Disclaimer:

We have both Japanese and American friends who may read this but we are confident that they will take this in the spirit it is intended!!

In every guide book regarding Australia the 'Great Ocean Road' (or GOR as the Aussies call it) comes up as one of those things that tourists 'must do'. It is one of Australia's most iconic roads, skirting the Southern Ocean west of Melbourne, along the shore and inland to Allansford. It has astonishing views, passing through small seaside towns, great surf and swimming beaches, pockets of rainforest, dairy farms, heathlands and koala-filled tree canopies.

However, as this is on everybody's 'to do' list, everybody is there doing it! Given the right weather the road has some amazing sights. It was first constructed by hand, using picks, shovels and horse drawn carts, by Australian soldiers returning from the First World War and, if you have time to stop and consider this, it is mind boggling how such a road was constructed. The idea was to give the returning servicemen jobs and meaningful work as they built, effectively, a memorial to those that didn't return from the war. The Visitor Centre in the pretty town of Lorne has an excellent museum regarding this, and the road remains a wonderful memorial to the Australian soldiers who gave their lives for the country.

We started our journey at Queenscliff, on the Bellarine Peninsula, which is a short ferry ride from the exclusive Mornington Peninsula, and travelled along as far as a town called Warrnambool. Some tourists take the tourist buses from Melbourne and do the journey in a day. Fine, if you don't have much time, but why rush? Those people that do rush tend to be the Japanese tour buses. Oh, the Japanese tour buses……..whoever is working for the Australian tourist board in Japan is doing one helluva job!

Australian tour buses now seem to have dropped their Australian logos and have rebranded to glitzy logos in Japanese. In general, these buses and Japanese driven hire cars, show little or no respect to others on the road. The tourists pile out of the buses, camera in one hand, umbrella in the other and push past you with elbow and brollies to get to the best view from the scenic lookout. They then take their selfies, taking ages to pose like some model in a glossy magazine, oblivious to everyone else wanting to take photos, and then they are gone in the blink of an eye, only to be replaced with another bus load! What they miss is the awesome beauty of the place, the power of the ocean, the noise, the constant rumble and the pure natural limestone coastline that, unfortunately, is crumbling away at 2cms per year. The coastline is a natural geological feature and not man made cliffs. London Bridge, for example, was a natural double arch but, back in 1989, the inner arch collapsed and two tourists were actually left stranded on the outer arch before being rescued by helicopter. I say that because we overheard one American tourist, whilst looking at the remaining infamous 'London Bridge' arch out to sea, "I don't understand why they don't just build another bridge". Agghhhh!!!! We are still chuckling, and that was several days ago!

So that's two nationalities we have picked on, but I am afraid they deserve it. Sadly there have been many deaths along the GOR caused by Asians just walking out onto the road, phone in hand, oblivious to others. All the way along the GOR there are road signs in both English and Japanese, the only place where we have seen this. The most predominant one is 'Drive on the left hand side of the road in Australia"! Tourist hire cars will suddenly stop, out pops a family to take their pictures and then they speed off again, often on the wrong side of the road! You need to have your wits about you! One has to question what do these people get out of this? Is it merely ticking something off on their bucket list? Sadly, it appears that way. You don't have to view things through a camera to appreciate life!

One doesn't necessarily pick up in the tourist guides that the road itself is not the best in Australia. The road, the B100, is in need of a lot of pot-hole filling and resurfacing and is not a two-lane super highway, but one that needs a lot of care and attention. It can be very windy (as in wiggly not blowy!) in places and traffic congestion easily builds up, especially behind a big, lumbering Winnebago!!! Victoria Roads are addressing this, as we had a number of roadworks to negotiate and they have made 'turnouts' where slow traffic is supposed to pull in and let faster traffic pass. Drones, which check on possible landslides, also monitor the road and the way rain dissipates in order to plan new roadworks!

