Great Ocean Road - Sept. 5

We woke up at Warrnambool, ready to make the return trek to our evening accommodations in Geelong along the Great Ocean Road.

Since we got in fairly late (and focused on the hot springs), it was time to give a bit of our attention to Warrnambool - and nothing looked better than a whale nursery lookout at Logan’s Beach! An Australian was there with binoculars and gave us a bit of information on the location, but he wasn't sure (or I didn't capture) whether we were sure it was a grey whale.

Leaving the wind of the beach, we grabbed a breakfast of bacon and egg rolls at a nearby cafe, before resuming the road trip. All of the advertising had gotten me, so we only made it 20 minutes to Cheese World, where we grabbed wine, cheese, and sea salt pita chips for snacks for later.

Now, it was time for the postcard tour. The western half of the Great Ocean Road follows the Twelve Apostles Marine Preserve, and every few minutes, another named hunk of rock had a parking lot and a walk to an overlook. We started with Bay of Islands.

Bay of Islands gave us an idea of what we'd be seeing that day - worn down layers of softer sedimentary rock were on harder base layers, so each island was stacked like a crepe cake, with nearly vertical edges into the ocean.

To get closer to these rocks, we stopped at the Grotto next. Walking down to the beach, we found the arch that had been worn away to form this sunken lair. I found being next to that, and the framing of the ocean in the arch, to be one of my favorite sights of the day.

Then we stopped at London Bridge (you can likely imagine what that rock looked like), then The Arch (off the side of a cliff, instead of on an island), then, on our way to Loch Ard Gorge, we finally found them! Live kangaroos!

They were up on a hill in the distance, but we had at least seen them once in Australia, so could check that off.

Loch Ard Gorge was a hike down onto a sandy beach in between two cliffs. We weren't sure how tides worked, so we wandered for a little before making sure we wouldn't get cut off from the wooden stairs and exit when it seemed like the water was rising.

Since our next stop was the Twelve Apostles, and it was only five minutes down the road, I got the keys to the car. Mark finally got to experience how unnerving it is to be that close to the edge of the road on the passenger's side with no control! Driving wasn't hard at all, but it certainly gave him some empathy for me being on the left side of the car all the time.

The lot of cars and buses and groups had grown by the time we parked at Twelve Apostles. It was nice that we had stayed so close, because the buses coming from Melbourne were later in the day and added to the crowds. A school group asked us some questions about why we had come to see the Apostles, and we answered then after taking a look at the (not twelve) islands in the distance. It was a well-developed park post, so the bathroom line wasn't too bad.

Our last nature destination of the morning was the Gibson Steps. After going in and out of the car just that many times, we decided not to make our way down the hundreds of steps to the beach. Instead, we watched a surfer take on a wave before finding lunch.

And we had to search. Princetown was very much a locals town, and the restaurant was the only one in the town, period. The darken interior, wood tables, and fireplace made it seem eternally at dusk. The retirees meeting up for their beer and fish and chips helped the mood as well.

With all the success of waterfalls yesterday, I decided I wanted another for my birthday, so we cut inland to Triplet Falls. It was an hourlong hike, with interpretive signs to teach us that carnivorous snails and platypus were in this park! Sadly, we didn't see either - what a birthday that would have been!

We did find the falls, and I played with the DSLR's settings to see if we could get that blurry water picture. We got a lot of blurry pictures, that's for sure! There was the remains of a logging mill along the trail as well, but that was much less picturesque and special.

We'd covered as much of the Great Ocean Road as we had planned, so we used the faster inland roads to cut an hour off the drive time to get to the Gate House on Ryrie in Geelong (emphasis on the long when pronouncing).

We got there right at 6, when the proprietor had said he was going to leave, so didn't yet meet him as we found our room. The parking lot was small, and the house was configured such that we wound our way through the old house's kitchen to our room and attached kitchen and bath. The mansion's gravitas was a bit wounded by the fact that it was across the street from a “mackers” (McDonald's).

I had planned myself a nice dinner at Wah Wah Gee on the wharf - it was well-rated and had reservations for the time we wanted, and it was on the pier! We walked there with pretty high expectations, but the restaurant was much more casual than we anticipated. Because of the "small plates" nature, we ended up ordered the greasiest fried food on the menu, but treated ourselves to their nice cocktails.

As we were walking back to the mansion, we passed a lively-looking restaurant with an American theme and decided to go get shakes afterward - because my birthday was almost over!

Sugared up, we returned back to our creaky but enjoyable room for our last evening driving in Australia.