Travels in Australia - Andy Webb 2003
The Great Ocean Road
Tuesday 1st July - The journey to Port Fairy
We said our goodbyes to Marg and Fred at the car rental place in the centre of Adelaide and went to get our car. Unfortunately, due to a double booking we couldn't get the car we had ordered so they gave us a free upgrade to a nice shiny blue Volkswagen Golf. Within a few minutes we were negotiating our way out of Adelaide for our journey towards the Ocean Road. The first part of the journey was through luscious flat farmland which seemed to stretch for miles making cow spotting a futile game. At about 2pm we arrived at Mount Gambier where we stopped for a late lunch in a nice place called Cafe Capri which served tasty Mediterranean cuisine. We had been advised that there was an extinct volcano that was worth checking out because it had an azure blue lake, but apparently, this time of year it was a more mundane grey, so we decided against it.
We arrived in Port Fairy at about 4pm where we checked in to the YHA, which was, I must confess one of the nicest hostels I have stayed in. The main part was a victorian style boarding house with games room and lounge area with open fire, but the best bit was the sleeping accommodation we managed to get a room in the coachman's cottage, which was effectively just one small room with a double bed, but it had a nice rustic charm about it.
We ventured out to the Victoria Hotel for a couple of pre-dinner drinks before we headed to the Caledonian Pub for dinner. This was obviously a popular place, and perhaps the busiest place we had encountered on our travels, luckily they had a table free. The food was very filling and good value and is heartily recommended. After our food we had a few drinks in the bar and then realised that we had forgot to add an extra half hour on to the time as we had moved from Southern Australia time to Victoria time, which meant it was later than we thought.
On our way back we saw some bizarre shop displays in the windows one of which appeared to be shop mannequins with lampshades for heads and another window with two giant plastic sheep glaring at each other! Before retiring, we finished off a bottle of wine back at the hostel accompanyed by a few games of pool and some bizarre coin slot internet machine that seemed an awful expense.
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Lamphead |
Port Fairy |
Logan's Beach |
Wednesday 2nd July - Port Fairy-Lorne
We awoke to fine sunshine and had a quick hostel breakfast which involved me inadvertently stealing someones bread from right under their nose and consuming it, how was I to know it was their bread when they had put on the hostel bread shelf?! Anyway the thieving out of the way, we strolled down to check out the harbour of Port Fairy which was very picturesque and obviously quite an affluent area.
We set off on our journey to join the Great Ocean Road, which officially started just outside Warrnambool. The approach to Warrnambool was punctuated by some nice smoking industrial buildings, and before we knew it we had driven right through the town. Our first stop was just outside Warrnambool at Logan's Beach, where we hoped to spot a whale or two. This place was obviously geared up for whale watching, as they had a purpose built wooden viewing platform. We hung around for about half an hour, looking out for any unusual waves or ripples but to no avail. The people beside us were on their third day and they still hadn't seen anything, what chance had we in half an hour and without even a pair of binoculars? We gave up and hit the road.
Hurrah! We officially joined the Great Ocean Road, whereas before most of the road had been inland, we were now, looking forward to literally driving on the edge of the cliffs. For the first part though, the road was not quite on the edge of the land and we only caught glimpses of the ocean. We had been expecting terrible weather for this time of year, but we were rewarded with bright blue skies and quite a warming sun. Our first stop was the Bay of Islands, an impressive Cove with smaller bits of land dotted about it, hence the name. You really see here how the power of the sea has made an impact on the land. Thats when we first noticed the orange car.......
Our next port of call was the Grotto, another interesting land feature which I won't bang on about because your better off looking at the pictures! The orange car was pulling in as we left. After the Grotto we visited the so-called London Bridge which supposedly was called London Bridge because it was a bridge. However, its bridge to the mainland collapsed back in the early nineties rather unfortunately when two German tourists were on the seaward part leaving them stranded for eternity. Now London Bridge is separate from the mainland and the German tourists have now gone, they were rescued by helicopter 2 hours later. There was that orange car again, they must be stalking us!
We checked out Loch Ard Gorge which apparently is a great spot to do some great cliff hikes, unfortunately due to our limited time we just looked, oh the orange car again! Our last main sight see (all this was acheived by 2pm) was the 12 Apostles probably the most popular of the Great Ocean Road attractions. In fact it was so popular they had built a Visitor Centre, or so we thought, in fact when we got inside it was nothing more than a bloody expensive set of toilets! Netherless it was extremely busy, when we arrived in the car park there were a bunch of Scandanavian tourists having an unbelievably loud conversation or shouting match, whatever they were doing we ran for cover! Through the visitor centre we walked up to the viewpoint, where you can see about 75% of the 12 Apostles, apparently you can only see them all if you see them from the air, and one had probably collapsed by now. They are truly bizarre outcrops of rock, much akin to some of the South West coastline of England. The highlight was watching a group of Japanese tourists flagrantly climb over the 'Danger Cliff Face No Entry!' sign just to get as close to the edge as possible for a photo, we had seen the same thing days earlier at the Remarkable Rocks, I guess it must be programmed into their genes 'go get picture taken on edge of cliff you never know you might fall off to your death!' As we were leaving we nearly got run over by the orange car.
