Today was yet another grey day in Melbourne and it was starting to feel like England. So we decided that today would be a good day to spend most of it in a car, so we drove 250km over to Warrnambool and joined the Great Ocean Road where we would follow it back to Melbourne stopping at the main sights along the way back.

The first history lesson for today.....

The Great Ocean Road is a 243-kilometre (151 mi) stretch of road along the south-eastern coast of Australia between the Victorian cities of Torquay and Warrnambool. The road was built by returned soldiers between 1919 and 1932, and is the world's largest war memorial; dedicated to casualties of World War I. It is an important tourist attraction in the region, which winds through varying terrain alongside the coast, and provides access to several prominent landmarks; including the nationally significant Twelve Apostles limestone stack formations.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_ocean_road

I can see how this road is voted as Australia's best costal road, which passes through Port Campbell National Park, but obviously it would be so much nicer if the sun was shining and maybe doing the drive in a convertible car. Even in this weather it’s truly amazing.

We stopped at most of the main viewing points along the way for photos, which included:-

Bay of Islands

The Grotto - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Grotto,_Victoria

London Bridge - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/London_Arch

Loch Ard Gorge - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Loch_Ard_Gorge

The Twelve Apostles - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Twelve_Apostles,_Victoria

Today we must have driven for around 8 or 9 hours and around 600 km. Thanks Dave for doing all the driving today.

But to top things off Dave dropped me off in Melbourne city centre while I met up with two friends that I had made in Vietnam. I had arranged to meet up with Joe and Louise at the Royston Hotel. Joe was the guy from Hanoi that had been bitten by the dog and had to go on the course of 5 rabies injections. We had arranged to meet here as they were out with their friend at a pub quiz night and we were quite good and came in a close 3rd out of about 12-15 teams. Most of it was down to the Australians in our team as many of the questions were about Australian history, music and TV so us British team members had no idea. Dave even said that he would come back and pick me up as long as I called him with 30 minutes notice, what a star.