| Frank & Lisa's Amazing Cross-Australia Adventures |
| on to more Great Ocean Road ...or |
| Our destination was Melbourne, but this was one trip that was definitely all about the journey! The Great Ocean Road (GOR) is spectacular! Now, we'll start with some background information. The GOR is usually travelled from east to west so that the car passenger can better capitalize on the ocean views to the south (remember that we drive on the left over here and the seating positions are likewise reversed). We did it west to east, though, to accommodate both my Adelaide conference and the Melbourne Hat into our travel schedule... The GOR basically consists of 2 different sections. The second section (which we saw first), has a road that follows the oceanside, but doesn't hug it. That is because the cliffs are unstable and bits are constantly falling into the ocean. So instead there are parking lots and lookouts at very regular intervals along the way where you can walk down to observe the natural wonders that are these many rock formations. The most famous one of these is the Twelve Apostles. It is my belief that it is most popular because it is the first one along this section of the road coming from Melbourne (the east), so it is the only one that many tourists ever see. There are certainly others that are just as magnificent, if not better further along the road! The first section of the road (which we saw second) is the famous part of the road built by World War I veterans that twists and turns treacherously around cliffsides, and is very commonly used for car commercials to demonstrate superior handling and manouveurability. In many cases the road is closed so that North American cars may be seen driving on the correct side of the road around the cliffs. It is also supposed to be (another) one of the top 10 drives in the world. And with that, I think we can begin the story of our own journey... |
| Victoria - Portland |
| Shortly after departing Mt. Gambier, we entered Victoria (now our 6th out of 8 Australian states & territories) and soon reached our overnight stop of Portland. This little town was admittedly not particularly exciting, but just a few kilometers away lay |
| Victoria - Great Ocean Road |
| The next day we departed Portland on our journey to the beginning of the Great Ocean Road, which still lay about 1 1/2 hours away. On the way, however, we stopped to visit Tower Hill Reserve. This small national park is actually inside the cone of an old volcano. As you drive down the hill to the reserve you can see the layers of ash in the |
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| Cape Bridgewater and Discovery Bay. So, with a few hours of daylight left, Frank & I were off to see the petrified forest and the bay's blowhole. The coolest thing about walking down to the petrified forest is that you could almost draw an s-curve in the scrub between the 2 completely different types of terrain demarking the "forest" from the rest of the park (pic right). |
| The petrified forest is a forest of pertified wood (wood that has turned to stone over many thousands of years). You could clearly see the stump remnants everywhere you walked. However, only one wall was actually protected from human handling. (pics below) A blowhole is a place along a cliff face where the waves churn and crash in such a way as to blow the water high up into the air. We were actually to see another one or two along the Great Ocean Road the next day... Unfortunately, they don't photograph as well as they are simply experienced. Sitting and watching the water is a great way to develop the proper respect for the ocean's awesome power! |
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| stone walls. The real purpose of this visit, though, was to see koalas in the wild! We'd missed them on Kangaroo Island and this was going to be Frank's last good chance. The brochures all insisted that they were everywhere and they weren't joking! Without straying from the main ring road and our car we managed to spot 5 of them (pic right). From the vantage point of this picture you can see why the Aussies started the tourist myth of drop bears! Unfortunately, we stopped at the visitor center and also spotted over half a dozen emus wandering the yard, as well as seeing a few more on the way out of the park... Not my favourite animals, but they made for a couple of good photo opps nonetheless (pics below)! |
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| Northern Territory: Red Centre , 2 / Top End , 2 NSW & ACT: Hunter Valley / Sydney / Canberra , 2 Queensland Coast: 1 , 2 , 3 , 4 , 5 , 6 South Australia: Barossa Valley / Kangaroo Island / McLaren Vale & Coonawarra Victoria: Great Ocean Road , 2 , 3 / Melbourne New Zealand (North Island): Aukland / Rotorua / Tongariro / Wellington (South Island): Nelson / Westland / Queenstown / Milford / Dunedin / Mt Cook / Christchurch |