Great Ocean Road Trip

We Left Dan and Dawns for the last time bright and early and got a tram to our pick-up point for our next journey. We got picked up by a mini bus with a crazy driver called Bill. He has a very uncanny look of Crocodile Dundee!! We pushed through the morning rush hour traffic of Melbourne to start our 2 day trip along the 'Great Ocean Road' to Adelaide.
We had about 10 other travellers on the bus with us. We followed the road along the coast stopping at various points to enjoy the view and take photos (feel like real tourists again). On one of the stops I managed to get a photo of a Koala with its eyes open and waving at me which, is not as easy as you may think as they are asleep for the majority of the day.

Hi Down There

We again made stops at various good views and natural rock formations. Two being the 12 apostles and the 'London Bridge' both very spectacular and as so we took many photos along with the bus loads of other tourists!!

After more Km's under the belt Bill took us for a short guided walk through some of the National park forest where he showed us some massive trees, a few examples of the 640 different types of gum trees and plants that grow 1mm a year, one is about 10m high so is about 10,000 years old. In this forest various full skeletons of dinosaurs have been found.

As night fell and we were on deserted roads we all had to be on the look out for kamakazee and sucidal animals the majority being walabies and kangaroos. We witnessed many trying to eat the front grill of the bus but we managed to miss them all thanks to the skillful driving by our guide, think he has hit alot in the past though!! He was just telling us of how proud he was at keeping a clean sheet and we were just about to arrive at our evenings accomodation when a deer ran out of the bush and accross the front of the bus. With a quick shout of "right" from one of the other passengers Bill hit the breaks hard and some how managed to steer around him, that was very close and left us breathing hard only about 40m from our home for the evening.

After dinner we ventured out around the buildings in search of wildlife. Under torch light we found a family of grey kangaroos. One of the mothers had a roo in her pouch which was eating the grass at the same time. After a few cracks of twigs by us lot the quickly bounced away into the darkness. We turned around and set of in the opposite direction and soon again found some more grey kangaroos. These were males who were fighting to be the dominant male and like all the cartoons you see they do actually face each other and box. Great ring side seats.

April 20

Through the night we were freezing only to find in the morning that the window had been open opps! First leg of the trip was up the mountains to look out from the great views from the 'Balconies'. The bus then took us on to Mckenzie falls. We got dropped of at the top and in the heat of the day had to walk down the 279 steps to the bottom. and of course back up again but well worth it. At midday we got dropped of at a bus stop to change to a normal coach for a 6 hour ride to Adelaide. On the coach we crossed into South Australia and therefore back 0.5hrs.

After we found our hostel we headed out for a few supplies and dinner. For dinner the local Indian caught Tracey's eye and we went for that as we hadn't eaten Indian food since being in India! We had a really early start the next day so had an early night only to be kept awake by the other backpackers having a good time out on the balcony which our room was one that opened up onto. Oh well you get what you pay for!

written by  James & Tracey on April 19, 2007 from Adelaide, Australia
from the travel blog: James & Tracey World Tour
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