A Trip Down Under-From Melbourne Along The Great Ocean Road

After 17 years of a long ago planned trip "Down Under" we are finally there.  15 hours from LAX and a few Ambien later, we arrived at Tullamarine Airport in Melbourne, Australia.  Putting our better judgement aside, we immediately rented a car at 9am. Jet lagged Rob strapped himself behind the wheel and committed to driving on the left hand side of the road down to our AirBnB stay along Bell's Beach in Torquay.  We of course got going the wrong way on the Ring Road around Melbourne as there are no North/South designations. The assumption is you know the direction of the towns you wish to head toward.  After correcting I was so happy not to be driving the blasted freeway that I held my tongue as a good co-pilot should.

Torquay about an hour and a half south turned out to be a lovely little beach town probably like a California beach town like Santa Monica was in the 50's.  Everything within walking distance. The pace slow and laid back. I was struck by the pleasant, friendly folks who all seemed to have the time, to take the time to interact in the most genuinely upbeat manner.  The beach was lovely and the local school surf team was practicing by first running the beach, all "Chariots of Fire" in their beautiful physical health, in pink tank tops for both boys and girls their long muscular limbs pumping along the sand.  I sat and watched them come and go  and then they reappeared with their surf boards. All put into the surf for some boarding and headed out way beyond the breakers.  Mind you it was cold and windy but it appeared they were acclimatized.  Bell's Beach which is just south of here is famous as a world class surfing beach.


The Torquay Air BnB home was our  first AirBnb stay.  It was our own entire floor of a newly built, beautifully designed beach house.  The two retired teachers who owned it were both so congenial and helpful in mapping out our trip for the next day down The Great Ocean Road.  The place was fabulous and may have spoiled us for all future Air BnB stays.

The entire coastline that The Great Ocean Road covers has a history of dozens and dozens of shipwrecks along the coastline where unfortunates have foundered after making the trip all the way from England and other embarkments to these distant shores.  Many of those early settler unfortunates were doubly unfortunate as they were convicts sent to this "Fatal Shore."  The convicts ranged across all ages including women and children who had committed crimes back in England, some as egregious as stealing a loaf of bread and being sentenced to a life of hard labor and exile to this distant land, along with true felons and moral degenerates given the same sentence.  So lighthouses and gaols are two key tourist attractions in Australia that lend their historical insight to these harsh and challenging times of justice harshly metered out, banishment to penal colonies, seafarers, convicts and good and bad fortune.

The road takes one along highlands with sheep and cattle grazing in the meadows, to seaside cliffs where their government paid workers after WWI blasted the cliffs to create a highway much like that of Highway 1 along the coast of California.  Views of the ocean are interspersed with deep, large fern covered rain forests and eucalyptus trees wafting their generous scent into the air.

The two iconic herbivores of this great country are the kangaroo and koala.  Sadly there appears to be a challenge to the manna gum tree, one of the koalas major food sources. So one sees entire forests where koalas once grazed  and chewed their leafy cud, that have been depleted of leaves and stripped of vegetation. Thus the quick glimpse of one koala on the side of the road in a eucalyptus tree, surrounded by tourists taking photos was all the koala sighting we got.  Our first kangaroo sighting was also disappointing as it was a dead carcass of road kill.  Apparently cars are the major threats to kangaroos here like their counterparts the deer in the U.S.

We stopped to take a walk in the rain forest at Mait's Rest and found ourselves in a Jungle Book, Disneyland like natural setting with an incredible fern filled forest of myrtle beech trees, a few about 400 years old.  The mist and rain made it seem even more Jurassic Park like as we crawled in and out of cavernous holes in the base of the older trees and over huge moss covered logs among fiddle head ferns that made Rob look like Thumbelina.

We arrived in Apollo Bay at the YHA Eco-Hostel that had been built with state of the art eco-consciousness.  It was really well constructed with all aspects of the building being environmentally friendly from toilets, lighting,  air flow, recycling, to the well kept commons kitchen supplied with garden herbs from hard working worms munching the compost, and a log powered fireplace in the living room commons that heated the hostel as well. The list of eco friendly building considerations was a long impressive one.  After our palatial beach house stay in Torquay, Rob was a bit disappointed at our spartan concrete brick double bedroom with shared bath.  But a leisurely Facetime catchup with Jenny in the cozy living room made it seem like home.  We really enjoyed our stay there which had us recall our 20 something hostel days of old.

So while we have aged a bit since then we have not lost our sense of humor.

Finally,  the highpoint of the Great Ocean Road is the 12 Apostles, beach sand formations eroded by sea, wind and waves to create monoliths that stand as a testament to eons of time that has passed these shores.  The 19th Century Australians called these formations "the Sow and Piglets."  Not as Christian as their 20th century biblical reference.  The beauty of the beach with these impressive monoliths and the ceaseless crashing of the waves upon the shore suggests how infinitisimally small and insignificant our troubles, cares and concerns are in the face of time.