We were lucky enough to be able to have a car for 4 days so that we could go on a road trip throughout Victoria and drive the gorgeous Great Ocean Road. We have always felt our most relaxed when we have had our own transport and therefore have really been looking forward to New Zealand (6 weeks with a campercar… bliss!). We picked up our car. Excuse me Mum and Dad! It was a crappy little growler… an automatic which didn’t change gear until it was about to blow up and smaller than a micra. Not the best, but still gave us the freedom we wanted.

Driving in the Melbourne CBD was interesting. We had been warned about something called ‘Hook turns’, which is where you have to get into the lefthand lane to turn right and you can only turn on red?!?!?! Its got something to do with not driving in front of a tram which runs down the middle of the street. Luckily, I planned our drive so that I only had to turn left! Haha! Cheating the system! Once we had left Melbourne, we drove out towards Torquay which is known as the Gateway to the Great Ocean Road. We stopped and ate our sandwiches, but were pretty disappointed by the whole place. It was pretty dead and nothing spectacular.

As we carried on our way we stopped at Loveridge lookout, which gave some beautiful panoramic views over the bay.

Split point lighthouse, which is featured in the TV show ‘Round the Twist’. There is a video of us singing the theme tune, which I will show to anyone who can remember to ask in April.

The Great Ocean Road memorial bridge. The Great Ocean Road was built by war veterans and is classed as the Worlds largest war memorial.

And then we went a little ‘rouge’. I love a good waterfall. I just asked Simon, he also enjoys a good waterfall. We saw on the map there was a waterfall just North of the Great Ocean Road in the Otways National Park called Eskrine Falls. Obviously we had to go. The road started to turn quite dirt track like at times and we were worried for our little crap mobile, but we made it there. It was super impressive and also massive! We enjoyed spending some time here.

After the waterfalls the sensible thing to do would have been to drive back to the Great Ocean Road and carry on our way. It was already about 5pm, but no! At that moment, I got it into my head that we needed to see a platypus so off we headed to a lake we had heard about in the Otway National Park called Lake Elizabeth. I’m sure we’ve seen this lake on a Ray Mears TV show at some point. It took about an hour to get there because of the even worse dirt tracks this time and we didn’t see another car the entire time. We got there to an empty car park and then learnt that it was about another 40 minutes to walk to the lake. We had about an hour till it would start getting dark. Power walking got us there quite quickly and the lake took our breath away. It was just so beautiful and peaceful. I’m so glad we went there. We think we saw a platypus from quite a distance on the surface, but it was very hard to tell. Looking at youtube videos since has shown that the movement of the water that we saw matches the movement of a platypus swimming at the surface so we’re hopeful! Even if we didn’t, the lake was the most relaxing place we’ve been to since the start of our travels.

We saw about 10 kangaroos on the way back as well, which was amazing. I was getting pretty worried at one point that they were going to run out in front of the car, but luckily they just stayed by the side or hopped off into the bush.

We finally bad in to our hostel in Apollo Bay, got a takeaway pizza and crashed. It has been a very busy day.

The next day we headed off from Apollo Bay and were going to be ending in Port Fairy. Our stops along this route included.

A rainforest walk.

Gibson steps, which is where you can get your first glimpse of the 12 apostles.

The 12 apostles.

Loch arg Gorge.

The Razorback.

London Bridge.

The Grotto (some American’s were pronouncing it Growtoe).

All of these amazing sights were just beautiful and the photos truly don’t do them justice. We also stopped in Port Campbell for an ice-cream. I had a Gaynetto and Simon had a Gaytime. Google it. It’s real. While we had a drink and ate our ice-cream we learnt that Donald Trump was probably going to win the election, so that became the topic of conversation for the next 100km as we made our way to Port Fairy for the night.

We arrived in Port Fairy terrified we were going to get murdered at the YHA. It was that kind of town and the YHA was that kind of hostel. Most of the guests were over 50 years old and one guy decided it would be a good idea to give me some literature about how science is a lie after I told him I was a science teacher. Creepy!!! We decided to start watching Californication and go to bed.

In the morning I was a little ashamed with myself for feeling so badly about this town as when we went for a walk around, it was actually a pretty cute little seaside town. We did a 1 hour walk around the nature reserve, which is home to a colony of Shearwaters, and the town before getting into the car to head to the Grampions. The photo below is of a cool bird, but I couldn’t tell you if its a Shearwater. Please let me know what you think.

From here we drove up to the Grampions National Park. The scenery was so beautiful after about an hour of driving and we kept stopping to take pictures of the mountains. We drove along a lot of very straight roads for quite a long time before making it to Halls Pass where we would be staying.

When we got to Halls Pass we went and had a look around the Aboriginal Centre to learn a bit more about the history of the area. We learnt some more horrible stories of how the aboriginal people were treated when the settlers came. This visit made us want to go and see some of their history so we drove to one of the rock art sites to see some aboriginal cave paintings. This one is of Bujil who is believed to be creator of everything and his 2 dingo companions.

We had a few more stops to do this afternoon and we headed to MacKenzie Falls. We stopped at a view point first to get an overview of the area.

And on the way to MacKenzie Falls we saw Broken Falls.

When we got to the waterfall we couldn’t quite believe it. This waterfall was out of this World. It was sooooo impressive.

 

We saw another Kangaroo, went to another view point and then headed to our last waterfall of the day, Silverband Falls.

The next day we headed to a city called Ballarat which is known for being the centre of the Gold rush that happened in Victoria. We had a lovely lunch looking over the lake (there were more black swans) and then headed to our Motel for the night near the airport. We had an early flight the next day (6am) or so we thought to Sydney and then onto Auckland in New Zealand. More on the, or so we thought, in the next blog post. The majority of our time in Australia has come to an end and despite being sad to be leaving a country that has brought us so much happiness, we are pretty ready to head onto New Zealand. Lets start the next adventure. 🙂