We've spent the last couple of days on the Great Ocean Road, at the very bottom of Victoria, and by gosh it's been amazing!

We did the trip in reverse so on Friday we drove inland through to the furthest point just outside of Allansford so that evening we viewed The Bay of Islands then carried onto Peterborough where we set up camp for the night.

We woke up on Saturday and the weather was glorious - clear blue skies and lots of sunshine (luckily we have aircon in the van!). We had our breakfast then hit the road. This part of the coast was very rugged and high up so a lot of the viewpoints were from a cliff edge. The views were breathtaking - the sea was so blue, the limestone cliffs were eroded into islands, rock stacks, caves and arches, and the backdrop to this was rolling hills and farmland, it was just so beautiful.

The main points of interest were the Grotto, London Bridge (..fallen down!), the Arch, Thunder Cave, Loch Ard Gorge (which was where the Loch Ard was shipwrecked, there was also a lovely soft yellow sand beach), the Twelve Apostles and then the Gibson Steps which lead down to Gibson beach. The waves were huge, we went for a paddle and ended up soaked! There were a couple of surfers so we watched them ride the waves for a bit.

Beyond this we climbed the hills into the Otway National Park, at this point I was driving but quickly convinced Davie to take over as the roads were far too windy for me! As we weaved in and out of the bends through Lavers Hill we were disputing whether we were in a forest or in a rainforest - turns out it's rainforest so Davie won that one!

We took a detour of the road to get to Cape Otway and along the way we seen loads of koalas in the trees, all of which were conked out and stoned on eucalyptus! At Cape Otway we were on the second most Southernly point of Australia and we also got to admire the lighthouse from afar (we weren't paying $40 to get a close up view, it is only a lighthouse afterall!!!)

From here we headed back onto the Ocean Road and met up with the coast again. We were both continually blown away by its magnificent beauty and from this point there were a lot more beaches and small towns. We drove all the way to Lorne where we had a quick nap on the beach then set up camp for the night.

This morning we drove up a huge cliff to the Erskine waterfalls which again was beautiful, there really is so much natural beauty here in Australia!! Anyway we had a climb on the boulders to the base of the waterfall to get a better view and just took a seat for a while to take it all in. On the way back to town we were going downhill steeply so we were guarding the brakes for around 20km which the camper didnt enjoy and showed us by shaking violently and making horrible noises so when we got to the bottom and stopped the van we were straight onto roadside assistance who came and checked us out. The guy gave us the all clear, apparently it happens a lot but we just needed to be sure - we certainly didnt want the brakes giving up on us completely.

So off on our merry way we went back towards Melbourne. We pulled over onto a servo to fill up the fuel and have a cuppa, we could see in the distance large plumes of smoke and the next thing we knew I got a text alert from the CFA alerting us to bushfires in the area and to get out, so after a mild panic get out the area is exactly what we did. Not long after we left they closed the road so we were lucky with our timing. It scared us a lot I'm not going to lie, hopefully that's the only bushfire encouter we'll have.

After a fair few hours of driving through cetral Victoria we crossed the Murray River and made it to New South Wales where we have set up camp again. It's been another hot day so it took us a matter of minutes before we jumped in the pool to cool off....so refreshing!

Tomorrow we will continue up the Hume Highway until we reach Shell Harbour where we will join the Grand Pacific Highway which is meant to be another spectacular coastal drive.

Hopefully tomorrow will be drama free!!