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Going Topless on the Great Ocean Road
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After a short 3 hour flight (Maud was expecting it to be 6 hours) from Christchurch we landed in a new country, Australia and the capital of Victoria, Melbourne. After the usual formalities at passport control it was nice to be greeted by the happy smiling face of Lauren Wills, and without bump as baby Jemima was now 3 months old.
After packing all our gear into the yute (only joking, was an atypical SUV) we headed out to the burbs (suburbs) to Megan´s, her sisters house, where we would be spending the night. Stopping of at the bottleshop of course, to pick up some Carlton Draught and obligatory Strongbow for Maud. We were greeted at the door by Daddy Nick and a sleeping Jemima, who we looked in on in her cot. Needless to say the Coe family resemblances were immediately apparent with those big eyes beaming out at you.
Not wanting to disturb little Jemima´s sleep, we settled down for a few drinks and some great food courtesy of Lauren (thanks again luv) and had a good chat with them and Lauren´s sister Dallas about how parenthood was, the deadly animals and insects of Australia, how to tackle the Great Ocean Road and catching up on what was going on in Bermuda and with MR´s.
The next morning we said our "goodbyes for now" and got driven into town by Lauren to pick up our motor to drive the Great Ocean Road in. As we are now officially flashpackers we had hired an Audi A4 convertible to drive Australia´s most scenic road, and Maud was itching to get into the drivers seat after a month of driving a campervan. After managing to squash our stuff into the boot we put the hood down and Maud put her foot down to get to our destination for the night.
As we only picked up the car at noon we had decided to do the quicker inland route to Warrnambool to leave a full day for driving the Great Ocean Road on the return leg. On the way out to Warrnambool we stopped for a late lunch at Geelong, but there wasn´t much else to see there so we carried on, on those exciting straight roads through grasslands to our hotel for the night. We splurged out a bit on a really nice hotel called the Mantra Deep Blue, which was very nice but a bit out of place in this town but it looked like they were trying to develop it being the last town on the Great Ocean Road. That night we had a reasonable Italian at a place called Bojangles, then hit the hay as we had an early start and a long day of driving ahead of us.
The next day the weather was glorious and perfect for blowing a few cobwebs out of the Audi´s exhaust so we set off at pace for the first stop. After about an hour and missing the turn off for Bay of Islands we finally stopped at The Grotto for our first look out along the coastline, it was all very impressive with rugged sandstone cliffs and big rollers breaking onto the shore.
The stops were now coming about every two miles.
There was London Bridge, which used to have two arches, but one collapsed leaving two people stranded in the middle of the ocean on a rock and they had to be airlifted out. Then The Arch, a natural sandstone arch created by the sea eroding the coastline, followed by two mile bay and then Loch Ard Gorge which was named after the ship that wrecked there.
Only two people survived the shipwreck, a cabin boy and a woman who he rescued which was fairly impressive with those breaks. There was also a blowhole at Loch Ard and a cave that thundered as the waves crashed into the overhanging sandstone ledges.
Then finally after about 10 stops we reached the highlight of the road, The Twelve Apostles, apart from there were only about eight as the others had collapsed into the sea. Even so they were a really impressive sight and needless to say lots of photos were taken so we could look back on them in years to come.
After the Twelve Apostles there wasn´t much else to stop and see, but the roads were beginning to have more and more hairpin bends accompanied by the whoops coming from Maud as she took another corner at full speed.
I even managed to prise the steering wheel out of Maud´s hands and have a go of some real driving in a better performing car than the chugging campervan we´d had before.
We did make a detour to go to Cape Otway lighthouse but when we found out it was $37 each to have a look around it and that was the only way of getting in, we gave it a miss, even Gibbs Hill Lighthouse in Bermuda was only $5 to go up !! We did however see our first wild koala´s driving down this road which was very cool, they are basically just furry teddy bears clinging to a tree, stoned out of their brains on all the Eucalyptus they have been eating.
One particular koala was only about 10 feet up a tree and we tried waking it by knocking a branch against the tree. It basically reacted the same as I would if anyone awoke me from beer induced coma, eyes wide open looking startled and then once realizing it was only some stupid humans straight back to sleep again.
We kept driving towards Bells Beach the next stop planned and on route passed a Maserati gunning it the opposite way, then a Lambourgini and Aston Martin parked up in a layby with a cameraman, then after them a Ferrari thundered by, they must have been filming a Top Gear does Great Ocean Road or something.
At Bells Beach we tried to see if we could see some surfers as there was a Rip Curl competition on, but it was a bit late in the day and the swells didn´t seem too good. We then drove on to Torquay which was a bit of a strange place with some really nice houses (all painted 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!!
Latest Comments (2)
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Horses for Courses (reply)
Apr 1, 2008 11:52 EST by therickards
Good to see you have enjoyed some quality motoring at last.
Wonderful pics again.
I trust you meant an Italian stallion on your next
car and not one of those gutless American ones!
Dad.
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Lovely pictures (reply)
Apr 1, 2008 08:19 EST by alirich
Hu Guys
It looks fab! Much nicer than the rainy November day we did the trip in a coach full of old people!! We did manage to get an extra Apostle in our photo though.
Glad all is well and that the blogs are back!
Take care and watch for Kanagaroos!
Loads of love
Al
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