We Go to a Land Down Under -- III

The Great Ocean Road

Tuesday, Oct. 4

We are up too early again today for all the same reasons. But we’ve signed up for a daylong tour traveling the Great Ocean Road, which will take us to a famous coastal formation known as the Twelve Apostles. 

Tony always meets whatever group is departing to make sure everyone is there and knows which conveyance to board, and his puckish side comes out as we board our bus. He tells us to be sure to sit on the left side of the bus because that’s the side the ocean will be on, and we’ll have a better view. Being the trusting souls we are, the people from our tour group dutifully take over the left side of the vehicle.

But we don't need to do that. We'll be taking an inland route to begin the trip, and we'll spend large periods of time traversing forests, As we travel along, we figure out we've been had and begin to spread out.The first part of our journey didn’t follow the Great Ocean Road because heavy spring rains had caused widespread flooding in the southern parts of Australia, and landslides had closed a large section of the highway. 

Sheep dot the hillsides. Those are eucalyptus trees
on the horizon.

We claw our way out of town past the early morning traffic endemic to large cities before reaching the countryside. But what beautiful countryside. Rolling hills with sheep farms scattered along the way. Eucalyptus trees that form a unique silhouette on the horizon and hold the promise of koala sightings. It's hard to grab pictures through the bus window, and my descriptive skills are inadequate to properly convey the sights. But you can go yourself someday and see it for yourself.

The weather promises to be wild this day. The forecast is for rain and wind, and it is windy. By that I mean West Texas spring wind windy to strong gale force windy. Waves of rain move up from the coast, but we often manage to make a scheduled stop at a time when the clouds break and then leave just as they close in again. 

Old bridge at Winchelsea built by convicts. Only used
for foot traffic. The large tree on the left is a white gum,
a kind of eucalyptus tree with a smooth bark that leaves
a white residue if you rub it.

Foodie break: We stopped at Winchelsea for a morning tea break. Sharon and I drop in on a local bakery and buy a giant cinnamon roll to split, only they don’t call it a cinnamon roll so the woman helping us seemed a bit confused by our request. Unlike Cinnabon, they don’t drown it in thick icing. We didn’t find out what they do call the pastry we had, but the woman points out a cinnamon roll, which looks more like a flattened loaf of bread or a strudel.

Meantime, Aaron and Brandon visit the grocery store and discover a cookie, or biscuit , as it’s called in British English. (Biscuit can also be the term for what we call crackers. Confusing.) Anyway, this isn’t just a cookie; Apparently it’s basically the national cookie -- the TimTam. Imagine a rectangular Oreo with chocolate filling that’s way better than Oreo icing, and then the whole thing is dipped in chocolate. Later we discover that TimTams come in a wide variety of flavors. The Aussies are so confident that visitors have fallen in love with the TimTam that the stores in the Sydney Airport have large displays of them and even sell them in bulk, with a fancy, zippered bag containing eight packages.

One last food item before we return to the tour. We choose George’s Takeaway when we stop for lunch in Apollo Bay on Tony’s recommendation. He says they’re fast, and they are. We order fish, which the menu board says is made from gummy flake, and chips, None of us have a clue what kind of fish that is, so one of the guys looks it up. Flake is the Aussie term for shark meat, and it’s a descriptive term. Firm, flaky and delicious. Oh, and the gummy shark’s not endangered, so we don't feel bad eating it. My subsequent jokes about us eating the shark instead of the shark eating us are almost universally met with stares.  

Though it won’t always be true, we often find that we have to pay extra for “tomato sauce” -- what we would refer to as catsup. Given how often we’ll eat “chips,” or French fries, the extra buck it usually costs could add up. But paying for the condiment becomes less common in the later parts of the trip.

Sharon checks our the rocks on the beach at Apollo Bay. 

Apollo Bay also provides plenty of photo ops. Nice beach, winds driving decent waves, quaint little town, tourist shopping and plenty of places to eat. I buy an Aussie bush hat while here because I'll need a hat later in the tour, and I didn't bring one with me.

We make a few other significant stops during the afternoon. 

At one of our stops  the weather cooperates long enough for us to take a hike on a trail that loops through a rain forest at a place called Mait's Rest. Giant ferns mix with trees so straight that sailors used them to make replacement masts for ships. Other trees grow so high you can’t see their tops when you look up. Still others had trunks so large their age is estimated to be in the hundreds upon hundreds of years.

One of the koalas we saw.

Shortly after our driver pulls over in an area where he’s spotted koalas before. Sure enough, some in our group spot one in a tree right next to the bus when we get off. This bunch has debarked from a door in the middle, so the driver is unaware of the find and leads a bunch up the road where he's spotted one of the critters in a tree that sits a bit farther off the road. We snap pictures until raindrops indicate approach of another squall moving through and reboard the bus just before it hits.

Two of the stops are devoted to seeing the formations known as the Twelve Apostles, monoliths carved from the coastline by the waves and wind. Not sure how high the wind is while here because I hear different numbers, but I am sure that the sustained winds and the gusts are higher than anything I experienced before. The weather changes rapidly, sun, then clouds, then spitting rain. Holding steady long enough to get a clear photo is a challenge.

Waterfall at Loch Ard.

But the scenery is beautiful, and we stay out as long as we can stand it. At the second site we visit, Loch Ard, we’re treated to the sight of a large waterfall being blown sideways. And it’s thrilling to see waves crash against the rocks and splash at least halfway up the 150 feet tall formations. The winds grab the sea foam and send it soaring into the sky so that it looks like it’s snowing when it blows past us on shore. We all think it would be really cool to experience the area on a calmer day, but we also all agree that this experience is cool as well.

The other memorable stop is less a stop than a drive-by. Our driver is looking for an area where he’s seen kangaroos before. Eventually he spots one well off the road. He has nowhere to pull over so he slows to a near stop, but just as I’m about to shoot, he picks up a bit. He also starts honking, which I assume was an attempt to urge the creature to bound away so we can watch. It doesn't start hopping, but this whole routing makes it quite difficult to shoot a photo. Finally I start shooting through the window in the general direction of the 'roo and hope I get something. Sharon’s frustrated because she can’t get the shot. In the end, I wind up with this one, a bit fuzzy but recognizable.

Our last stop of the day is in another picturesque town, Port Campbell. We take care of personal needs, grab some pics as best we can with the wind blowing and rain spitting at us, then get back on the bus for a long trip back to Melbourne by another interior route. To entertain us, the driver plays “The Man from Snowy River” on the bus’s video system. Me, I sleep most of the way back. I’ve seen the flick, and it’s not good enough to worry about staying awake for.

Back at the hotel, darkness has fallen, and though it's not that late, we’re done for the day.