The Great Ocean Road

After a day exploring the coast to the east of Melbourne, for completeness sake I decided to join a tour heading west! It was another long day, but well worth it for the sights we saw.

Our first stop was at Torquay beach – somewhat different to its Devon namesake! At the heart of the Surf Coast, it is the birthplace of famous brands like Rip Curl and Quiksilver, which can’t be doing that badly given the number of people we saw in the water…

We then picked up the Great Ocean Road. Largely built by returning Anzacs after the First World War, it is both an impressive feat of engineering and one of the world’s great scenic drives.

We had lunch at Apollo Bay, which was teeming with holidaymakers: it now being the busy post-Christmas period. I left my phone charging on the bus by mistake, so didn’t get any pictures and had to be lent money for lunch! But my hour there was spent eating scallop rolls with Matt and Lottie, a couple from England with whom I quickly connected, and a stroll on the beach, on which I was heartened to see that cricket was the sport of choice!

Our next port of call was Mait’s Rest, a beautiful spot in the temperate rainforest where we went for a circular walk. With the warm air temperature and gentle sights, sounds and smells of the woodland, I found our time there very relaxing and a reminiscent of other rainforest experiences earlier in my trip.

We made a few extra stops for wildlife sightings, with wild kangaroos and koalas appearing by the side of the road.

As marsupials, both species keep their young, joeys, in pouches before gradually giving them more independence. Remarkably, koala joeys move from womb to pouch when only the size of a jelly bean! I had been on the look out for a (larger) joey throughout my stay, and finally found one during one of our roadside stops:

The star attraction of the Great Ocean Road is The Twelve Apostles. This sequence of limestone stacks, of which there are actually seven (but the number changes as coastal erosion takes its course), stand imperious above the sand and sea. We didn’t have long to take in the scene at the viewpoint before needing to get back to the bus, but it had certainly lived up to the hype!

Before returning to Melbourne, we paid a brief visit to Loch Ard Gorge on the notorious Shipwreck Coast. Here the Scottish clipper Loch Ard ran aground in 1878, with only two survivors – who took refuge from the storm in a cave next to the beach.

Tom and Lottie were very entertaining company and back in Melbourne we extended the day by another five and a half hours over dinner and in a couple of Barmy Army pubs: most enjoyable!

I left Melbourne with something of a heavy heart, as my week in Australia’s most populous city has been incredibly good fun. I’ve met so many great people, in the hostel and on trips, reconnected with others, seen some unforgettable sights and sport – and celebrated Christmas!

And so to my last internal flight of the trip: a short hop back to Sydney for New Year. Australia’s transport system is so well connected that this is almost as simple as taking the train – or maybe I’ve just learned the routine after two months travelling… I’ve certainly enjoyed the experience of navigating my way around this country, as I did in South America.

I’m hoping the festivities at Sydney Harbour prove a fitting finale to my adventure.