Great Ocean Road

My last tour in Melbourne is the Great Ocean Road.   It was built after WW1 to provide jobs for veterans returning to too few jobs.  It is the world's biggest war memorial

This tour is heavily dominated by Germans and Koreans.  Two new countries represented on my tour:  Ireland and Argentina.  Still no current Americans except me.

The first stop was Bells Beach.  This is the beach Patrick Swayze went to to get out of town in Point Break.  We had our normal tea.  The sun is just coming out (it seems to be cloudy here most mornings).  The problem is the wind.  Its making it cooler than the weather forecast.  I wish I would have brought the jacket I decided this morning I didn't need.  Surprisingly, the waves are not that great - lots of surfers sitting on their boards waiting a long time for their opportunity to ride. 

Drove by a replicated colonial house,  which was made of bark (vs. the American log cabin).  Saw a lighthouse at Airey's Inlet, which was in the background of the first Mad Max movie.

Brush fires are a big issue here.  There was a really cool house I would have loved a picture of (wrong side of the road). It is a small house built on a tall pylon or tower.  It was an odd looking house, but it survived the fires.

I sat on the left hand side of the van, as someone have me a heads up that it was the ocean side, and therefore the best view.  But what I didn't expect was all the trees and vegetation that blocks much of the view.  I also didn't expect it to rain the second half of the day.

Drove through Great Otway National Park.  We stopped for a 30 minute walk in another cool-temperate rainforest, called Mait's Rest.  And then ate lunch at Cape Otway.  There was another lighthouse here, but this is where it started to rain so I just saw it from a distance.  

Next we drove down the road where we were supposed to look for koala.  Because of the rain and how many I've seen here, I only did it half-heartedly.  As we drove down the road, you could see the ramification of the koalas - they're eating son the leaves on the trees and killing the trees.  Because of the rain, the koalas were huddled against the trees, so all your saw were lots of lumps.

After an hour trip, which gave the rain a chance to stop, we came to the highlight of the trip:  the 12 Apostles and Loch Ard Gorge at Port Campbell National Park. 

The 12 Apostles are plops of rock on  the coast.  They were formed by the ocean eroding the land, and this is all that's left of the prior coastline.

Originally, the rocks were called the Sow and Piglets, but later changed to the 12 Apostles.  No one knows why they had the name change, but speculation is that 12 Apostles is a more dignified name.  I think it was to attract tourist to, what was then, a seldom visited area. 

It was freezing, and given the 90° predicted, I had left my long pants and heavier jacket at the hostel.  But even with the cold and overcast skies, it was well worth bearing with the weather to see the view. 

A couple of miles down the beach, is Loch Ard Gorge.  It got its name from a shipwreck that occurred there.  Australia's version of the Titanic.  Sailors on the Loch Ard were supposed to be keeping watch, but due to fog, didn't notice they were close to the shore until they looked up and saw cliffs.  Only two survived the wreck, an 18 year old poor sailor and an 18 year old rich girl that the sailor saved.  They ended up on the shore, but due to the cliffs, couldn't be rescued from the beach until morning.  Newspapers played up the story and tried to create a romance between the two, to no avail.  She returned to Ireland and married.  He continued as a sailor and survived two additional shipwrecks (I would have given up after the one!) before dying of a heart attack at 48.  The ship is still at the bottom of the ocean.

My guide thought the gorge was better than the 12 Apostles, but I disagree.  The only thing the gorge has is that you can take steps down to the shore, whereas you can only view the Apostles from above.

So tomorrow, I'm off to Tasmania.   I wish I had more time here.  I'm going to miss Melbourne, although I am looking forward to seeing Tasmania.  I just heard they had snow on Mt. Wellington in Tasmania - I'm going there day after tomorrow.

I'll try to get some pictures loaded into previous day blogs if I can.

Random thought of the day:  I've decided tour guides are like the three bears.  Some give very little information beyond the name of where you are ("too soft") some give so much extraneous information you start tuning out ("too hard").  Some give just the right amount if relevant data ("just right").