Great Ocean Road

Monday morning we woke to clear blue skies and a gentle wind.  Perfect for our planned trip to do the second half of the Great Ocean Road.

The first 50km took us south east through farm land, until we hit the coast at a place called the Bay Of Islands.  What a spectacular view.  You come around a corner and suddenly there in front of you is the sea crashing into the high cliffs of a horseshoe shaped bay with several small islands in it.  I have a sneaking suspicion that is why they call it Bay Of Islands.

 

Because it is such a popular tourist attraction, the Australian National Parks have gone to the trouble of constructing excellent signage, parking, walkways and viewing platforms all along the Great Ocean Road.  Consequently you are able to make the most of viewing opportunities at all of the popular tourist sites, at times virtually hanging out over the edge of the cliffs to get a good view.  It was quite mesmerising to stand there and watch the awesome power of the sea unleash itself against the cliffs.  Christel commented that if we had to go home to New Zealand today, she wouldn’t be disappointed after having seen this spectacular display of nature’s power at work.

The road itself, at this end, was a bit like travelling from Mokau towards Tongaporutu, only the views were much more spectacular.  We called in at places like ‘The Arch’:

 ‘London Bridge’:

 

The Grotto:

and ‘Lord Ard Gorge’:

 which is the site of an 1880’s shipwreck.  All offered their own special attractions of what the sea can do after hundreds of years bashing away at the land. 

We read at one of the stops that the sea is presently eating into the southern coast line of Aussie at the rate of 2 cm a year.  Just think, at this rate, in about 600,000 years we won’t have to worry about Aussie beating us in cricket any more.

We finally got down to the ultimate attraction of the Great Ocean Road, the ‘Twelve Apostles’, though as we had been warned,  due to the process outlined in the previous paragraph, only eight were left.  How long ago the other 4 disappeared we couldn’t find out, but I guess for commercial purposes, 12 sells better than 8, so 12 it remains.

We knew we were getting near, by the ample warning signage, and the thousands of helicopters, (well three actually), full of Asian tourists, buzzing up and down the coast.  The huge car park was full of cars, caravans, campervans and buses, with people everywhere.

Personally we were a little disappointed with what we saw.  There were two ‘apostles’ on the eastern side of a peninsula, and from what we could see, 5 on the western side, and that didn’t add up to 8 in my book.  Maybe we should have taken a leaf out of the Asians book, and had a ‘rook’, from one of the thousands of ‘hericopters’.  I think we had been spoiled by the sights we had seen further up the coast.  Certainly most of the ‘tourist traffic’ was travelling in the opposite direction to us, and this would have been their first view of the ‘sea in action’.

Judging by the ‘rots’ and ‘rots’ of photographs being taken by the Asians, they were ‘obviousry’  ‘velly implessed’ by the ‘velly’ nice ‘scenely’.

The Twelve Apostles was basically the end of the road for us travelling from west to east, and from here the road swung inland to Lavers Hill where we had stopped for a beer after our trip along the road from the other end.  We continued on to the small township of PRINCETOWN and after a nice cold beer returned back along the road to Warrnambool.  We could now cross the Great Ocean Road off our list of things to do.  We were certainly impressed with what we saw overall, and, on reflection, can say it certainly lived up to its reputation.

Tuesday was another lovely sunny day, so we decided to take time out from our strenuous schedule and after school work, laundry, and blogging, spent a very pleasant afternoon on the beach. Cameron decided the water was warm enough for a swim and spent considerable time testing himself against the breakers, even managing to body surf in on a couple.

Later we went into town for groceries and also to buy some fuel containers and other essentials prior to heading north into the great unknown. We had decided that as tomorrow would be Dad’s Birthday and we were weren’t sure where we would be, we would go out for tea to celebrate.  We had seen the Warrnambool RSL building sitting high on a hill overlooking the town, and decided it would be a fitting place to celebrate Dad’s Birthday, so we finished off our day with a lovely meal, and toasted Dad with a couple of cold ones.

 On Wednesday we plan to travel from Warrnambool to HAMILTON, which is about 100km north, and from there explore the GRAMPIANS NATIONAL PARK.  Another ‘must do’ on our list.  Watch this space.