The Great Ocean Road

The Great Ocean Road is an astounding drive starting south of Melbourne and heads west along the coast. The road is not that dissimilar from Highway 101 which parallels the coast of Washington, Oregon and California. The road twists and turns sharply as the ocean crashes against the rocks and cliffs right off the side of the highway. As the tour book suggests, the driver doesn't get as good of a view because of the required attention to driving, but as a passenger it is amazing. Erin and I took turns - Erin drove westward and I drove on the return trip.

I believe that Erin enjoyed driving much more than I did. She certainly enjoyed driving faster than I did. My knuckles are still a bit white from holding on so tight as we sped around the sharp turns just over crashing surf. I'll let her take it from here - The road is made for driving fast; though fast means something very different here than say fast when driving through the middle of Montana. We were the odd-car out in our pack, comprised of a motorcycle, a Saab turbo, an MG convertable, and a BMW. We kept up nicely though, our little Toyota rental car zipped around the corners and through the (rather short) straight stretches at a whopping 70-80kph. Rally car racing, here I come. While there are many bus tours along the Great Ocean road, I think that driving is the best way to experience it. Oh, and I insist that Joey's white knuckles were due to the scenery, not my driving. Back to Joey -

As we indicated in previous posts, there are lots of signposts warning of wildlife crossings. On the drive, we saw wild kangaroos (26 or so) having dinner in a field on the side of the road. We also saw a few koalas in the trees, with the obligatory tourist standing in the roadway snapping photos while trying to avoid getting run over. (Erin again -- the koalas in the trees were their typical sleeping selves. Regardless, it was quite neat to see an animal that we had previously only seen in captivity just hanging out in the wild.) See if you can spot the koala in the tree above Erin's head.

We got to see a lighthouse at Airey's Inlet (pictured below), but we were disappointed about the Cape Otway lighthouse as there was a fee to get into the park just to see the thing. [Editorial note: We don't mind paying a reasonable fee to see sights (it was $15/person to get in), if you can at least see what you are paying for. In this case, you can't even see the lighthouse from afar without paying the fee. Additionaly, we don't mind paying to see sights if the money goes to a good cause (i.e. for a historical society), but the Otway lighthouse was a for-profit group and it didn't appear that the funds went to anything historical. You couldn't even use the restroom without paying! Anyway, that's all I have to say about that.]