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Today we travelled from Apollo Bay to the end of The Great Ocean Road. In contrast to the stunning naturally sculptured land forms of magnificent size and uniqueness at the other end, this part of the road hugged the coastline on one side with sheer cliffs on the other. It was stunningly beautiful in a totally different way to the other end of the road.
The road was narrow and winding with few places for drivers travelling east to safely pull off to take advantage of the turnout points, so taking photos was a challenge. Greg had to concentrate on driving so it was difficult for him at times to take in the awesomeness of this drive.
It seems the tourist buses don’t drive this end of the road for which we were very grateful but kind of sad as it gives a very warped view of this great drive.
The bushfire which devastated some of the towns such as Wye River and Anglesea just 2 summers ago showed little evidence of such a dramatic event, especially when we compare it to the recovery of our property burnt in the Eden Valley fires in 2014. Not surprisingly this
area has a much higher rainfall boosting the rate of regeneration. It is obvious that major roadwork has been done to ensure the Great Ocean Road has been able to survive the destruction caused to it in the severe fire conditions. There are frequent rock falls and slips occurring along this section of the road and much has been done to protect passing motorists. At one point a wall of shipping containers has been built to catch falling rocks. As you will see in one of the photos there are some very big dents in the containers indicating that some very big rocks have fallen.
We stopped in Lorne to visit the Information Centre and have a coffee. Outside a group of young Japanese tourists had a group of Sulphur Crested Cockatoos flocking to them, landing on their arms and shoulders, making for excellent holiday photos. They were feeding them Japanese snacks from the back of their car. They offered some to Greg who promptly had them following him. Naughty enough to feed the birds, even more naughty to feed them human food … but was very entertaining.
We deviated slightly to visit Bells Beach, famous for surfing
and International Surf competitions. It was not the ideal place to take the van into but there weren’t many people there so we managed to negotiate the tight spaces to enjoy the view. Mind you, there were plenty of surfers out on the water trying to catch the perfect wave. The waves all seemed pretty perfect … but then again, we are not surfers.
Once we reached Torquay it seemed like we were suddenly in suburbia. Our day’s destination was the Beacon Caravan Park at Queenscliff. Modern technology does not always play fair. We gave up on our TomTom as it wanted to take us places we knew made no sense. Instead we reverted to following good old fashioned sign posts pointing to the ferry. We thought if we followed these, we would end up some place near where we were trying to go, A good choice. Surprisingly there were 2 Big 4 caravan parks quite close together. We just called into the first one and they steered us in the right direction.
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