Day 14: Moday, February 18, 2002
Driving the Great Ocean Road

Today we drove the Great Ocean Road, a 64 mile stretch of road along the southwest cost of Victoria (southwest of Melbourne). We started in Foster, which is about 100 miles or so southeast of Melbourne, so we had a ways to go to get there.

We got an early start (leaving around 9am) and just drove for about three hours. Initially we were on medium-sized roads that went along pretty farmland. Then once we got close to Melbourne, we picked up the freeway, which ironically was the slowest part of the trip. There was a ton of construction and whereever there was construction the speed limit was just 80km/hr. On the "slower" roads the speed limit is 100 and usually we drove around 110. The odd thing was that most everyone followed the speed limit around the Melbourne area. Even though the right lane was fairly open, most people only inched above it. They must be cracking down on speeding or something. They had signs saying that they had speed cameras all over, so it's possible we'll get a dozen speeding tickets mailed to us from Hertz. At one point, while passing close to Melbourne, a motorcycle passed us on the right, then when I moved right to pass a bit later he gestured frantically at me, pumping his hand up and down, which might have meant slow down. I thought maybe he knew there was a speed camera right there or something, cuz it's not like he hadn't been going fast. Who knows?

Great Ocean Road

When we finally made our way out to the coast to start the Great Ocean Road it was about noon. The road was pretty, sort of like the Pacific Coast Highway in California, but probably not as dramatic. Initially it started as a nice ocean highway, nice but not spectacular. Then we got to the first town, called Lorne.The town was okay, but seemed like a fairly typical seaside town. Some of the houses seemed quite nice at either end of town, so probably people come here from Melbourne for seaside getaways.

Street in Lorne near where we had lunch

We were both quite hungry by then so we stopped for a bite. There were a string of cafes and restaurants at one end of town so we chose one among those. I had a nice chicken and cheese sandwich on some yummy Turkish bread. Walendo had a ham and cheese sandwich but he'd chosen from a different sandwich menu than I had, so his was kind of small. I think he considered it a lunch appetizer. :-) We walked down to the other end of town and I got some ice cream and Walendo got some Chinese food to fill his quota. (It had been a while.) He said it was delicious — much better than he was expecting. So far he's had very good luck with Asian food.

Walendo after collecting shells on Great Ocean Road coat

We continued on the road and the coastline started to look more dramatic: Beautiful blue ocean and craggy rock coastline. There were pullouts every 100 meters or so, which was great because it's the kind of road where you want to keep looking but the road is so windy that you have to keep your eyes on the road. So lots of cars were pulled over. We stopped at a few for the view, and then we found one where we could clambor down to the beach and rocks below. Walendo wanted to look for interesting sea shells. He went down ahead of me while I stayed above to take some coastline shots, and then when I went to join him, I saw him out on a rocky area that I couldn't get to without getting my feet wet.

The shells we collected

In just that amount of time, the tide had come in enough to cover the rocks he'd stepped on! I stayed on the beach area and took more pictures while he collected shells, then he came back to join me. (He was wearing tevas, so he just stepped in the water to get back). He showed me a bunch of shells he'd collected, many of them quite beautiful. I was a little wary about taking them since we'd learning how important they are to the sea creatures, but there were so many of them on the beach and most weren't the type where creatures could crawl inside, so it seemed okay to take a few. We climbed back up to the car and continued on.

After a stretch of lovely coastal views we came to the next main town, Apollo Bay. This one we liked more. It had a very nice park area on one side of the road and that led to a nice beach. The other side of the road had a string of stores. Probably they were similar to Lorne's but they seemed a little nicer somehow. We saw postcards of a waterfall, so there was probably one nearby. I could see hanging out in Apollo Bay for a day or two.

View of Apollo Bay

After walking along for a bit (and using the public bathrooms, as always), we continued on the road. Shortly after Apollo Bay, the road curves away from the ocean and winds its way through some lovely pastoral scenery. That area is rolling hills with lots of ranches and dairy farms. The road is much straighter so we cruised along enjoying the road. We met up with the ocean a couple of times but then veered away again until finally we picked it up again. On this end, the road is more barren, full of vegetation that grows in windy places. It reminded us of further north in California, similar to the Mendocino area. Fairly soon after we joined up with the coastline again, we came to the signs for the Twelve Apostles. These are those giant chunks of rock that broke off from the cliffs, standing out about 100 yards on the beach. It seems to be the main atraction of the Great Ocean Road, and we'd seen lots of pictures of it before we got there.

