The Great Ocean Road

After all the excitement of Tasmania, Vanessa and I decided we needed to do something relaxing for a bit. After regrouping in Melbourne for a few days at Melbourne International Backpackers (free pancakes for breakfast, comfy beds and good showers, what’s not to love?) we decided to head to Adelaide via the Great Ocean Road.

The Great Ocean Road is the Australian equivalent of driving the California coastline on Highway 1. It’s all beaches, cliffs, lookouts, and seaside tourist towns that are creepily deserted during the off season. The main attractions are these massive limestone formations called the Twelve Apostles. It also must be a huge tourist destination because there are signs every kilometer or so reminding you that everyone drives on the left in Australia. Not very reassuring on a windy two lane road with no median…

Since we were now veterans of driving down under we figured the best way to see the road would be to secure a car and spend a few days on the way to Adelaide; camping in the car, relaxing on sunny beaches, and just doing whatever we wanted without any moody ride-alongs.

There’s a really cool service called car relocation that anyone considering renting a car for a one-way trip should look into. It’s something that rental companies offer when they need a car moved from point A to point B, usually going towards touristy areas, and it’s an incredibly good deal for the budget traveler.

You find a website that lists the relocation cars available, find one that needs to go where you want to be and request it. If you get accepted they give you limited liability insurance (you can pay more for full coverage if you want), a full tank of gas, a shiny clean rental car and a certain amount of days to get where you need to be, for free! All you pay is gas and other fees you might incur on the trip.

It’s so cool. In our case we had four days to bring the car from Melbourne to Kangaroo Island, which was close enough to Adelaide for us, and somewhere we planned on going anyway. It was so cool! We got a Nissan SUV with less than 100 kilometers on it, new car smell and everything! The only downside was that we had to pay for the car to go across on the ferry, but even round trip tickets for us and a one way ticket for the car cost less than a rental would have for that whole time, so we were happy.

Getting out of the city was a little hairy… I might have said that I was a veteran left-side driver by now, and that’s true! In Tasmania. The difference is that the whole of the island seems to have about as many cars as downtown Melbourne, and people are really horn-happy. There are also trams, which make turning right in an intersection a nightmare unique to the city.

Apparently, instead of everyone lining up in the intersection yielding to all the oncoming cars that are going straight, one or two cars at a time will pull into the intersection and wait until the light turns red, then peel across the lanes as fast as possible to get out of the way. This is supposed to keep the tram lines clear of cars, but as far as I could tell it was just an excuse for everyone to play ‘honk at the tourist’. Knowing this, every time our navigation thingy told us to turn right I would make three left turns instead.

It worked pretty well, and I managed to get us to the highway with only one panicky right turn the whole way. About an hour later we were officially on the Great Ocean Road!

It's so nice of them to put up all these signs! Makes it way harder to get lost.

Our first stop was Bells Beach, which is supposed to be great for surfing. We didn’t see any out that day, but there were a couple of kiteboarders out sailing around.

At least the cloudy skies make for good pictures!

You can just see two kiteboarders off in the background.

Unfortunately the spotty weather we had in Tasmania seemed to follow us to the mainland, and it was cloudy most of the day, windy and cold. We decided to camp early-ish that night and save the Twelve Apostles for the next day, where we wouldn’t have to rush to see them and the sun would hopefully be out.

That night we had some trouble finding a camping spot, and by the time we settled on a caravan park the office was closed. We had every intention of paying, but they didn’t have a pay station like they do in the national parks or anything, what were we to do? Is it our fault we were awake before the office opened the next morning? I figure if they wanted our money that bad they would have made it easier to leave it for them. Anyway, we weren’t all that comfortable sleeping in the car, and if we wanted to use the bathroom facilities we had to wait for a paying guest with a key to walk out and leave the door open, so it wasn’t exactly luxurious. The next morning we drove a ways down the road and had breakfast on the beach, which a great way to wake up.

The beach in Lorne

After we ate we started in on the drive in earnest, and it was gorgeous! The water was a pretty tropical blue, the waves were huge, the beaches are all white sand, yet another place in Australia where everywhere you look could be a postcard.

These were taken out of the car window, sorry for the blur.

I even saw my first ever wild kangaroo standing by the side of the road! He was huge, and definitely not as cuddly cute as the ones at the wildlife park. I definitely wouldn’t have walked up to that guy with a handful of snacks!

Before the Twelve Apostles we turned off the road to find a rainforest walk, which was pretty, but the weather was still pretty iffy so we got rained on a little.

I guess rain in the rainforest shouldn't be a surprise, but still. This is Australia!

 

Then we stopped at an area where you are guaranteed to see wild koalas hanging out in the trees! We couldn’t pass that up, neither of us had seen any yet. It was easy to find the spot, there were cars parked all over the road and people running around taking pictures like madmen. Us included, how could you not, they’re SO cute! Like living teddy bears!

Lucky that we saw one that was awake! They sleep about 21 hours a day, and eat the other 3.

Looks cozy, doesn't he?

The dark blobs are koalas! It's hard to see but the one at the top is a mom with a baby!

 

This poor guy was so tired he fell asleep right next to the road! Probably not the best spot, but great for our pictures!

 

See? I didn't want to touch him, they are not as cuddly as they look, and they have a strong bite and some wicked claws! Of course, he didn't wake up the whole time we were there, but I didn't need to find out what it would take to get him mad...

Finally we got back on the road and made it to the Twelve Apostles. These massive rock formations are constantly under attack from the sea, and one fell down in 2005. You can’t actually see all twelve from any point along the coast, which is probably good for the parks departments, otherwise they would have to change the signs every time one fell down. In the 1800s they were called the Sow and Piglets, which I think is a better name anyway. Maybe they will change it back someday.

This is at the Gibson Steps (you have to walk down about a million stone steps to get to the beach, I'm guessing they were made by someone named Gibson)

 

These are the first of the Apostles, that rubble pile in the foreground is what's left of the one that fell down in 2005

Those big formations at the Steps from the other side

Herman decided to get out of the car for this one, but he insists on being out of focus. Like I said, he's shy. 

This is, can you guess? The Arch!

This is the London Bridge. The part that's in the ocean was attached by another bridge a few years ago and people could walk out to the end, until it collapsed a few years ago. Apparently there was a tour group on it when it collapsed, and amazingly nobody was hurt. There were two people stranded offshore for a few hours though. They had to send a helicopter out to get them.

That night we found a cheap campground that we paid for this time, thank you very much, and it was close enough to the beach that I could wander out to the coast in time to catch the sunset.

The path to the coast, I kept expecting a kangaroo to jump out of the bushes or something.

Rough waters, reminded me of home!

 

The next morning we backtracked a little to try and catch the Apostles when the light was better, but we couldn’t take too long because we had a 7.5 hour drive ahead of us to Adelaide, where we would stay Halloween night before taking the ferry to Kangaroo Island in the morning. That was kind of a grueling day, but it was worth it to have a car of our own on KI. 

More posts and pictures to come on that later tonight! I’m leaving for an outback trek tomorrow and probably won’t have internet for over a week, so get ready for rapid-fire updates. I’d like to get them all posted before I go.