The Great Ocean Road
We got up at 6am in order to have breakfast at 6:30 and leave the hotel by seven. While we were having breakfast, we spotted three hot air balloons, taking early morning flight over the city. A short walk took us to the bus which was to take us on the full day tour to the Great Ocean Road. We drove out of the city on the M1 for about an hour and a half when we stopped in Winchelsea for a cup of coffee at the café la hoot. While we were there, we watched some of the hundreds of small white parrots. This is a small native bird and is very noisy continually squawking from dawn to dust. From here we continued onto the Great Ocean Road. The road was originally constructed as the first road to connect communities, which were previously only connected by the sea route. One of the intentions of building Road with provide employment for servicemen, returning from service in World War I. They constructed the road by using pick axis and shovels and very little usage of dynamite (as many of them men were probably suffering from PTSD after their experiences in the war). It took 13 years to build the road which was originally the single lane, And a toll road. First stop on the road was to see the 12 apostles. These are limestone stacks formed formed by sea erosion and the collapse of the roof of caves. The number 12 is misleading as originally there were eight of them, but now they’re only seven. It was very windy here and sometimes it is very difficult to take photographs. There is no other landmass between here and Antarctica. The section of the road is referred to as the shipwreck coast. As over the years there’s been at least 400 recorded shipwrecks here. a few miles from the apostles, we stopped to visit the Loch Ard gorge. This was the site of a famous shipwreck of a ship called Loch Ard which was sailing from England to Melbourne. Some of the people on board managed to get to shore and survived. it was a very dramatic bit of the coastline. A quick lunch and we continue our journey into the next section of the road, the great coast. This took a winding road to an ancient rainforest, predominantly eucalyptus trees. This area forms the Otway National Park and we visited the Melba gully, named after the famous opera singer Dame Nelly Melba. Here are some of the second largest trees in the world, as well as a lot of tree ferns. We had a walk here before continuing along the road back to the coast and the start of the third section of the road, the surface coast. We stopped for awhile at Apollo Bay, and found ourselves parked directly in front of an ice cream shop, so we had to investigate. Continued along dramatic. Stretch of coastline, with lots of big waves and many surfers out to enjoy them. we also sold the sites of another shipwreck of a boat which has been built in Inverkeithing on the Fife coast of Scotland. One final stop was to spot a couple of kangaroos. An hour or so later and we were back in Melbourne.
