across loads of wild Koalas next to the road while we were heading down towards a lighthouse. Neil went scrambling up trees trying to get closer to the Koalas. Normally I would take the opportunity to also climb a tree but the koalas looked less than happy about it so I stayed put. Fortunately he didn’t try to get too close to them and it was funny watching him balance extremely precariously on branches that looked like they would snap any minute.

My diet for the duration of the trip consisted of only a large batch of pasta with tomato sauce and heaps of salami subsidised with a packet of ‘home brand’ ginger biscuits and four tomatoes. The salami by the way, a huge piece I bought for $2 AUD because it had reached its sell by date, was 2 days out of date when I cooked the pasta and four days out of date by the time I had finished eating it but posed no problems for my digestive system.

Moving back to the great ocean road now. We reached the 12 apostles (and the other dramatic formations of the area) late in the day not long before sunset and spent an hour or two stopping off at the various different view points, running around on the beach at their base or enjoying the views from the top of the cliffs. The furthest I went was a place called London Bridge (which actually fell down a while ago and sadly took a few people who were on top at the time with it). From here me and Neil went our seperate ways - me heading back south and him hitchiking further north.

By the sounds of things hitchhiking here isn’t as common or as easy as I thought with many people being scared off by horror movies such as wolf creek. Nevertheless it is clearly possible and picking up Neil has strengthened my resolve to hitchhike up to Sydney and maybe even onto Brisbane…

That night after starting off back towards Lorne I decided to sleep in the car park of the twelve apostles view point so turned around quickly and headed back. When I pulled up in the car park there was a camper van already there with three girls in it and later more appeared. It was the perfect location with toilets and drinking water just next to it. After re-organising the neat filing system of Buzz’s car, which took me a fair while, I had planned to knock on the door of one of the camper vans with my six pack of beers and attempt to do some socialising but I bottled out of doing that. Partly because none of them looked like they particularly wanted to be sociable and also because I thought a random bloke knocking on your door in the middle of the night and in the middle of nowhere with a six pack of beer might freak them out. So instead I took a walk back down to the cliffs for another look at the twelve apostles. It was a full moon so there was plenty of light and though it was pretty cold I had them all to myself, which was really nice.

In the morning I was surprised to find that I had actually slept really well in the car and though I was intending to see sunrise at the apostles there was lots of cars arriving already and with the stormy weather it was clear there wasn’t going to be one so I headed off straight away in the pouring rain hoping to get to Lorne in good time. After ten minutes I came to a place called Port Campbell and realised I was, incredibly stupidly, going in the wrong direction along the coast. After saying a few words that aren’t all that pleasant I swung the car around at a roundabout and headed back, now in the right direction.

I enjoyed driving in the stormy weather and for ages I didn’t see another car so felt like I had the whole place to myself.

Before I arrived at Lorne, at one of the places I stopped I managed to lock myself out of the car in the middle of nowhere. After a moment of panic I quickly formulated a plan involving a very long stick and bending glass windows of the car. Fortunately for me, I discovered how easy it was to break into his car without damaging anything and was back on the road in no time. Panic over.

I’d like to say this is the only mishap I had with the car but at one point along the journey when I stopped to refill the car I also realised I had left the fuel cap at a petrol station back in Melbourne so was now driving with it plugged up with newspaper covered in a plastic bag. Again luckily for me when I got to Melbourne the fuel cap was still there.

Before I got back to Melbourne I had met Adam and his parents in Lorne. His parents had come down for 3 days holiday and he had come to meet me. We all had lunch and a drink together and then Adam and I headed off for Torquay to have a swim.

We went down to Torquay beach for a while and then headed back to his house and had a quick knock around on his tennis court. I remember at this point thinking how hard my life was at the moment 😊. Later we picked up an Indiana Jones movie and headed back to Buzz’s house. Watching Indiana Jones together was something we had talked about in Nepal. Buzz loves Indiana Jones and every holiday he goes on he tries to go somewhere Indiana Jones has been - hence the Nepal trip.

That brings me up to the present time - sitting on the couch in Buzz’s house with the commonwealth games on TV. Later I’m going to see an Aussie rules game with Adam and tomorrow we’re all off to see England play in one of the hockey games.

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Photos

Near the 12 apostles
The coastline is absolutely stunning around this area

Bedtime
Suprisingly comfortable sleeping in a car like this actually.