Great Ocean Road

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Back in Victoria we stopped for lunch at Portland - the oldest settlement in Victoria. Unfortunately it was too windy and rainy to do much more than briefly tour some of the historic buildings and we drove on to Port Fairy where we set up camp for the night in the rain again ( I wonder why we prefer staying in people’s houses?!)

Fortunately the weather greatly improved the next day so for our trip down the Great Ocean Road we were blessed with blue skies and the ideal conditions to appreciate the amazing scenery. Our first sight of the "Bay of Islands" was breath taking - particularly the contrast between the blue sea, white foam, red and yellow earth and the green heathers. The formations themselves were also stunning - The Grotto, London Bridge (now just called London Arch since the part connecting it with the mainland disappeared in Jan 1990) and Loch Ard Gorge which contained our favourite, the Razorback, all gorgeous. The Twelve Apostles were OK but you can’t see them all from one spot (not that there are still 12) and because they are the most well known formation were completely overrun by tourists. We stopped at Kennett River campsite which was a bit basic but had the huge bonus of wild koalas. When you see them in a zoo during the day they do very little, sleeping for the vast majority of the time, but at night they are much more active so we managed to catch one running across the ground (chased by most of the campers and their cameras!) and jump from branch to branch - nature in the raw!

The last part of the Great Ocean Road the next day was lovely too and it was a long drive with lots of photo stops. We literally made our mark at the Lorne Visitor Centre with Charlie managing to be sick all over the floor for some reason... Managed to squeeze in a bit of shopping and some jobs in Melbourne before heading back to Jonathan and Helen’s where we spent the next morning completely reorganising all our stuff and repacking the pick up ready to ship it across to New Zealand, and ourselves over to Tasmania. Fortunately for once we had allowed masses of time so we managed to drop the car at the port and grab a taxi, arriving at the airport 5 mins before the check in even opened which for us is unheard of but was a good thing as we had been warned that Tiger Airways, although cheap, take no prisoners when it comes to late arrivals, even though it was OK for them to delay the flight by an hour... humph!

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Comments

[Scott]

Kiss me quick!
Bella, Charlie, You have to let your dad know that he looks like a bit of an eastender with his "kiss-me-quick" hat! Or if he was wearing a jacket he could be one of the blues brothers. At least it hasn't got corks hanging down from it. And your mum has got a very aussie "shiela" hat, great effort.