van wyk journeys September 22 – 24 Three days and two nights on the Great Ocean Road
Going for a drive in Australia is an interesting experience for people from countries that normally drive on the right side of the road as Australians drive on the left side of the road. While I thought that I was well prepared and got off to great start managing to get to the hotel from the rental centre in South Cross Station without an issue. After loading our luggage, things went downhill pretty quick as we ended up heading east through a very long tunnel ending up south and east of downtown. Nice to see an alternative view of the CBD but its not where I had planned to be and we were heading east not west. After a brief stop and getting turned around we were on our way to Port Campbell, about 3 hours east of Melbourne.
We made a quick stop for a break at McDonald’s (called Macca in Australia) in Colac. We are starting to get used to paying $4.00 for coffee. Not any cheaper at Macca.
We are doing the Great Ocean Road in what people refer to as the reverse direction. Our first stop is The Arch, London Bridge, the Grotto and the Bay of Islands. The images in the slider below cover the sights seen over a two day period.
Our hotel in Port Campbell was Southern Ocean Villas and in Apollo Bay was the Sandpiper Motel. Both were well situated for easy walks to restaurants and the the local grocery stores for the supplies needed for breakfast.
On day 2 of the GOR, we made our way from Port Campbell to Apollo Bay our destination for the night. Along the way, we stopped at the Gibson Steps only to learn that tourists can no longer walk the steps to the beach as there is a barred gate a short way down. Doing a brief search online revealed that the steps were occasionally closed due to “swell events” or “high” tides. I guess we managed to arrive on one of those occasions.
The next stop on the journey was the Cape Otway Lighthouse. This lighthouse is one of the oldest surviving lighthouses in Australia and is considered the most significant.
Along the drive, Diane had been watching in the trees for koalas. We came upon a few cars and quickly pulled off the road to see what was of interest. It turns out that Diane’s sharp eyes spotted a koala perched up in a tree. We walked back down the road about 100 meters and there up in a tree was a koala. It appeared to be half asleep which we found out later that’s what they do a lot, sleep.
The next stop was Kennet River where we were told there usually were a large number of koalas to be seen. We turned into a small parking lot and then walked up a road to where a large number of people were feeding a big white cockatoo. The full title of the bird is Yellow Crested cockatoo. There were also several colourful red and blue parrots which I have now learned are called Crimson Rosella Parrot Bird.
Oh, and there were koalas which I took many photos of and none were good enough to show here. It seemed that when I set up for a shot there was too much light in the background which turn the koala black plus most were quite high in the trees making it difficult to get good focused shots. At least that’s my story.
The last stop along the way was to a golf course in Anglesea called, of course, the Anglesea Golf Club. We had read that it was a good spot to see kangaroos. There were quite a few kangaroos laying around, literally. It must have been the time of day as they were laying around in a number of places but none of which were close enough to get good photos the best of which is in the slide show below.
It’s really too bad that I found out that the rental car was equipped with Apple CarPlay at the end of our GOR journey. It would have made getting out of Melbourne much simpler, as I would have had turn by turn directions that were audible. The only reason that I discovered this was when I was going to turn in the car and had to plug the phone in because of a low battery. When I plugged the phone in up popped Carplay.