Blogs from Great Ocean Road, Victoria, Australia, Oceania - page 9

Photos day 1... read more

As the biggest island (or smallest continent) in the world, Australia has plenty of coastline, but everyone there knows what is meant by "The Great Ocean Road;" that moniker belongs to the stretch of Highway-12 along the Victoria state coastline from Torquay to Nelson. Fresh from New Zealand, we were used to some great coastline, but Australia's Great Ocean Road offers unique experiences for the most jaded coastliner. Where else can you watch kangaroos hopping on the beach, or marvel at the giant sea-carved towers, the Twelve Apostles, wondering how they got their name when you can only count 8 of them? We headed for the coastline on the morning of March 28th, driving west along Highway-12 through Geelong, Torquay, Anglessa, and Lorne. Along the way, we stopped at a couple of beaches and ate from ... read more

"So, we thinking of renting a car and driving up the Great Ocean Road, next week. You in? It'd be good craic, like" The invitation came something like that from my Irish friend Bobby.It was an invitation alright but the plans were vague. Even on the day of leaving I had to make a call to make sure we really were going and at what time. I finished work a little before 5 on Friday, quick walk home, and an even quicker shower and pack. Jump on the tram to meet up with my Irish friends. We sorted out who was going in which car and made our plans to meet up outside the city in a town called Werribee. After Werribee there were absolutley no plans made, except that we had to bring booze and ... read more

Hiring a car turned out to be a pretty difficult process as we had left it so late to do, not knowing that you need to book things way in advance. But in the end Matt bagged us an automatic Mitsubishi Outlander from Thrifty which we went to pick up the morning of our ROAD TRIP! Whoop! Luckily when the Thrifty sales woman looked at Matt’s drivers licence and told him that it had expired, he was convincing enough in his response that it was just the photo that had expired, not the licence. (This is true - I noticed it about two days before leaving England which sent us into panic as we knew we wanted to hire a camper van in New Zealand and I did not want to have to drive the ... read more

Another week, another late blog. I hope everyone is well. I'm sorry it's late again but we have been real busy in the last few weeks. So what have the van gang been up to since the last mammoth blog? Well, we started the great ocean road in Torquay as you saw from the previous blog. We spent a few days there just relaxing by the beach and recharging our batteries after being in Melbourne. Torquay is famous for Bells beach, which holds surf competitions and discount retail outlets. As you would imagine you get to know each other very well whilst living in a van 24/7 so we have now worked out that Martin loves hats and Fox Racing. So when we came across a “fox racing” discount shop with a $5 hat box that ... read more