The Victoria Luxury Apartments Hotel Port Fairy

... at 4pm demanding roast potatoes. Lunch was served between 12pm-2pm, dinner between 6pm-8pm. So we had some toblerone cheesecake in a café across the road and went off in search of the volcano. Now the trouble with extinct volcanoes is that they look a lot like hills and so there was quite a bit of driving around going, 'Is that it? That looks pretty volcano-y to me' until we found it. Viewed from above the huge crater had steep sides and a large lake ...

... ferry to catch and it's a few hours drive away. The journey takes in our first kangaroo, who stops at the roadside to watch us watching him. We then see our first 'Big Thing', an Australian peculiarity of having replicas built of almost anything. In Kingston SE we see the 'Big Shrimp', a giant of the crustacean world. We get to Cape Jervis and our ferry to Kangaroo Island. PS. How do we know we had the fastest car on the road? We have got over $500 in speeding fines to prove it!

It's good for the drought. What it's not good for is a pair of Irish travelers who have flown half way around the world to escape it. Yes, I'm talking about RAIN...and lots of it. It was still grey skies and wind wipers galore as we pulled out of Melbourne City headed for the Great Ocean Road. Being famous for its beautiful coastline and beaches, we were wondering how much of a wash out it was going to be. Lucky for us the rain did pretty much clear up ...

... every afternoon and all the pubs he visits have TAB within.. Go figure! The kids and I went to the playground via the surf beach on our bikes. Max fell over and split his lip, blood everywhere. Thought for a minute that I had another child with more missing teeth. Called Greg once Max had calmed down he met us at another pub Caledonian 'The Stump' Oldest licenced continuously licenced pub in Vic. (no TAB) Bar meals here $7, the B.N eyes lit up! Max ...

... all of the three days on the road. Then we headed out towards the Great Ocean Road. "The Great Ocean Road is a 273km stretch of road along the South Eastern coast of Australia between the Victorian cities of Geelong and Warrnambool. The road was constructed as a Memorial to the First World War. It is one of Australia's great scenic coastline drives" Fact. The first stop was Geelong, we got out and had a look around but to be honest we didn't think much of it ...

... dark grey though), a couple of nice golf courses but absolutely no shops; we figured it must have been a retirement village or something. Finally the end of a great days driving was coming into Melbourne over the huge bridge as the sun was setting over the city. We recommend the drive to anyone down in Victoria, just do it in a car that justifies the amazing roads and scenery, if we ever do it again the car might just have to have a stallion on it!!

... the first 2 drivers then Les spoilt it. He gave his turn to Gill. The speed limit was 110kph/73mph. The roads were empty and straight. An absolute delight. In fact they were boring. Mile after mile of bush. The only thing to do was sleep or kangaroo spot. We still haven't seen one. We arrived in a place called Robe, a lovely seaside village. The sky was blue, the sea was green and the wind howled. We had nowhere to stay so we had an animated discussion about ...

... Katie was delighted, she loves these little guys, and with spirits buouyed, we continued down the road again... <br><br> <br><br>As we approached the town of Apollo Bay, we took another turn off ...

Ok well we got up really really early as the other people in the hostel left early and woke us. We fisrt of all went to Maits Rest in the Otways, a temperate rainforest. The walk was very informative and nice. Next stop Cape Otway Lighthouse, except we were too early, it didn't open until 9am so we went onto Otway Fly, a tree top walk in the rain forest. This was ...

... little critters and usually sleep during the day, but a couple of them were quite active - well as active as they get, eating the Eucalyptus leaves etc. Port Fairy is a quite a small place arranged around where a river meets the sea, so it has a nice wharf and lots of cafes / restaurants (no fairies though so far as we were able to tell!).