Driving the Great Ocean Road!by Amaru & Suzanne, October 4th 2009

It's taken me almost 5 years since I first arrived in Australia, but I've finally seen the Twelve Apostles...

As a combination of both our birthdays we decided this year that we would travel to Melbourne over the long weekend and also incorporate a trip down the famous Great Ocean Road and the Twelve Apostles.

We left Sydney after work on Friday on a Tiger Airways plane. We weren't quite sure what to expect as we'd read a lot of bad reviews about the airline and also seen the TV show "Airways". But we had no problems, the plane left on time, it was comfortable, staff were friendly and at $39 each one-way you just can't complain...

We were lucky enough to be picked up at the airport and then spent Friday evening catching up with Kate and Adam and also getting to know their daughter Keira, whom we met for the first time.

Saturday was a nice relaxing day in the city, we woke up and made our way to the Queen Victoria Markets where we pretty much just strolled the food courts looking for tasty treats for breakfast.

While wandering we saw a dougnnut van with a massive line-up... Of course this made us interested and we lined up to see what the whole deal was about. Well, apparently this van has been in business for over 50 years and the doughnuts were great, hand rolled, jam filled with sugar on top....Mmmm!! We paid for a bag of six but were given eight.... Ah well ;)

We were half thinking about visiting the rest of the markets as well but since we've done that a few years ago and weren't really interested in buying anything (that we couldn't eat) we moved on.

We made our way on foot to Federation Square to see if there was anything going on.

We arrived and saw a street performer and sat down to watch his show. During his show he walked up to the audience and selected one girl to participate... while he was doing this Suz pretended to look for something in her bag as she didn't want to be selected. I laughed at her and 5min later I was selected.... figures!

So, my time in the spotlight had finally arrived! I was given a wig to wear and then had to pretend that I was in a club fighting over a girl with another guy while performing some 70's dance moves... There is some video evidence of this somewhere but it won't make this page anytime soon ;)

Once my career was over and done with, we jumped on a tram and made our way over to St. Kilda. We always visit St. Kilda when we're in Melbourne, it's just such a nice area, it's right on the bay has a bohemian atmosphere to it and contains a few nice food places.

The rest of the day we just spent wandering different parts of the city, finding small alleys to walk down and sit down for a coffee and just people watching...

The next morning we had breakfast at a South American inspired café. Suz had a "normal" breakfast while I had the "Venezuelan" one which consisted of "huevos pericos", black beans and arepas and felt like a kid again ;) On our way out I discovered that they were selling "Manjar" and had to buy a small can for the road...

After a very gratifying breakfast, we picked up our car and started our trip towards Torquay and the beginning of the Great Ocean Road...

We drove and stopped at quite a few places along the way such as; Torquay, Bell's beach, Anglesea, Split Point, Big Hill, Lorne and Apollo Bay where we finally stopped for lunch.

At the beginning of our drive we had clear skies and sunshine but as we continued along the road we were covered by thick clouds and a few drops of rain started to fall. It was still a pretty road to drive down, it just meant that we didn't want to pull over too often due to the rain.

After lunch we made the inland journey towards the Twelve Apostles and along the way the skies started to clear up again, we were now hoping to experience a nice sunset.

The Twelve Apostels are amazing, not sure what it is, it's just a few limestone cliffs sticking up our of the ocean but they the experience is mesmerizing!

We stayed around for a while just taking it in before we started the drive towards our stop for the day, but before we reached Port Campbell we stopped at Loch Ard Gorge and had a quick view of this area as well. Here we could actually walk down to the beach and be surrounded by the cliffs.

Once in Port Campbell we checked into our hotel (after accidently going to the wrong one first), sat at the local pub for a refreshing cold drink for a while before making our way back to the Twelve Apostles (only 10min by car) for a sunset viewing.

Boy were we in for a treat! If we thought the view was beautiful before it was nothing compared to what we now witnessed.... It's actually difficult to find words to explain it so I'm just going to leave it at that and leave you to see for yourselves in our photos!

The next day we awoke to dark clouds and rain and before we drove back to Melbourne (shorter route this time via Colac and Geelong) we made a final visit to the site and even though it was cold and cloudy and rain was falling, the view was still great!

Another great weekend in Melbourne and its surroundings.... can't wait to go back!

 

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