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Published: December 17th 2009
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Great Ocean Road
The memorial arch at Eastern View The Great Ocean Road, or the B100 to give it its official and less romantic name, is a 151-mile stretch of coastal highway between Torquay and Warnambool in Victoria, Australia. Touted as one of the best driving routes in the world we packed our bags, power ballads, hired a car and set off from Adelaide giving ourselves a week to reach Melbourne - over 650 miles away.
The Great Ocean Road delivered exactly what it says on the tin; but don’t be fooled by the name - it’s not all sea views, beaches and cute seaside towns as we were expecting. Parts of the route are inland driving through rainforests, past waterfalls, caves, cliffs and over green hills covered in sheep. Indeed it was scarily English at times, the sheep that is, not the rainforests.
Undoubtedly the Road’s biggest attractions are all situated around Port Campbell. Within a few miles of each other are the amazing Twelve Apostles and other rock formations all formed from years of erosion by the furious Great Southern Ocean. The stretch of coast the Road runs parallel with is also known as the Ship Wreck Coast after the 160 ships sunk there. The most
famous, and tragic, of these is the Lord Ard after which the Lord Ard Gorge is named. Only two of the fifty-four passengers survived and soberingly the gravestone of seven members of the Carmichael family rests on the headland. It was here that we took a micro-plane journey along the coast viewing the Twelve Apostle’s and their neighbours from above. Amazing. You’ll see in the pictures how precarious some of the rock formations are - one of the apostles crashed down in 2005 and London Bridge collapsed in 1990. There were never actually Twelve Apostles though - just clever marketing replacing their former name of The Sow and Piglets.
Another draw of the B100 is its population of non-human inhabitants. We were luckily enough over the course of the week to see kangaroos at Tower Hill (national park set in a volcano crater), wallabies at Port Fairy’s Griffiths Island, an echidna at the Gable Look Out and hundreds of koalas on the road down to Cape Otway Light House. As cute as the koalas were though, our next lighthouse stop at Split Point remained our personal favourite as it was the home of the TV series Round The Twist!
Simon, Bekki & Bex
At Roottop bar number one The last stretch of road winds its way along Victoria’s surf coast with beautiful beach towns and is also the site of the Eastern View Memorial Arch. The road was built by 3,000 ex-servicemen who built the road as a living tribute to their fallen comrades from the First World War, with the arch.
History lesson over; Andy’s turn now to fill you in on our week in Melbourne...
Although it was a shame to have to hand our car keys over and be back in a big city we had the added bonus of staying with friends (initially Simon & Bekki and then John and Ayesha). Melbourne is unlike any other city we have seen in Australia with a diverse mix of people and a huge selection of shops, restaurants and bars. Known as the sporting and music capital of Sydney (not content with their current thirty-four sporting venues, they are building another one) we thought it only proper to participate and went to a great Green Day concert at the Rod Laver Arena and cycled the Albert Park Grand Prix track.
Simon & Bekki were fantastic hosts taking us wine tasting in the Yarra
Valley, a rooftop bar crawl in the city, to Ramsay Street (much to my dismay), jogging in Albert Park and provided us with more leaflets on the city than you could get at the Tourist Information shop. We also discovered that Simon is Mr barbecue extraordinaire. When we though it couldn’t get much better we moved on to John and Ayesha’s house and they equally spoilt us with a great meal in St Kilda and then a trip to a Belgian Beer Cafe to cool down after a scorching 40 degree day (yes, we know it is snowing in London...) where Beccy’s highlight was not the ice cold liquid refreshment, but seeing Harold Bishop’s son, David, drinking at the table opposite.
Today we head to Tasmania for even more hospitality as we are staying with family friends Lois, Vince & Co for a week. Hope everyone enjoys the last few days of work before the Christmas break.
Christmas greetings to all!!!
Andy & Beccy
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alan
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great pics
Loved the coastal pics. Come on Andrew, you can't fool me - I bet you were thrilled to visit Ramsay Street!!!