What a long day! It began with the alarm at 5:45 am and ended when we 'hit the hay' in our hotel room well after midnight.
The Great Ocean Road follows 243 km of South Victoria coastline and the scenery is breath-taking. Many countries have scenic coastlines but very few, in my experience, have a road that follows the coastline uninterrupted for such a long stretch. This road construction began as a project to provide work for WW1 servicemen in 1918.
We traveled in a small 24 passenger coach with a great group of people from Brazil, France, Switzerland, US and other parts of Australia. Our driver, Allen, was also our tour guide. Our route took us back through Geelong, to Torquay and Bells Beach to watch the surfers and hear surfing stories, songs and the success of Rip Curl, the surf gear company that originated in Torquay.
Then it was on to Lorne, jewel of the Otway National forest, where we stopped at a picnic site for morning tea.
We also stopped at Kennett River where strolled through the trees, spotting koalas and brightly coloured parrots in their natural habitat.
We had lunch in Apollo, aka 'Paradise by the sea". After lunch I found the 'world famous award-winning' Doohey's ice cream shop, where I indulged in chestnut ice cream. Mmmmm.... After lunch we went for a hike in the temperate rainforest among tree ferns - beautiful!
Then we went on to view the 12 apostles, a series of limestone stacks that were originally part of the coastline.
We stopped also at Loch Ard Gorge, Port Campbell and another sandstone formation called London Bridge (last photo). Our guide gave us a great commentary between each of our stops along the way. He had grown up in this area and had plenty of history and interesting stories to relate.
We took a shortcut back to Melbourne via an inland route, stopping for quick snack at Colac. It was late when we were dropped off not far from our hotel, but the three of us had a hankering for tapas and wine, so we indulged before giggling our way 'home' to bed.
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