Great Ocean Road Trip

Today we got up at 6:30am and got dressed and ready for a trip down the Great Ocean Road. The Great Ocean Road was built by soldiers returning from the first world war who found themselves out of work. Despite being called the Great Ocean Road, it is not next to the ocean. It is next to the Bass Strait, which links the Great Southern Ocean to the west and the Tasman sea to the east.

We had to meet at the tour companies office at 7:15am which, thankfully, was just round the corner from the hostel. We loaded onto a mini bus of about 24 people and off we went, heading off towards the sea. The first thing we did was go over Westgate Bridge, which is the longest bridge in Australia. Apparently this makes it better than Sydney Harbour Bridge. 

At around 10:30am, after a little snooze, we got to Gibson's steps.  From the look out point at Gibson's steps you could see a lime stone stack, which was not an apostle but looked fairly similar. We went down the steps onto the beach, took some photos and headed back up. The walk back up was actually quite hard work!

Next we stopped at the 12 Apostles look out point. I'm not entirely sure why they were named the 12 apostles. There was never 12 of them. At one point there was nine, but due to weather and erosion there are now only six. It was quite fascinating how the stacks had formed. They were quite impressive. You can take a 15 minute helicopter ride over the 12 apostles for $145. As you can imagine, that was a little out of our price range.

Next we visted the Loch Ard gorge, which I thought was pretty beautiful. It is named after a ship from Britain that was sailing to Melbourne but crashed on the rocks nearby and sank. A 19 year old Irish girl called Eva Michael jumped overboard and grabbed a piece of wood to stay above water. One of the sailors called Tom Pearce also jumped overboard and swam into the gorge and on to land. He then heard Eva's screams and swam back out to get her and bring her on to land. It took him over an hour but eventually he managed it. The two spent the night in cave. In the morning Tom climbed out of the gorge  (having been in the gorge I have no idea how) and came across some farm workers who helped him get Eva out of the gorge. Eva moved back to Ireland, deciding Australia was not for her. Apparently a newspaper reported recognised her in a pub some time after and asked her why she hasn't fallen in love with Tom in that most romantic of situations. She is reported to have responded "he was a sailor". Tom stayed in Australia and was reported in 2 more shipwrecks and survived them both. As I said, the gorge was quite beautiful. We went down the steps into it, took some photos, climbed into a cave and then headed back to the bus. We only had between 15 and 45 minutes at most of these stops so we couldn't hang around.

After this we had an hours drive through forest to Cape Otway lighthouse. We drive through a rainforest populated with Mountain Ash trees, which needs fire to help regrow. Also found in the forest are black otway snails. They are the only carnivorous snails in the world. They eat smaller snails, slugs and bug. They are only native to only this forest. We didn't stop to see any but apparently they are quite small.

We also drove through a forest that was basically dead due to the over population of koalas. We spotted one koala scurrying along a tree branch as we drove.

Cape Otway lighthouse was the first lighthouse built in Australia. Sailors would sail along south coast and use this lighthouse, and another lighthouse on King Island, to guide them. If you could see both, you knew you were a day away from Melbourne. If you could only see one, you were in big trouble.

We stopped at the lighthouse for lunch. We had beef sausages and pasta salad. Then we went to the top of the lighthouse, which wasn't particularly high, to get a good view along the coast.

After lunch our next stop was Kennet River to look for koalas and to look at the birds. You could buy bird seed to feed the birds, which some people did, and the bright green parrots would come and land on you. We didn't buy any but got very close to the birds anyway. A couple of people even had the birds land on their heads.

We went off in search of koalas. We found two on a tree, one very high up and one a bit lower down,  and tried our best to get some photos. Just as we were about to head back to the birds, a girl told us we could find a koala that wasn't very high up a bit further on so went to have a look. We found him sitting in a tree, munching away, just out of arms reach. We used the selfie stick to get some good photos of him and then headed back to the bus. Our guide told us that he'd spoken to indigenous people who had told him koalas were the only useless animal. Indigenous people didn't eat them, or use their fur. They don't have any effect really on plant life and they have no natural predators so they don't help sustain the food chain. This may be true, but they are still very cute. I wouldn't mind being a koala in my next life. All they do is eat and sleep.

Our final sightseeing stop was the Great Ocean Road memorial arch. It is the fourth version of the arch as one collapsed, one was hit by a lorry and one burnt down in a fire. It's quite a simple arch, made of wood.  We took some photos and had a quick look at the beach before getting back on the bus to head back to Melbourne.

We had driven down the Great Ocean Road to reach all these places and it had been a beautiful scenic drive. The road hugs the mainland with sea on one side and hills, trees and fields on the other. It was spectacular.

We had a toilet stop 15 minutes from the arch, and then from there it was an hour and a half back to Melbourne. We got back to the hostel around 7:15pm.