The Great Ocean Road

Well before starting the Great Ocean Road we are pleased to say that a new member joined our gang and a friend Dan Littleton (another camper) joined us for the journey. The new member to the gang is Froane, she is a nice girl, rather large and robust though.... The truth is Froane is a Toyota Hiace poptop campervan, and is our new home for the forseeable future.

The Great Ocean Road runs along the south coast of Australia from Torquay to Warrnambool. First stop was Torquay, the surfing capital of Victoria and home away from home for Soph. After looking round the stupidly expensive surf shops we head on down to the famous Bells Beach which is just down the coast. Bells Beach is renouned amongst the surfing population of the world so suprise suprise I couldn't go past with out jumping in for a surf. We decide to move further on down the coast that night and spend the night in a beach car park in Angelsea. This was the first night of many in our van, Froane.

We woke up and carried on down the coast, after driving a short distance we stopped at Split Point light house which some of you may recognise from a classic TV show. Any guesses? (see picture for answer) We carried on trooping along the coast road checking out various view points, a highlight was a 15 meter waterfall called Sheoak Falls. We also decide to check out another lighthouse, after driving the 15km down to the headland, we found it charged $16 to get in, so we disappointedly decided to save our money and head back to the main road. On the way back, we saw cars randomly stopped on the side of the road and people looking and pointing up a tree, so we did what any other self respecting tourist would do and stopped, we were lucky enough to see our first wild Koala bears, the 15km drive suddenly seemed very worth while.

We spent the second night in a place called Port Campbell, not much to say about this place really, nice little sea side town, which was convientely positioned at the start of the main stretch of view points on the Great Ocean road. We woke fairly early and headed to the Twelve Apostles which i am sure the majority of people have heard before. A truly amazing site as well as the most spectacular coastal formations such as Loch and Gorge, The Arch, London Bridge and The Grotto. The weather just about held out for us with only a few light showers (where is this Aussie summer everyone promised us!!)

Our third and final night was spent in Warrnambool, a bigger city located on Lady Bay. We stayed in a surf club car park on the edge of the beach where we managed to blag free showers from the campsite next to us. Here we had a relaxing night to get up early to hit the road back to Melbourne.

The trip was a great success and we are now in Melbourne preparing for the next major one which is up to Sydney and up the east coast. We are spending Christmas and New Year in Manly just outside Sydney before heading up the coast on January 3rd.

Hope you are all ok and we want to wish you all a HAPPY CHRISTMAS and a HAPPY NEW YEAR!!!

P.S. Thank you all for writing on our message board, we really appreciate hearing from you, keep them coming!

Bye for now