The Great Ocean Road: One of those bucket list items that we firmly managed to tick off our list. It's only 200 or so kilometres long and shouldn't have taken more than maybe 2 hours, and with it being winter, it should have been much, much less enjoyable. But it was bloody great and we took 2 days to see as much as we could.
The weekend we spent on the road was a wild, wintery concoction of heavy winds, rain and cloudy sky's, mottled by a sunny spell every few hours and it was spectacular. The many metre high waves that crashed around us echoed and rumbled like nothing we'd ever heard before, and although it would have been lovely to have basked at the views with the sun on our backs in 30 plus degree heat, the weather made our experience far more memorable: almost scary.
Although some of the shots of our trip look very similar, every stop was different. It didn't seem to get that "If you've seen one, you've seen them all!" vibe. There were maybe a few places that we skipped that perhaps it would have been nice to visit (particularly in the wooded areas) but with sea-studded blinkers on, it didn't seem too necessary to linger in land. I think one of the more interesting things on reflection is that The Twelve Apostles- the shining star of attractions upon this magnificent piece of tarmac, is astronomically underwhelming in comparison to what we experienced along the way. Granted, we did the road the opposite way to the normal tourist route so when it randomly popped up with far less signage than the rest of the stops (we only parked up because we saw the sign for the Apostles Carpark, not one of those brown tourist signs. I must admit, I was expecting some sort of fan parade, or at least balloons to show we'd arrived at it!), it already took a back seat.
The other thing that springs to mind now that I'm finally getting around to writing this up is how little you must be able to absorb if you book it with one of those coach tour companies. We spent two days on it and unless we booked ourselves into a hostel or hotel at one of the larger towns, or stayed at the rest stop in the wooded part of the road, there seemed to be very little places you could stay the night if you wanted to. We ended up parking up practically on the side of the road in the tiny hamlet (it was the smallest place with a name that I think I've visited) down the road from the Apostles after eating in the only place that you could for miles around.
Oh, and the magnificent piece of tarmac is bloody awful to drive on. Yes, the road gets used a lot but it was in a horrendous state!
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