Blogs from Otway Ranges, Victoria, Australia, Oceania

GOR Day6 The rooms at the Lavers Hill Motel were a little basic but adequate and the bluebottle, thank goodness, remained a prisoner all night in the rear room overlooking the Alpaca enclosure. This was made even better when I took out my hearing aids. Excellent food at night, as was the breakfast, which was more than I can say for the weather. Quite foggy and a light drizzle which made me worry about being able to see the rainforest at the Otway Fly. Up and down we rode along the ridge and then down (and up) along the private road to the Otway Rainforest. Luckily the cloud had cleared when we arrived and we had a good walk through the forest and up onto the steel walkways and to the tower to see the ferns, ... read more

The title says it all, I must have picked the absolute worst time to drive the Ocean Road, it has been almost non stop torrential rain, freezing cold a top temp of about 10degrees with a wind chill factor bringing that down to just above freezing. Add to this high winds and heavy seas, do you get the picture, sounds like home doesn't it. The plus side was that I endured it all, the roads to my surprise weren't flooded and I arrived safely in Worranbool unscathed. After leaving Pollo Bay I went to Otway Point, it was raining but not too heavily at this point. The road to the lighthouse was about five or six miles and this area is renowned for koala bears. I saw some people had stopped and were looking up into ... read more

Tempting as it was to stay longer in the Grampians, we had to start making a move if we wanted to catch our ferry to Tasmania on Wednesday evening. After much discussion, Paul and I decided to not see Melbourne this time around, as we just did not have time, but rather to return to Melbourne in June on our way to Alice Springs (just a bit of a detour, but it means we can take our time to explore Melbourne, and it also means I will get a chance to see my friend Sylvia and meet her two daughters for the first time, as she now lives in New York and will be visiting Melbourne then). So, with a couple of days up our sleeve, and the sun still shining, we left to tackle the ... read more

DAY 130 Waking up to a cold but fairly dry morning, it had periodically rained throughout the night but there was a good strong wind, I was glad of that as the trailer tent could be dried off a little. We had decided to be up early and off, as we had about 145K’s to go on the way we wanted to see the 12 Apostles, London Bridge and all the other things on the Great Ocean Road that were on offer. I got out of bed at around 7.00am and put the kettle on, we were still alive from drinking the untreated tap water that we boiled for tea last night. The flame came out of the burner, blue with a crown of orange, then went out, sh*t!! We are out of gas and I ... read more

We drove down to Portland via Dunkeld and Hamilton and stayed right on the beach at the Henty Bay Caravan Park. Annelies and Thomas loved the recreation room with a giant chess set and free air hockey and table soccer. We stayed for two nights to clean up and do some washing after the Grampians, and on the Wednesday (26th), we went on a free tour of the Portland Aluminium Smelter, and then visited a local park where Annelies and Thomas loved the very long slide. On Thursday we headed east along the Great Ocean Road, stopping briefly at Port Fairy before heading into Warrnambool for lunch at the fantastic and free Lake Pertobe Adventure Playground, which has the best flying fox that we've come across. Annelies and Thomas had several goes on the bigger flying ... read more