The Great Ocean Road

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Yesterday we rode one of Melbourne’s two free tourist transports. This morning started out with the second; the City Circle Tram which, as the name implies, runs a loop around the CBD. It worked out great for us since the Avis location was on the opposite corner of the CBD from our hotel. Although it was a bit crowded we managed to get to Avis without a problem. Not surprisingly, their downtown location was small, but surprisingly Saturday is their busiest day so while they had our reservation, we had to wait 45 or 50 minutes while a load of cars were delivered from the airport. For our “inconvience” they upgraded us from the Corolla we had reserved to the Aussie version of the V6 Camry, tricked out with all the toys. It has turned out that this has been a great car for all the driving we’ve been doing, but we’re getting ahead of ourselves.

The combination of relatively light traffic (Saturday morning), excellent directions from the rental agent, and great navigation by Connie allowed us to get out of the CBD and onto the M1 without delay. Our first planned stop for the day was the RAAF Museum at Point Cook. Point Cook is an active RAAF training base so we received a stern warning from the gate guards that while we could take photos at the Museum, not to take photos elsewhere on the Base. That was a real disappointment as I really wanted to photograph the two Cessna 172s and one Bristol Bulldog we saw on the ramp. We arrived at the Museum without being shot and as we checked in at the front desk noticed the person at the desk had his ID on a “Luftwaffe Museum” lanyard. He had visited there a few years ago while at a seminar in Europe. It turns out he was one of the paid curators working the front desk to “know the customers”. We had a nice chat about museums and while he’d never visited the US, he hoped to at some point. We then went off to the displays and as in NZ, artistic display won over photographic ease. So a number of aircraft I’d never seen before were virtually unphotographable, particularly the Mirage IIIC. They had arranged a secure viewing area within their restoration area and we were able to see the Mosquito they are working on. The fuselage is still largely unpainted so you can see the wooden construction very easily. When finished it will be a glass nosed PR Mk 16 and should be pretty spectacular, but there is a lot of work still to be done. We were then able to walk to the other hangers where more aircraft were on display including one of the F-4Es the RAAF used while they were waiting for their F-111s and one of the last F-111Gs operated by the RAAF. Overall a very impressive museum.

Back on the road we headed for Torquay and the start of the Great Ocean Road, which follows the coast of the Bass Strait and Southern Ocean all the way to the South Australia state line. Our first stop was at Apollo Bay which just looks like it’s a stone’s throw from Torquay on the map. Well again the map doesn’t tell the story of the ups and downs and twists and turns following the coast. We stopped along the way for an early dinner and several times to look at the scenery but didn’t get to Apollo Bay till after dark. Although it’s a pretty small town and we had an address, we did spend quite while cruising the town looking for the B&B. However eventually we found it (after asking a waiter that looked and sounded a lot like Russell Brand for directions) and got settled in for the night.

Early the next morning (OK not that early) we set off again bound for Mt. Gambier just across the line in South Australia. Along this section of the drive is another patch of rainforest where we had a bit of a tramp as they say down here. After that, the coast got much dryer and windier and we came to the Twelve Apostles which are stone stacks sitting out in the ocean as the shoreline has been eroded back from them. Although they are they are the most famous thing along the coast, there are a number of other interesting rock formations and coves. On the day we were driving by, there was a good deal of surf which added to the wonderful views. We hope the pictures do this section of coast justice, but they probably don’t give a sense of the scale.

Part of this area of the coast is also known as “Shipwreck Coast”. The most famous shipwreck was of the Loch Ard in 1878 which was bound for Melbourne. There were only two survivors and only four bodies were recovered. Those four are buried in a small cemetery close to the wreck site which also has a memorial to all those lost.

We finally got to the hotel in Mt. Gambier in the early evening. With the advice of the person at the front desk we went to a delightful Italian restaurant called Caffe Belgiorno. This was our first experience at pub style service where you place your meal order at the bar, pay for it, place your drink order at another spot, and then wait at the table till the meal is delivered. It really works pretty well and seems to reduce the amount of wait staff the restaurant needs. We did a little drive around Mt. Gambier before going back to the hotel and it seemed like a very nice small town, there were some signs of prosperity which had been lacking in the other towns we’d seen. When we got back to the hotel we discovered our room didn’t have any hot water, but they were able to switch us to a new room without any difficulty. They named all their rooms with US State names and while we started in Arkansas, we ended up in Indiana which we thought was appropriate.

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Photos

RAAF Mosquito fuselage
for you non-airplane folks, notice how the entire fuselage is made out of wood.

The Great Ocean Road Memorial
Dedicated to the WWI veterans who built the road.

Interesting House
quite a view of the coast

They call this one London Bridge
and there used to be a second arch connecting to the headland on the left but the arch collapsed in 1990.

Another really big trees
in the rainforest