Great Ocean Road (Tuesday 22nd February - 4rd March).

Enjoyed a beautiful scenic drive along the Great Ocean Road. It seemed like every corner revealed another spectacular beach or ruggered rock formation with pounding waves or crystal clear calm waters.

We stopped at Torquay and Bells Beach (as nearly every tourist does) and while the boys had little idea about the significance of these beaches to the worldwide surfing community, one day we can remind them of our visit.

Our first stop was Cumberland River (5 minutes past Lorne). This campground, along with Kennett River, came highly recommended by various people we met at Ben Boyd NP, Wilsons Prom and also Phillip Island. So we had to give it a go. We were really pleased. Our campsite was right beside the river and the boys had so much fun playing around in the water and climbing over all the rocks. It was another one of those special moments...quietly sitting back and enjoying the imaginary play of our two young adventurous boys.

There was plenty of boogie boarding at Lorne Beach. While the water was a little cold for me, the boys didn't seem to mind and wasted no time getting their "wetties" on and racing down the beach shouting out "come on dad...come on dad".

Our next stop was Kennett River (literally 26 minutes drive from Cumberland River). I was standing behind the clothes line pegging some washing out, when I heard a lady asked Max where we had come from, he replied "ah about 10 minutes away". She didn't believe him and said "I don't think so...". I couldn't help but laugh.

There were koalas all through our campground. It was unreal. The boys also got to feed the parrots and ducks, which Archie loved.

A few mornings Roy and the boys would get up early and go picking Blackeberries that were growing wild along the river. Not many blackberries made it back to camp as the boys ate them as soon as they could pick them. However, Archie always managed to bring one or two slightly squashed berries home for me...very cute.

The boys enjoyed more boogie boarding at the beautiful beach across from our camp which we had almost to ourselves most days....I even ventured in for a swim... at least I can now say I had a swim on the Great Ocean Road.

One night we drove up into the mountains to see the glow worms. The drive up through the forest was great and we saw at least 10 Koalas hanging out of trees along the side of the dirt road. We arrived at the picinic area where the glow worms reside and had dinner. A little later we were joined by a young couple looking for a romantic night....they had their dinner all ready to cook a couple of glasses of wine and they got a nice fire going.....next thing we know the boys are sitting with them in front of the fire asking a million questions about what they were cooking....how they made it etc etc etc. it was hilarious. I think they couldn't wait for it to get dark and get rid of us whilst we went looking for glow worms. The glow worms were great and we all had a great night.

We also took a drive down to Cape Otway where we got to see a few Koalas and more great scenery especially around Blanket Bay, and the town of Appllo Bay where we stopped on the way for morning tea and a swim was also quite nice.

Peterborough