^rad^'s adventures driving around South Eastern Australia
Day 1 - Tuesday January 3rd, 2006
Departure from Adelaide at 0700
This holiday was planned the night before out of boredom! Annual leave wasnt a certainty as I had been working in India and was unsure if I could take leave. I thought that motels would be booked out until I checked and when I found vacancies I decided to plan this holiday quickly.
Day 1 and no photos! But theres good photos to come I promise.
The drive to Warrnambool is quite short, only about 600km, the South Australian part is very boring but once you cross over to Victoria the scenery is much nicer.
Lunch is at a rural Victorian town called Hamilton, and along with lunch I ordered a piece of lemon meringue pie, the piece under the counter was what I wanted, but instead out comes a piece from a far larger pie, I was pretty excited.
Warrnambool is a very nice town, quite large, and I am very dissapointed I didnt take any photos. Between the city and the sea theres a sort of marsh land thats been transformed into nice lakes and grass lands with walk ways and boats and stuff, very impressive.
Dinner is at Taco Bills! A franchise of mexican restaurants, I like it better than montezumas which is the competing franchise, but am also weary of eating franchise food on holidays, however they are proper restaurants not like a mcdonalds or something like that.
The motel is more of an apartment, and its 2 stories, which was quite strange, I sleep well ready for the big day tomorrow!
Day 2 - Wednesday January 4th, 2006
Warrnambool - Geelong
The Great Ocean Road! A premier tourist attraction of Australia. I have been here previously as a child but cant really remember it, you see it a lot in pictures though and because parts of the coastline keep falling into the sea, as you shall see in my pictures shortly.
The great ocean road is a series of stops along the road with interesting coastline to view, you generally get out of your car and walk down steps
A spooky cave to the sea, if the right sort of wave comes you get wet
This is the site of 'london bridge' the two pieces of land used to be joined by a rock bridge, which fell down in 1996 whilst some people were standing on the island part, they were rescued by helicopter after being stranded a few hours, the collapse was caught on video.
Another Rock Bridge
An Ocean inlet
Here I am facing out to sea, the sea comes into this part via a long underground cave. About 100 years ago a ship ran aground near here and lots of people died, many of the bodies popped up in this hole a few days later
This picture looks similar to a previous one, but its a different location, why is that interesting, I have no idea
I am pretty sure if you fall in you will drown
You can walk out on various spits if you wish, the news headline would say 'tourists drowned today as a freak wave hit...' You hear the term freak wave so often on the news that it should just be replaced with 'slightly larger than normal' wave
This is whats left of 'the twelve apostles', originally there were 12, they keep collapsing into the sea
Another View of the 12 apostles, looking the other way
Near the great ocean road is the Otway National Park, which is sort of a Rain Forest with big Australian trees.
You can walk amongst the trees on giant steel platforms, theres a few of these around Australia and I have never been on one.
The tree walk employs a time honored tradition of placing the car park a good kilometre from the entry gate with no mention of admission charges until you get to the gate. In fact theres no sign until you get to the window, and by then you are basically comitted to paying since you have wasted an hour, its an awesome plan and works.
Heres a shot of the trees from the walkway, its hard to convey how high up you are, more than 60 metres at the top of the tower in one of the following pictures
Looking down from the tower at the walkways which are probably 50 metres up, its an impressive engineering feet, it doesnt sway much and was apparently moved here from a national park in Launceston, Tasmania, after it went broke there...perhaps they posted the admission fee too close to the car park
The tower, its a lot of steps to the top, but fun
Some dork looking at a tree
After walking in amongst trees, I spot on my map a logging track which leads us back to the great ocean road...it really is a track and we follow a logging truck which goes way too fast around blind corners, if you were coming the other way I dont know what would happen.
Following is quite hard as the road is dirt and theres a lot of dust, but it soon turns off to pick up some 200 year old trees to be exported and turned into cardboard.
The rest of the ocean road is less tourist oriented, but still a very interesting drive. It is however a slow drive, many drivers are overly cautious, so be warned if you intend to drive along here, 70km an hour is going to be your maximum speed!
We arrive in Geelong quite late and I am starving, dinner is pizza and it is really bad! About 5 pounds of shredded ham on the pizza, it looked so promising from the outside, italian guys, wood oven...so dissapointed.
Unfortunately I failed to take any pictures of Geelong, it is a big city almost adjoining Melbourne, one day it will be joined up I think