TripRoundUnder

Back at it again with the close together posts. No chance that it will continue, but here we go.

Well, we managed to survive the boat ride back and we were now into an arguably more dangerous situation of driving a troopy through Melbourne… We did however manage to catch up with Alex, one of Steve’s friends in Melbourne and his girlfriend, which was really nice. In true Melbourne style we had to have a pretty crazy meal and then some banging cocktails in between dodging some “interesting” characters.

Leaving Melbourne, we were on our way East to experience the Great Ocean Road, supposedly, one of the best drives you can do in Australia. In doing this, we were also going to have some reminiscing moments for Lauren who had many happy family holiday memories of the area. It was a new adventure for Steve though, who had never been down to that area of Victoria.

First stop was Torquay where we stocked up on some food and then drove out to the famous Bells Beach, home of pro surfing events each year. In true Steve fashion, the poor surf jokes and references were coming thick and fast and I’m glad Lauren hasn’t disowned me. Yet… The view from the cliff tops overlooking the surf breaks really gave a great viewpoint of how perfect the area is for surfing and how amazing the landscape of this coastline has been formed. Unfortunately however, we did not get pitted in the greenroom…

Moving on, we kept moving down the coast towards the beautiful town of Lorne. This is where the nostalgia really kicked in for Lauren who along with her brother Matt, got up to all kinds of mischief back in the day when her family came on holidays. We decided to get out of the car and have a much needed swim as the water looked absolutely unreal. After schooling the rest of the beach about how to body surf we were back in the car and ready to look for a campsite for the night.

With all its amazing aspects, one thing the Great Ocean road is not good at is camping facilities. There is hardly any free camping around the coast and most of the caravan parks were either booked out or way too expensive. Due to this we had to drive an hour inland to an RV friendly town called Winchelsea. Our hopes weren’t high, but we had a nice little free camp by the river and cooked up a nice little Cesar salad for dinner.

From here, we made our way back down to the coast with the aim of the day being to see the 12 Apostles. The drive was absolutely stunning, with views of the rugged but beautiful coastline cliffs contrasting with white sandy beaches and blue water right next to the road. Driving wasn’t easy when you just wanted to look out the window!

We eventually made it to the 12 Apostles and although it was blowing it’s guts out, they were definitely still worth seeing. Again, we were reminded about the awesome power of nature and the sea. The fact they were all slowly disintegrating and falling apart was a little sad, but we were glad we were able to see them in all their glory.

We also managed to see some of the other impressive landmarks of the area including the unique Loch and Gorge beach and Johanna beach. We were a little unlucky given the pretty rough and windy weather, but it was still an unbelievable experience and Steve even managed to get a little pitted.

While driving through the area, we constantly were thinking about how best to organise our travel as we were getting quite keen to get back home. So, we made the decision after seeing the 12 Apostles to boost it across the border and get back into SA. It does sound like we did the Great Ocean a little quickly, but we promised ourselves that one day we would be back. The fact the weather was looking like this also helped play into this course of action.

This tactic had positives and negatives… the positive was that we arrived to our campsite near Robe the same day as the 12 apostles. The negative was 4 hours of driving in the dark playing dodgem cars with half the kangaroo population of South Australia. Not so fun…

We spent the next day looking around the Robe and Beachport area before heading north to visit Lauren’s friend who lives on a farm outside Lameroo. By this stage, we were getting tired of driving, but the warm welcome we received from Alice the calf made it worth it. At least we think it did for Steve!

It was time for home and the long drive to get there! We were very excited to see our dogs Toby and Mick and maybe even the rest of the family as well (if they’re reading).