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Published: August 22nd 2006
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Well thank you very much to Jayne and Glenn who let me stay in their flat whilst I was in Melbourne, especially as it was Jayne's first week back at work! They also took me to see an Aussie rules game at the Telstra Dome which is something I've wanted to do since before I arrived in Australia! It was the Mighty Western Bulldogs vs the Carlton Blues -it was a very tense match and at times very close. The sport it is most closely related to is Gaelic Football but there are one or two differences, for example it is played on an oval pitch. Thanks to Glenn and Micks tutoring, I had just about figured out the rules by the end of the match! Thankfully the team we were supporting won but as always with sport its not over til its over and one of the amusing things about going to a live match is watching how involved people get in the game and how upset they can get! We got called names a couple of times, including being called losers when our team was actually winning!
So what else did I do on my return trip to
Melbourne? I visited the Immigration museum with Julian who is someone I met on my trip down from alice springs. It was actually really interesting, all about the trials and tribulations faced by those who emmigrated and if you have time/ know who you're looking for, you can look through records for any of your relatives who've emmigrated. Melbourne is the fashion captial of australia so I did a lot of window shopping, particularly in the bohemian streets of Brunswick Street and Smith Street in the area of Fitzroy. You can feel very cultured as you wander in and out of the shops, cafes and art galleries down these streets. They are also good for designer factory outlets, I just wish I didn't have to window shop!
So after spending a few days exploring melbourne and imposing on Jayne and Glenns hospitality, it was time to do another great road journey and do a tour of the Great Ocean road! I did this with ride tours, it was a two day tour and I had a great time! The reason that its a great road journey is because of the beautiful scenery, it really is a postcard around every
corner. I've put a few pictures on about what we did, I think we visited all of the major sights as well as one put into the tour just for me...............visiting the lighthouse from round the twist!!!!!
Day one:
A lot of driving as this tour takes the non coastal route to the end of the great ocean road but we stopped for lunch at a great place called tower hill which is a sunken volcano and is teeming with wild kangaroos, koala's and emus (check out the photo's). We then headed to Logans beach to do some whale watching - the species of whale we saw is called southern right, the reason they have this name is because they are quite slow, found in southern waters and were therefore the 'right' whales for whalers to catch. We saw a mother and her calf, because of the distance they were away and the zoom power on my camera, the photo's are not very clear - I did in fact take a couple of photo's of a rock (partially covered by sea water) which were more convincing/ I could have fooled you with but I decided against it. So from
It's hard to see, and you may not believe me but that is a whale and her calf
a species called the southern right whale - its the black bit in the sea, in the middle of the photo logans beach we headed along the great ocean road and stopped off at the bay of islands, bay of martyrs, the grotto and london bridge.
A couple of stories about these places............ the bay of Martyrs is so named because when the eurpoeans settled in this area, there was an aborigini tribe who lived in the area but the europeans ousted them from the area.....now the aboriginis didn't like this and kept coming back to the area...I can't remember the story exactly but it was either that this was a really peaceful tribe and they got massacred in the bay of martyrs or, they were a tribe who used weapons to defend their land, were rounded up and massacred in the bay of martyrs. Either way, we europeans, once again, do not come up smelling of roses. I think it was here that I showed off my not so impressive frisbee skills, I think by the end of the trip I was better than when I started! The story of London bridge however is a slightly less horrible one. But there is a moral to the story........ One day in the early 90's London Bridge, which was so named
beacuse it was a huge natural arch (a bit like durdle door but bigger)........ fell down. Stranding two tourists on the other side. Because of the weather conditions, they were unable to be winched off this rocky outcrop just off the coast for several hours. A huge media circus as well as locals and tourists developed around them and the broken bridge. When they were eventually winched back to safety, they refused all interviews and tried to cover their faces. Why? Well because both of these people were married, just not to each other! What a way to be found out!
So from here, we headed on to see the twelve apostles in time for sunset. The twelve apostles are basically some rocky outcrops lining the coastline but they are stunning too. They exist as most of these natural wonders often do because they are made of slightly stronger rock than the cliffs that surrounded them before the sea and general weather, wore them away. There are in fact only 8 apostles, there were 9 but one collaspsed in the 80's or 90's, I don't know if there was ever any evidence that there were in fact 12 of
these, I think the tourism board just thought it sounded good!They were beautiful at sunset though, check out the photo's. Then off to a hostel for the night in a tiny town. It was getting really cold at nighttime here along the coast, infact when we went out to the van in the morning, it was covered in frost! First frost I had seen for a year and a half!
Day two
So on day two we headed first to Loch Ard Gorge, this is part of the shipwreck coast and also has a story attached to it. Its a really trecherous part of the coast here and in the 1800's there was a ship wreck with only two survivors, one a cabin boy who managed to swim to safety and the second a young girl who was a passenger on the ship and managed to hold onto some wood and called out for help. So the cabin boy gallantly risked potential death and rescued the girl. They eventually got married, unfortunately they didn't live happily ever after together but its a nice story. We then headed back to the apostles to see them in daylight and later headed
down to the beach via gibson steps and had fun playing football there.
Then it was off to Maits rest to do a guided rainforest walk before heading off to apollo bay for lunch, lovely beach here. Then off to Bells beach (scenery shown in a film with Patrick Swayze, maybe called point break? I can't remember) a famous surf beach, to watch the surfers do their stuff on the waves and then a quick stop at Torquay for browsing in the famous surf shops of quicksliver and ripcurl.
On the way back we also stopped off at the round the twist lighthouse, I'm sure I'm not the only person I know who used to watch this show after school, when you've been a tourist/ traveller as long as I have, you knid of stop caring about quite how geeky it is to want to have a photo taken of you with it, just to say you were there!
Then headed back to Melbourne ready to get my friday night, overnight bus to Sydney for my final week in australia!Back home now but very behind on blogs..more soon
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