If, dear reader, you sense we were not totally enamoured with the GOR, sadly you are correct. The scenery was amazing even though we didn't have the best of weather along our route, and bright sunshine on deep blue waters does make a difference to the must have photos, but we hated the tourist aspect of it. Having been travelling in Australia for a number of months we have seen so many beautiful, empty beaches of golden, or white, sands that beaches full of photo snapping tourists tend to make us shy away a bit. These beaches along the Southern Ocean shoreline are also pretty treacherous and you are constantly advised to 'only swim between the flags'. There have been several drownings since we have been here! The coastline is also known as 'The Shipwreck coast", a bit of a clue there!

To quantify our comments, we think, had we visited the GOR before we had travelled around the East coast of Australia we would certainly have been in complete awe. The Tourist board does a great job 'selling' the GOR as 'a must do', but then roads such as 'The Grand Pacific Highway' (SE Australia), which covers large areas of National Park are just as stunning, but probably undersold by the tourist board.

Nevertheless, the GOR is a beautiful part of Australia, and it helped that we started our trip in a wonderful Chocolaterie (the chocamochachino and white hot chocolate were to die for!), where we also spent a fortune on the most gorgeous tennis ball chocolates, choc covered cocoa beans etc etc, and finished our trip in a cheese and wine store! We stayed in a wide variety of camp sites: where wildlife was bountiful, next to sports fields and meandering rivers and one even behind a local waste station (not as bad as it sounds!). In Torquay, Bob made such an impression with a possum, who liked our van, that the possum bit his toe (I didn't just laugh, I was in hysterics!). We stayed in a character filled 'Bush campsite' at Cape Otway, where a rather large koala slept above our van, only to decide to move during the middle of the night and boy, do they growl!!! However, these campsites are full of tourists that don't seem to have much experience of camping or, indeed, don't know the etiquette of campsites (oohh, hark at us, the much travelled, all knowledgeable campers!) and it can be quite different to some of the less touristy routes. We even had one camper van pull up on our site thinking that there was enough space to park. Once we had managed to squeeze out the door, and asked them to turn the music down, we 'advised' them that they were in the wrong place - they moved! Hmmm!

There are some great walks along the GOR - you can do the lot, if you are that way inclined, a mere 104kms. There are also some great cycle tracks along the way, which the Australians seem to do so well. We loved the one in Warrnambool which, funnily enough, had cafes at both ends!!! One of the cafes, which was part of a busy surf life saving club, served us some remarkable beer, brewed in Geelong (just outside Melbourne), and stored in wine barrels and hence you got a wine taste along with the beer, really unusual. There was, strangely enough, a white label and a red label - a delicious pint after a long cycle!

As a complete contrast, we have now headed inland into the Grampians, which are a beautiful range of mountains that almost appear out of nowhere. We were recommended to stay at Halls Gap by an English exile working in one of the campsites we had visited. True to recommendation we stayed in what can only be described as a wildlife park! The park was underneath the huge Dam wall of the Bellfield Lake and extremely well disguised. So much so that wildlife abounds within the campsite. Seeing emus, kangaroos and white sulphur-crested cockatoos pass so close to you is a truly unique Australian experience. Well, as to the emus, we hadn't actually intended to see them quite so close but one managed to run across the road in front of us with no warning - fortunately Winnie's brakes worked and everybody survived. Kangaroos? Picture the scene (if you can, you may need a bit of imagination here) but we are sitting underneath our awning, so only a couple of metres or so out from our motorhome, and two bloody huge lumbering kangaroos slide past us to munch on the grass. A sudden intake of breath from us both as they were SO close and such a moment to treasure. The down side though, was that Bob was out early morning shovelling their poo away from the van area!!! Quite a unique experience and one which we can cherish as a truly Australian moment yet so, so different from the tourist moments along the GOR. However, both simply unique and memorable!

So, we have had our fill of beautiful coastline scenery for a while as we now head inland to follow the Victorian Silo Art Trail, and eventually into another Australian territory, South Australia. Here, before crossing the interstate border, we will have to empty our fridge of any fresh fruit and vegetables and be inspected as we cross the fruit fly exclusion zone. Exciting times ahead!