It's a famous piece of geography, and now I know why. The Great Ocean Road is quite spectacular--mile after mile of beautiful blue water and golden beaches with rocky cliffs occasionally thrown in. We begin by leaving Melbourne and driving through the Mornington Peninsula where we are given a guided tour by friends of Bob and Margaret (our neighbors in Mukilteo who live 6 months in NZ and who have come to meet us in Australia). We can see both bodies of water at the same time from a hill atop the peninsula; both beaches are spectacular.
Next we drive to Port Philip Bay and find our ferry, drive on and off we go to the other side of the Barwon Heads to a town called Queenscliff where we meet our friends Kathy and David and Michelle and Steven at the Vue Grand. These are people we met in NZ on the overnight boat trip we took out of Doubtful Sound. We get a guided tour of this amazing piece of land and water where ships come through to get to Melbourne. It's a beautiful day to drive around and look at this area where Dave and Kathy have a holiday home. Lucky us, they have invited us to stay there as it is on our way to the Great Ocean Road. What a darling town they live in! It's called Barwon Head, and they have a home between the ocean and town, so we can walk everywhere. We walk to dinner in the evening and then take a morning walk along the entire peninsula the next morning. We could live in this little town, we all agree, but we must pull ourselves away and get going.
Our first day is glorious, looking at the gorgeous water, hearing the waves roll in and the sea birds overhead. Every place we stop is fantastic with beautiful rock formations, some sticking out like big noses or giant shelves, others hugging the coast or rolling down to mix with the white foam as it splashes and shoots high above them. We stop to see lighthouses and the rainforest where we walked through beech tree groves, avenues of giant ferns and towering eucalyptus trees with their pungent smell. We walk out on headlands to view the famous Twelve Apostles, scattered rocks that stick up as much as 200 feet above the Bass Straits, and the London Bridge, a huge natural rock arch. Unfortunately, in the 1990's it fell down, stranding some tourists on the part farthest out. They were rescued eventually, but the bridge now has a huge gap, still beautiful, however, surrounded in its solitude by the cobalt blue sea, rimmed by white waves. At night we can see thousands of stars, including the Southern Cross, which seem to bend down and twinkle at us.
After two days, we turn inland at Port Fairy, an old fishing port and picturesque town, where we take in an old volcano nearby at Tower Hill. It is there that we spot more koalas, wallabys, an emu and a big snake crossing the road. It's a beautiful scene in this big caldera, and we enjoy the forest and flowers which eveutually morph into sheep ranches and wheat fields. The predominat color is now golden yellow in this area called The Wimmera. The Grampions Mountain Range now juts up on the horizon. We reach Halls Gap around 4 pm, just in time to have a short "bush walk" before dinner.
The next morning we wake to a cacophony of bird sounds! And when we look outside, we can see many, many wallabys mosying around our cabin. As we walk to the car, clouds of white cockatoos shoot overhead and kookaburras hide in the trees, laughing their unmistakable laugh. We find the trail to the Pinnacles, hike through the narrow Grand Canyon, watch youngsters learn to rock climb, scramble up large rocks (I know I'll be sore tomorrow) and scuttle out on a huge rock high above the valley we just left that morning. Stunning view!
But there's no rest for the weary, so we retrace our steps, back down the mountains to our car and it's off to Adelaide for us. We arrive around 8:30 just in time to see the sun set. Tomorrow we'll go to the city with some friends of Bob and Margaret's, but meanwhile, we are in need of a deep sleep.
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