Great Ocean Road

9th-10th January 2011

Yesterday morning we picked up a car from Europcar in Melbourne city centre and set off to explore the Great Ocean Road. I’d left Jonathan booking the car online the day before and when we went into the parking lot to collect our vehicle it turned out to be a huge great blue thing (Holden) rather than the tiny Vauxhall Astra type hatchback I’d been anticipating! Typical! Any excuse to try out a big fast car… he tried to fob me off with, we needed a big boot for our bags but I was less than convinced!

Anyway – we headed out (accelerating out of every junction at a scary speed) into the country and towards the Great Ocean Road. We passed through a place called Geelong on the way, which has these cool totem pole type sculptures dotted around the foreshore. We didn’t really stop for long but managed to grab ourselves a free ‘Splice’  which is a Wall’s lolly ice, similar to a Solero but without the ice-cream. A little disappointing if you ask me but no doubt healthier, as all the boring things are! Anyway, it was quite cold (about 20 degrees, as it had rained in the night) and the poor young girls promoting it had to wear a red Baywatch swimsuit whilst they were handing out the ices. They looked less than impressed! David Hasselhoff was somewhere launching the ice-cream the other week; we saw him on TV! 

The Great Ocean Road, according to the guidebook, is one of the world’s great scenic drives. However, we managed to hit it on two of the only overcast and drizzly days we’ve had in Oz. It may be spectacular at particular times of day in glorious weather but it was anything better than we’ve seen either at home (say Cornwall) or in New Zealand in our opinion.  There are surfing beaches  dotted along the way which are some of the best in the world (Bell’s Beach for example) because there is a solid rock platform rather than a beach. In fact about half of the beaches seem to have some rock in them. Curio Bay where we saw the penguin in New Zealand was like this. The waves were pretty tame as we passed these areas but I guess it would be pretty scary on a stormy day. Jon and I were wondering how deep the drop is under the waters after this costal shelf. Is it just a few metres or super deep? And if it is –do sharks come right into the coast?! We are now obsessed with sharks, spiders, snakes and jellyfish although we’ve only seen a spider in the Chinese gardens in Sydney! A girl in the hostel we stayed in last night though, said she’d found a large spider on her bed in the morning. Needless to say, neither of us had a full night’s sleep last night!

A nice lady in a tourist information centre yesterday said that some of the highlights of the G.O.R. are the lighthouses and that we should go and see one of them. She said she really loved lighthouses though, whereas I think they’re a sign of danger, peril and lost souls and they give Jon the heebie-jeebies. In fact, the only lighthouse I think I like, is that one that was in the children's’ programme ‘Round the Twist’. Didn’t that have ghosts in it too? And was that filmed in Australia as it certainly wasn’t English… I’d certainly make the effort to go and find that one if it was around here…

Anyway, one of the lighthouses that we passed was quite picturesque up on the rocks as we drove swiftly past. The other one I made Jon drive about 10 miles down a road to was blocked off  by a visitor centre when we got there so we couldn’t even see it. Scandalous. Now if they had a castle, they wouldn’t be so fussed about a lighthouse. I wonder how big a barrier would be erected around  a castle? Hmmmm… lighthouses - the poor man’s castle.

On the plus side however, we did see a huge number of koala’s in the eucalyptus trees as we passed, looking very sad and miserable in the rain! At one point there was one or two in every other tree – wonderful! These weren’t the first we’ve seen either. We were pointed towards another road yesterday where they could be spotted. We’d only driven about 50m up this road when we saw one in a tree. It looked like it was just waking up as it opened one beady eye, looked us up and down and curled back up in a ball. Just 20m more, around a bend, we spotted two people looking at something and as we pulled over we saw a koala crawl up off the floor and hump his way up the trunk and onto a branch. He wasn’t too high meaning that we got a great view as he munched through some leaves. One long leaf extended out of his mouth and waggled up and down as he chewed, like a big green tongue! At one point he jumped from one branch to another and although he made it, he looked pretty heavy. They’re actually a lot bigger and more robust than we’d imagined. We were thrilled to get such a great view.

We also saw kangaroos in the distance and an echidna crossing the road yesterday. Jon is taking great pleasure in calling them enchiladas though. We have clearly spent too much time with just ourselves! Today, we also saw a wallaby (maybe a swamp wallaby – according to a guide I looked in). It was right next to the road but it had disappeared before we had time to get the camera.  The other thing that was really cool was the Superb Fairy Wren, male and female, and the male has a striking blue tail. It even has a cool name. I think I’d like to be referred to as the Superb Helen Greaves from now on… it definitely has a ring to it.

The last thing we did today was drive past the Twelve Apostles. The weather had been so poor this morning that we weren’t even sure we’d see them but luckily it had cleared up enough to get an ok view through the drizzle.

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Whether it’s much more impressive on a good day or sunrise/sunset again I don’t know, but neither of us were blown away by the sight. It was quite impressive though. I think I would have liked to have gone down on the beach and see how tall the rocks felt, with the cliffs trapping you from behind. However, the weather put a bit of a damper on my enthusiasm at the time.

We’ve ended up at Warrnambool Beach Backpackers tonight which is quite a big hostel that looks like it was some kind of community function centre in the past. We’ve met some nice English/Swedish girls in our room who have donated some folding chairs to us as they’re getting a flight back to Sydney. We thought we would take them for Kate and Yuri for when they go to the beach and stuff. In comparison, another couple seem to be having a barney, be it very quietly while I was sat watching TV. Jon had found a Nintendo Wii by that point so I had to become immensely interested in the TV programme that was on. Unfortunately that happened to be an English documentary on the RSPCA where an officer was rescuing 5 toads from down a grid. The french people next to me where asking in astonishment if we really pay people to do that. I was slightly embarrassed to admit that yes we do. I think the owners of the property could have gone down themselves, don’t you? Even worse, the officer had to get out an ID guide to identify them as toads rather than frogs. It’s my guessing that the toads where quite happy down there in the cool for the time being.