Nelson to Melbourne
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Checked out of the campground after a little chat with the French-Canadian wife of the guy we talked to last night. “Oh, you must be the Americans my husband told me about”. Guess we made an impression.
First stop, Portland! Luckily it was on the way or we would have had to detour there anyway. How could we not go to the town of Portland? Well, it isn’t too impressive and we drove around for 10 or 15 minutes looking for a sign that said Welcome to Portland. We finally found it, got a picture and headed for the Great Ocean Road.
But first, about 60 km of farmland on the way to Warrnambool. Shortly before Warrnambool is the town of Port Fairy, which is a bad enough name, but then it turns out they are widely known for their folk festival, so I bet the other towns pretty much beat it up and take it’s lunch money all the time. But it seemed like a pretty nice place. Those folk festival revelers must get out of hand though because there were signs all over town saying “No alcohol beyond this point” or “No alcohol to be consumed in the street”.
We passed through Warrnambool and finally reached the big turn to the Great Ocean Road. But no ocean. More farmland. Turns out they’re a little loose with the definition of where the road really starts and it’s another 30 km or so, towards Port Campbell where the scenery starts getting interesting.
Anyway, we finally reached the coastline and it really is quite spectacular. We knew we’ve been getting behind and we shouldn’t stop at *every* scenic viewpoint, but when were we going to be back here again? And how do we know which ones are the good ones? So of course we stopped at all of them.
The first place we stopped was called “The Crags” and on first inspection looked to be just a couple of interesting rocks just off the coast. But on more careful inspection, with the tide out, it was a series of tide pools and you could walk around all over them for quite a ways. Some of the pools were quite large and water was cascading down the sides of them as the ocean surged. You could get all the way around the point and to a beach on the other side. There were starfish and other creatures you could see as well as an extensive kelp forest. If Australia had sea otters, they would have loved the place. We spent quite a bit of time there and would have liked to spend more, watching the tide come in. But we had to go (a theme for the day).
This stretch of coastline is made primarily of limestone, so it erodes fairly quickly with the ocean waves, rain and wind. So you get sort of a Big Sur like drop-off, but also various rock formations, arches, big inlets, caves, etc. Shortly after The Crags we came to the meat of the order. About a 20 km stretch with the most widely known formations. First was “The Bay of Islands” a bay with a series of rock formations in it and the boat launch from hell (check the pictures). A huge hill down to the beach. Not for the faint of heart.
Next was The Grotto, then London Bridge, which used to look like London Bridge before one of the spans collapsed. When it happened, a couple was out on the span that didn’t collapse and had to be rescued by helicopter. A guy we talked to said that the couple was actually having an affair and the media attention was a bit problematic.
Next came The Arch, then Loch Ard Gorge (where we saw a snake — first one), the Twelve Apostles (the most famous rock formation in Oz) and Gibson’s Steps a somewhat harrowing stairway down to the beach. Check the pictures, it’s too much to describe. It took all day but was welcome after feeling like we really saw nothing yesterday.
The only thing we didn’t like was that the “ocean road” didn’t really follow the ocean. Not the way Highway 1 does in Big Sur. It was inland and you’d drive out to see the various “attractions”. In between there wasn’t much to see.
Anyway, after the “big” stretch, the road heads up into the hills and into eucalyptus forest. Again, a dramatic environment change in a short distance. We stopped to take a picture of a glen full of eucalyptus and when we got out of the van, the smell was great. We went up and down through the hills on twisty narrow roads. Very pretty. But slow.
It was now getting towards evening and we still had 200 km to go to Melbourne. We came out of the hills towards sunset and hit the stretch of the Ocean Road that *is* like Highway 1 in Big Sur. It runs right along the coastline, hugging the hillside the way Highway 1 does. Unfortunately, it was now dusk and the last 30 km or so faded into blackness. Various caravan parks beckoned to us but we had to get to Melbourne if we had any hope of keeping to our schedule. So on we went.
We finally hit some straight road at Torquay and headed north for Geelong. Didn’t look like we were missing much on the way. Just a big suburb. In Gelong we got on the M1 motorway and made a beeline for Melbourne. We stopped about 20 km out of town at a Best Western and have settled in for the night. The plan is to go into Melbourne in the morning (fighting the morning commute), find some Internet access and upload the logs and send some mails, then hightail it for Sydney.
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