We decided to take late luncheon in Apollo Bay, but first we had a very pleasurable drive through the Otway National Park. The coast was replaced with large Swedish-like forests and the I got my first chance to try out the VW's windscreen wipers as a light drizzle had started. The car was great for these type of roads, it had good cornering and although I'm not a fan of automatics, it certainly saved a lot of gear changing. We came out of the forest into luscious rolling green hills and the sea in the distance, the sun was now shining again. We made our descent into Apollo Bay, it was a beautiful place, more like a quiet holiday resort than anything else, with a nice green and palms separating the sea from the main front. We parked up and went in search of food. We opted for Nauticals, which was a very chilled alternative bar/cafe serving great vegetarian food, despite it being a little cold we decided to site outside and consumed some very nice Roti Wraps which the resident dog was trying desperately to get to! We stayed in Apollo Bay for a couple of hours until the sun hid behind the hills, it is certainly a very nice place to spend a day. But time was pressing, so we pressed on.
Our destination, we decided due to the lateness in the day would be Lorne, as we had planned to go straight to Melbourne, we felt we could do with another day exploring. The road to Lorne was steep, winding and precarious but extremely spectacular, in the distance higher up we saw our friend the orange car. We arrived in Lorne after sunset and booked into the YHA which seemed to be halfway up the hillside. We acquired a nice chalet with kitchenette for the night, before heading down into the town. We started off with a few drinks in Reif's Restaurant Bar which seemed nice enough, before going to Mark's which was a cross between an up market wine bar and restaurant. The only disconcerting thing here was the barman who looked like Jamie Oliver! We headed back to Reif's for dinner, which was delicious. We were treated to some dubious live music after dinner from the kitchen staff accompanied by a large group of pissed people who seemed to have the inability to know the meaning of the word 'excuse me'.
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London Bridge |
12 Apostles |
Apollo Bay Sunset |
Thursday 3rd July - Lorne - Melbourne
We awoke surrounded by a lovely forest, quite disappointed we didn't have another day to explore. While in the toilet I had the interesting experience of a dubious looking red/brown spider descending towards me, however at the halfway stage it decided better of it, and so I would never know if it was a poisonous one or not. We headed out to the Erskine Falls which were a short twenty minute drive inland from Lorne. At a height of 38 metres they were an impressive sight and at the bottom they crashed into jungle like undergrowth.
Back on the Ocean Road we continued on passing through Torquay until we officially left the Great Ocean Road. We headed on from there to Geelong, which seemed to be a bustling seaside town with a famous wool museum. We found a place to park after driving around for about fifteen minutes and headed down to the seafront. There appeared to be a newly built tourist info place with of all things a fairground carousel inside! For lunch we settled on the rather commercial Buccaneers Cafe & Bar on the Cunningham Pier, mainly because it had a great sea view. We were joined by hordes of hyperactive children who seemed to be on a mission to cover every square inch of the restaurant and fight amongst themselves. Quite relieved to get out alive we trudged back to the car and continued on towards Melbourne.
Our last stop before Melbourne was the Victoria Zoo, which offered a safari type bus adventure. The zoo itself was quite pleasantly laid out with some impressive sculptures dotted about. We took the bus trip along with what appeared to be a very dysfunctional family. The woman appeared to come from some real redneck state and had to ask a question about literally everything, even if it was completely pointless. Whether the guy also on the bus was related to her I don't know but he sat well apart from her and occasionally kept looking round at us, as if we were going to start up a conversation or laugh at a joke that hadn't been said. The trip wasn't bad, we saw a large array of wildlife including rhinos, hippos, camels, various assortments of deer/antelope, buffalo, giraffes and emus. At one point the driver rather masterly managed to run over an ostrich egg while complaining that they didn't get enough funding as Melbourne Zoo. Despite all this the journey was quite enjoyable and we ended up being the last ones in the zoo, after being transfixed by monkeys for about half an hour and waiting to get a photo opportunity with a jaguar that never came.
We joined the highway and were soon approaching Melbourne which seemed shrouded in a thick mist....
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Erskine Falls |
Zebras |
Monkey |
Melbourne >>
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