From Sydney we flew to Melbourne, or better, to Avalon airport which cheap companies sell as Melbourne but which is actually about 100 Km away. I suppose 100 Km in Australia is "just around the corner" but still!... In view of this, we decided to go straight to the Great Ocean Road and rented a car at the airport. The staff was so nice that they gave us a free upgrade and we ended up with a brand new Hyundai Elantra. If we only knew then what we know we would have refused the kind offer. We'll get to that in a few lines...
It was about 10pm when we left the airport. We had to drive 50 Km to Torquay which happened without incident, except from a brief moment of hysteria when I saw a sign indicating Geelong, a name I recognised from the many stories Anwyn had told me about her teens. Upon arrival we pulled over while we tried to figure out where our hostel was. It was called Bell's Beach Hostel ,or something to that effect, we are still working on obliterating the place from our memories, and some kind locals volunteered us directions to Bell's Beach. Off we went, into the bush, late at night, to find this place. We went around for a while in unpaved country roads, trying all combinations of side roads and main roads but failed to find anything resembling a house not to mention our hostel. We did succeed however in entertaining the local population of kangaroos which watched us going around in circles from the side of the road. Eventually we returned to Torquay only to find that our hostel was actually across the road from where we had pulled over for directions in the first place!
The hostel turned out to be an anthrum for brainless surfers and airheaded surf-dudettes (where all sentences started with "like, oh my God!" and finished in "dude" or "babe", spoken in really slow voices either from the beer, spliffs or just lack of basic vocabulary. The next morning we made a swift escape and finally like, oh my God, so hit the road, dude! Still on a surfers mood, Tom insisted in stopping at the local outlet centres for all the surf brands - quicksilver, rip curl, reef, billabong... If shopping uncontrolably is a female characteristic then Tom was particularly in touch with his feminine side that day! (ahem, this is the home of surfing you know)! I watched bemused as he walked back to the car with four or five shopping bags. Maybe it as just a bit of shock therapy after a traumatic night, I don't know...
We made another attempt at finding Bell's Beach. The kangaroos were gone but the beach was back. We briefly looked down from the viewpoint, trying to keep standing in the bitterly cold wind. Some brave souls were surfing down below but the waves weren't really that great. Tom explained to me that this beach had some world famous breaks. Yeah dude, like, oh my God (tsk, tsk)!
In Anglesea we stopped for a look at the lighthouse and the rockformations bellow. The colour of the sea was just perfect and even if the temperature outside wasn't quite hot, it was still very enticing. Unfortunatelly you can't swim in most parts of the coast as the currents are too strong...
We carried on to Lorne. We had heard about koala spotting nearby so Tom rushed to the about to close tourism office. I parked the car and in a moment of total distraction locked the keys in the boot! Oh, how stupid of me!! Like, oh my god babe, what have you done!! We went to the local hardware shop were a very sweet middle-aged couple offered us advice and help and even accomodation for the night! We used their phone to call the australian version of the AA. The guy on the phone told us that in the new Elantra, the botton to open the back seats was in the boot: this meant he could break into the car but we wouldn't be able to reach the boot from there. (I had to take over at this point, the situation was getting more complex to fix and Vania was beginning to knock everyting in the shop over in frustration)! Then we called the car rental agency where we were told that the copies for Victoria's cars were kept in Melbourne but that if the car was from another state then the keys would be in Sydney or even Brisbane (several thousand km away)! Fortunately the car was from Victoria. We decided to spend the night in Lorne and again we found that the people at the local YHA were extremelly helpful. They even set us up with two german girls which were driving to Melbourne in the following morning. In the city we got the new set of keys,worth a 200 dollar deposit, and made our way back by train and bus to Lorne. One day, 400 Km and spoonfulls of patience from Tom later we were reunited with all our belongings finally released from the boot. Ufff.
That afternoon we still made an attempt to find the elusive koalas at the Cape Otway reserve but either we were too tired to see them or they were not there. We reached the wonderful YHA eco-hostel in Apollo Bay where we spent a quiet night over a well deserved glass of wine.
The next day we made it to the more famous bit of coast: the Twelve Apostles. These rock formation are all that is left as the sea gradually eroded the soft limestone, creating arches and eventually pillars. Of the initial twelve only about eight remain. As impressive as the rocks were the millions of flies pestering the tourists. Unlike flies anywhere else in the world, these are determined to explore every cavity in your body, in particular your mouth, eyes and ears. You can wave them away but you'll find that they just go 360 degrees around you and set down in exactly the same spot two seconds later. It's the battle of the minds and usually you'll give up first... Except for Tom, he was getting seriously annoyed and at some point starting swearing out loud at the flies, with them interrupting his photo session. Of course the flies didn't understand what he was saying so went on annoying him but a few japanese tourists were very entertained with the spectacle. Some might have even taken photos (no, they'd never do that)....
Close by is the London Bridge rock. At some point there were two arches but in the 1990s the one closer to land collapsed, leaving two tourists stranded in the new island. There is a story around of how this pair was on a romantic weekend away while having a secret affair which thus became exposed by the news teams covering the rescue operations. How unlucky is that!
As we prepared to leave the Great Ocean Road we found the sign to a reserve which warned of koalas for the next few kms. Of course I made Tom take the road! We went into koala-spotting mode (looking for fuzzy grey backsides in the trees seems to have become a mandatory pursuit - Vania was now transfixed looking upwards to the trees, alarmingly even when driving) but failed to see anything in the high eucalyptus trees. Then something looking like a ball seemed to be in one, then more and then the eucalyptuses (eucalypti ?!?) became shorter so I could definitely see paws and ears in the balls. They are just so cute!!! Little fluffy balls precariously balanced on the tree trunks. Most of them seemed to be asleep (koalas sleep 18 hours a day): some of them actually looked as if they were climbing the tree when a sudden assess of narcolepsy made them just slump down where they were. You really felt like picking them from the trees and taking them home. Poor Tom, we was trying to drive us out of there but I kept shouting "Stop!" at every new koala sighting and running out to take a photo. Here are only three photos of the zillions I took, just to make my point of how cute (don't you mean lazy) they are:
(oh good, more reasons to keep stopping for photos)!
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