Great Ocean Road: Melbourne to Apollo Bay, Oct. 4,2009

I am back to the next installment of Karen and my fall vacation to Australia and New Zealand. After looking at my Fall Break post and preparing the pictures for this post I noticed my pictures are normally orange, and brown or blue and grey, with a little green thrown in once in a while. It’s tough keeping the header in sync. This one is the blue grey green type.

When I left off reporting on our vacation we were in Melbourne. The next leg of the trip started with Clarice and Jon picking up a rental car, loading their and our luggage and heading out of Melbourne. Remember we were carrying enough luggage to get us through both the Outback, through a highly urban setting and now a rural open country and beach front environment. It all fit! Soon we were heading southwest out to town, note we are driving on the left as is the custom in Australia.


Small towns in Australia look pretty much like small towns in the US except they the drive on the “wrong” side of the road.

We stopped in one of the small towns and went to a park that featured a fishing pier and a lighthouse. The parking area was pretty full so we thought this must be some special lighthouse or the fishing must really be good here.

As is turned out the Australian Navy was schedule to scuttle one of its out dated ships to help form a reef. It's a little hard to see in the blue picture below. I need a bigger lens.

Our next stop was head toward some of the renowned surfing beaches.

Most of these beaches are connected by trails that follow above the beaches along the cliffs. The natural habitat is a dense growth of shrubs, interspersed with wild flowers.

Along the trail whenever a sizable tree trunk was found the project paid to have local artists carve some sculpture that is displayed somewhere on the trail, usually at seating areas our outlooks.

We eventually made our way to Bells Beach where we climbed down from the cliff areas and walk the beach a ways.

Bells Beach had a few surfers that day. It was a bit chilly for swimmers. There was a really colorful restroom there as well.

We took the compulsory we were there photo and head down the road. Just w few Kilometers down the road Karen yelled form the back seat, “is that a lighthouse up ahead?”

Sure enough it was and it had a really interesting rock formation nearby as well.

Back on the road again we got to this structure marking the start of the Great Ocean Road, which was where we have been heading most of the day.

Just like most great roads this one included not only good scenery but also interesting driving.

We took a few rabbit trails off the main road to hike down to a water fall or two through some rain forest covered trails.

We stopped at a restaurant, fish market, fishing pier for a few minutes and got a couple of interesting photos.

A bit more hard driving and stops for sun sets and we made it to the small town of Apollo Beach where we were going to stay that night.

When we finally got to Apollo Bay the place Clarice had arranged was very nice. We up packed the car, made a fire in the wood burner, and headed into a restaurant within walking distance of the cottage. We had a nice moon lit walk along the beach on the way back to the room.