Twelve Apostles

There is a parking area and a small building and then you walk under the freeway along a nicely maintained walkway out to the views. There's a boardwalk that takes you to three different viewing sites. Of course there were plenty of tourists, probably most not from Australia because most people walked by on the right rather than the left. There aren't really 12 such rocks, but who cares. It is pretty dramatic. The viewing area is toward one end of the apostles, but there are two more in the other direction. It's unfortunate that you're looking right into the sun when you look in the main direction, so much of it is washed out.

One of the Apostles (wave at lower right gives scale)

I liked the view that was lit up better, and got some nice shots of it. The sizes are hard to fathom though. Some people were walking down on the beach and you got a better idea of how gigantic these rock formations are. We stayed for 20 minutes or so and then went back to the car. For such a major attraction, it was a little surprising that there wasn't that much more to it.

Loch Ard Gorge

We continued down the road a bit and came to Loch Ard Gorge, which we enjoyed quite a bit. In the late 1800s, a ship crashed on the rocks and sank, killing all but 2 people, one woman passenger and a male crew member. He heard her calling and managed to get her to a cave, then climbed up the rocks and got help, and the two were saved. There was a cemetery there that had graves from the shipwreck but also others, probably of townspeople. The gorge had a number of walkways that went out to interesting sites. There was one that went out to an archway created by the powerful pounding waves. On the other side we could watch the waves pounding against the wall of rock. It was pretty dramatic to see and hear the water smash against the rocks and splash way high.

Smashing waves

I love that kind of thing, and we stayed to watch for a while. Then we checked out another area that looked like a big hole in the ground and there was water coming up from the sea in a tunnel it had created in the rock. You could see it enter from one end and then continue on up a winding narrow tunnel. Amazing that it still had so much force. Eventually, the land above the tunnel (where we were standing) will probably give way. We explored most of the walkways in that area and finally headed back to the car.

Water Tunnel Loch Ard Gorge

Up the road is what they call the London Bridge, which was a natural bridge to an outcropping of rock. However, in 1990 the bridge part collapsed, just after two tourists had walked across, so now it's just a gap. (The two tourists were rescued by helicopter.) We didn't stop for that, since we felt like we'd had our fill. It was also getting a bit late and we needed to get to a town to find a hotel. So we drove on for another hour or so until we came to Warrnambool. (Well, first we passed by Cheese World near Allantown. Walendo wanted to go in and get a tour but it was closed, so he contented himself with saying Cheese World a lot. He'd also been practicing his moo-ing during the day, so this provided a little variety.) Anyway, we had been thinking we'd try to make it to Port Fairy, which was another 30km past Warrnambool cuz the guidebooks said it was an especially picturesque town.

Downtown Warrnambool

But Warrnambool seemed like a nice-sized town and it was getting kind of late, so we figured we'd stay. When we stopped at some hotels, two of them were already down to their last room (which usually means the executive room that's more expensive), but then we found one called the Centrepoint Motor Inn that was within our range (AU$96, US$48), so we checked in. It was probably around 8pm by the time we went out looking for dinner. There was a main strip that had a bunch of restaurants all along one block, so we scoped them all out and ended up choosing the Mexican place called Taco Bills. This was a good thing cuz it turned out that Walendo had the very best seafood burrito he'd ever had. He just loved it. He had about 4 bites to go and he said he didn't want to eat any more cuz then he'd finish it. He just couldn't get over it. I had gotten a chicken burrito and it too was quite good, much better than your average California Mexican fare, which is surprising. Dinner was quite a success.

Walendo checking email in Centrepoint Motor Inn

After getting ice cream (of course) and coffee at a little shop, we went back to the hotel. It had a terrific room. The room was huge and everything was modern and very clean. We were sorry we weren't staying more nights. Another nice thing was that there was a local internet dialup number, and for the first time, we were able to dial up from my laptop. Yahoo!! So we both checked mail and then we took care of paying some bills. (We needed a 128-bit secure browswer and the ones at the Internet Cafes hadn't have them.) I was even able to run Hubbub, although no one else was on, since it was around 4am in California, 7am in NY. So I left little "post-its" to some people saying hi from Australia. We went to sleep fairly late since we'd gotten such a late start on the evening.

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