Our first stop was in Torquay, where there was nothing to see that really interested us, other than Bell's Beach, so we took the detour and saw the beautiful beach. Unfortunately, we did not see where the turnoff was, so we only saw it, but that's OK, we had plenty more to see and the rest was actually a lot nicer.
Torquay is apparently not officially on the GOR, but since we weren't sure, we decided to check anyway.
We drive through the various surf towns, such as Surf World Museum (not making this up) in the surf town of Anglesea, which is exactly what you would imagine a surf town would look like - loads of surfing stores and nothing much else, at least not on the main road.
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| This was the basic view most of the way, though we can't remember where this was |
Our first real stop, therefore, was actually Aireys Inlet. While we had no intention of stopping there, largely due to the fact that we don't stop in cities whose names we can't pronounce, we saw one of the known GOR stops along the way, so we went to see it: The Split Point Lighthouse. While we still have no idea why it's called that, it was a nice lighthouse with a gorgeous view. Here, again, we were faced with Australians who decided that since it's late December (think late June on our sides of the world), they should wear shorts and a tank top, even though it's 20 (tops) and windy.
We then went to the TOTALLY awesome (NOT) Memorial Arch, specifically because in the booklet we have, it is listed as "should not be missed." We still have NO idea why this is a landmark, but it made us think that Israel really has it all wrong and should work better on its tourism. Just about every rock there can be turned into a "tourist attraction" where people can sell ice cream for $5 and a coke for $3.50.
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| The amazing, incredible, can't-be-missed Memorial Arch |
Our next stop was Apollo Bay. We were actually supposed to spend our first night in Apollo Bay, but changed our plans the night before when we saw that our last day would have an entirely-too-long drive that would get us into Adelaide way too late - and this is on Christmas Eve.
Apollo Bay was cute, but since it was still cold in that area (about 20 degrees Celsius or even less), all of the beach towns, that are probably awesome during the summer, were a bit ghost-town-ish.
After a short break for lunch and browsing our way through a bookstore (we love bookstores), we continued our drive up to Cape Otway Lightstation, which was supposed to be awesome. We don't know how awesome it is, because it was 5:30 at this point and they were closed (grrrr - lots of these place close around 5 or 5:30), but it wasn't all a loss because along the way we saw a bunch of people looking up in the trees and taking pictures of... koalas!! We hadn't seen any yet, so this was totally exciting.
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| A mom and baby koala. They are SOOOO cute!! |
We got out of the car and started taking a bazillion pics, they are so freakin' adorable, and even some video. We were probably there for half an hour. There were koalas on a few different trees, one had a baby koala, and another had a sleeping koala who was so perfect. And when the sleeping koala woke up, we found out it was actually a mom with her baby!! This alone made the entire trip worth it!
At this point, though we had wanted to make a few more stops along the way, we decided to haul a$$ to the Port Campbell area so that we would have a chance to see The 12 Apostles, the most famous attraction along the GOR. Before you think that we haven't seen much, the drive itself up the road is about 10 hours long, so we often had 1 or 2 hours of driving between stops.
We arrived at the 12 Apostles when the sun had already begun to set. Luckily for us, in Australia summer, it's still light outside at 9, so we could really take advantage of our days to see as much as possible.
I think we won the lottery - it was gorgeous at that time, probably much more than it would have been during the day. The sunset was just giving it a gorgeous color, much more than we can probably see in the pics. The 12 Apostles were, as everything else, created by the water eroding rocks, etc. There weren't actually 12 apostles, but as we learned by reading the signs there, more are being created all the time. Later that evening, the girl we were couchsurfing with told us that one of the apostles fell and now there are 8 instead of 9.
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| The 12 Apostles |
This was going to be our last stop being arriving in Port Fairy (our host was only getting home at 10 that night, which was perfect for us since it gave us much more time for stops along the way), but right after the Apostles, we saw a couple more of the places that were recommended, the first being Lord Arch Gorge, which was gorgeous, and the London Bridge (the other one) which, apparently, is no longer called that since part of it collapsed in 1990 (bringing a whole new meaning to the song "London Bridge is falling down") and is now called the London Arch. Still being sunset, the view was, once again, gorgeous.
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| Rony saving the wildlife so it doesn't get run over |
We decided that this was it, we weren't stopping anymore along the way since we had to be in Port Fairy by 10, but we made a short stop in Port Campbell when we took a wrong turn and saw how gorgeous the town is.
We arrived in Port Fairy a bit after 10, where we were met by a really sweet host (about our age) with a gorgeous house, and a tiny dog that loved Rony and bit Talia's ankles.
This post is very long already, so we will write about the next few days soon. For now, here are some pics from the GOR, and the days after, as well:
http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=588459&id=906005363&l=3dcccbe1fb
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