Start of the Great Ocean Road
Trip Start
Sep 22, 2005
1
54
85
Trip End
Apr 13, 2006
Torquay,
Australia
Saturday, December 10, 2005
It's a little confusing, or at least it was to us, as to where the road begins. We believe the official starting point of the Great Ocean Road has changed over time, but we we're happy to say it started in Torquay as we discovered the address to Torquay Golf Club was 1 Great Ocean Road.
Prior to leaving Geelong we tried to find an internet cafe to transfer photos from our memory card to CD. We apprehensively asked the same lady at the reception for directions
01 - Us at Point Danger
. These seemed a little easier to follow and we made our way into town. Upon parking at the metered space and pink and green elf appeared, put money into our meter for us and handed us free chocolate! You may think we had been drinking, but before you ask, it wasn't a "real" elf, it was a young lady dressed up - presumably performing good deeds for Xmas, or just doing something that flicks her switch - either way, we we're grateful! The only bummer was the internet was shut, so we headed to Torquay. Into Torquay, we stopped at White Beach opting to take a short stroll. As we walked through the bank to get to the beach we encountered our first "beware of snakes" sign! Although Nikki would like to see one snake in the wild, and one snake only, she is still scared of them and was secretly glad we didn't encounter any here.
As we needed to book some accommodation for that night, we drove into town and parked up next to Front Beach. Torquay is also very close to Bell's Beach, one of the most famous surfing beaches in the world, also where the film Point Break was filmed with Keanu Reeves & Patrick Swayze. Because of the surfing attraction there is a very good surfing museum next to the information centre. However, we decided, as we would struggle to write on a postage stamp all we know about surfing, the $8 entry fee was a little too much for something we wouldn't really appreciate
02 - And again from another angle!
.Instead we popped into the town to find an internet cafe. Along the way Nikki stepped into a couple shops (Paul was now thinking the museum was probably a good option). A new pair of Flip-Flops later (or Thongs, to use the Australian word for them, which we've both now adopted) we headed for a photographic shop which was recommended instead of the internet cafe. We asked the chap to add the photos from our memory card to a CD which had enough space, but also contained some of our other photos. This is not a problem as the software is designed to cope with this, however, for some reason we have temporarily lost the photos that were on the CD originally. Fortunately we are constantly backing up the photos on our Ipod, so we do still have copies of them!
Feeling a little disappointed at this we decided to cheer ourselves up by going to lunch at a nearby cafe. Afterwards we looked at the menu of the local 'juice bar' but decided we weren't in the mood for a smoothie. Juice bars are all over the place in Australia, where you can get milkshakes, smoothies, iced drinks, juices, etc, but then they have got the climate for them!
We drove along the coast to see what we could find. After a kilometre we stopped at Surf Beach where we walked to Point Danger and looked out at the beaches along Torquay's front. Very picturesque and VERY windy! Back to the car, we quickly (it takes 10-15 minutes) transferred the photos onto the Ipod whilst we watched the surfers in the sea.
We decided to carry on down the coast for a couple of Km's to visit Bells Beach. Paul didn't recognise any of it from the film. We sat on the beach with our books for an hour and a half before the wind got too much and we decided to head to our campsite. Where we discovered we had the neighbours from hell! Ok, maybe a little over exaggerated, but our cabin was a good six foot away from there's and all we could hear was them talking, sorry, shouting at one another!
We didn't stay long opting for a trip around Torquay to find dinner. We we're using the voucher book to find places where we could get money off, or free meals, but they were either shut down, not that appealing or we couldn't find them. We ventured out to Bells Beach Hotel only to discover there was a surfers convention in full swing and we weren't invited. We ended up eating at a Thai restaurant less than 100metres from our campsite!
We sat in a banquet seat, where you would sit cross-legged usually, but we had pits to put our feet in - cheating really! We had a lovely meal, the staff we're really friendly and as we left a very chatty lady was asking us everything about us and our trip. As we headed out the door she called out "Happy Christmas". She's the first person to say it to us so far and it brought it home that it's just over 2 weeks to Christmas Day!
