Day 1: Adelaide to Mount Gambier
Well Hertz didn’t have our cars ready, so they gave us three more expensive ones without a change to the cost, which was a bonus! The first day was the longest in terms of driving, and we didn’t really stop for much until we got to Mount Gambier, the last major town in South Australia before Victoria.
Along the way we stopped by the random Giant Lobster in Kingston. This lobster was designed to go on the roof of the restaurant, however the plan was in imperial and they actually built it in metric, so there was no way it would it on the roof! We also nearly ran over some sheep who had somehow got on to the road, and were stopped by a drug test, though none of us looked that suspicious…We went out that night for Chinese food!
The destination for the end of the day was The Jail: a hostel which used to be a prison, and basically still was one. We stayed in rooms (affectionately called cells), thee was barbed wire on the roof, and codes to get inot the dorm areas. It’s funny how you talk about things like horror movies when you’re in a scary place, and we all kind of freaked ourselves out, enough to do a re-enactment of the final scene in Blair Witch!
Day 2: Mount Gambier to Halls Gap (Grampians)
We were all terrible at getting up when we decided to, and getting eleven people to move their arses was difficult, but nevertheless we did get out in the mornings (albeit about 2.5 hours after we intended to leave!).
We headed to the Blue Lake, a (surprisingly) blue crater lake near to Mount Gambier, and they have no idea why it’s so blue. We then headed up to the Grampians National Park; a beautiful mountain range across in Victoria, the state to the south east of SA. After visiting the Aboriginal centre and learning the history of the mountains, we went to have a look at some of the sights. Sadly the weather wasn’t that good, and there wee a few things we simply couldn’t see owing to the clouds, but we still had a good time. We managed to see Broken Falls and MacKenzie Falls, and then the heavens opened and we were all thoroughly soaked. None of us had really packed for the weather, based on how good it had been in Adelaide!
We finished the night with a meal and shooting another Blair Witch scene at our hostel, watched the amazing Garden State and had a multilingual session reading the same passage from a magazine in our respective languages.
Day 3: The Great Ocean Road itself (Halls Gap to Apollo Bay)
We then headed back to the coast and on to the Great Ocean Road, which really was great. After driving from the Grampians, we kind of went crazy when we found the ocean. We parked near the beach and randomly danced, did the conga and other things. Perhaps our craziness was due to the fact that this was one of the best days we had weatherwise; still cold, but at least no rain!
Every 300m or so we had to stop to see another awesome coastal view. The most amazing part was the Twelve Apostles; several stacks of rock standing along the coastline. The road winded round the coastline and made for some fantastic scenery. This was also the first day of good weather. It was really windy and cold, but at least the sun was out. Along the w
ay Christina hit a nail sticking out of a parking bay block (stupid nails!), thereby damaging one of the cars, but luckily the insurance covered it, and it was quite funny looking back on it. You’d think we’d be more careful with rented cars, but that wasn’t the case (see Tasmania).We ended up at Apollo Bay in a great hostel for the night. We hadn’t booked a hostel for this night and were concerned that there wouldn’t be space available for 11 people at such late notice, but the first place we looked at had exactly the right number of beds available! A great day had by all.
Day 4: Arrival in Melbourne
The next day we continued along the GOR, along the best bit for driving. Here the road went actually along the coastline. The sea was lashing against the shore only a few metres away from the road. We stopped at Sheoak Falls in the Great Otway National Park, where we shot what was probably our best Blair Witch scene. We then headed to Melbourne, where the usual getting lost, etc happened. Eventually we managed to find our “hotel” (seriously that was an overstatement!) and got the cars back to Hertz.
That evening we headed out to Chinatown for some good food!
See next entries about our day in Melbourne and Tasmania!
See my Facebook photo album which goes with this entry:
The Great Ocean Road
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