Guess what, more driving. Yes, today we drive from Phillip Island, through Melbourne, and to part of The Great Ocean Road. This is considered one of the most scenic driving roads in Australia. Since we were going to be in the Melbourne area I wanted to do this. Because we were coming from Phillip Island I wanted to try and hit just a couple things before the sun went down. It rained on and off on the drive, and the sky was completely overcast, I was hoping for the best.
So we went to the 12 Apostles first. This is an area where there were 12 rock formations in the ocean you could see, but it is down to 9 now due to time. It was so windy you could barely stand straight. It was also VERY crowded. I didn’t like it much. With the overcast sky it was only ok, but it wasn’t raining so that was nice. Oh and it was windy – check that hair out, but there are still smiles (we laughed a lot about how windy it was). From there we headed northwest to Loch and Gorge next. I really liked this section. It was very pretty and the waves hitting the cliffs was amazing to watch. “B” convinced us to do a little extra walking around in the area before we drove more, and I was very happy she did. This was my favorite stop along the road this day. After that we hit London Bridge. Yes a rock formation that was a bridge, but again had fallen down over time. And finally we got to Bay of Islands. This was where we hung out for sunset. I was hoping the sky would open up a little to give us some kind of lighting other than grey skies, but that never really happened. Oh well, again you can’t plan for the weather months in advance. This area had lot of rock formations in the ocean you could see and it looked like islands, hence the name. It was again super windy. I jumped in the air and was blown backwards an inch or two, it was quite intense. At that point it was dark and we still had a while to get back to our Airbnb. So, we stopped for ok food in Port Campbell. Oh yeah, lunch was cold leftovers in the car at a BP truck stop along the way (I know very fancy). I drive the rest of the great ocean road in the dark to Apollo Bay where our room was. There were no cars on the road which was nice. It allowed me to drive a little slower on the very curvy road. Now for the Airbnb place we were staying for the next couple night. Well, we were warned that the driveway was steep. The owners told us to maintain our speed along the driveway for at least 20kph otherwise you wouldn’t make it up the hill and could easily get stuck. Oh yeah at it was gravel. They said that coming at night was not advised for the first time, but I said I had done gravel/dirt driveways before that were steep so I wasn’t too worried, and they said that would be good. Well… it was no joke. It was by far the steepest road I have ever driven on. We almost didn’t make it up, I think the rain made it even worse, and I am glad it wasn’t actively raining when we got here. Not sure if we would have made it up if that were the case. I wish we would have had a manual transmission vehicle for that road. The automatic car didn’t want to downshift enough to maintain a good RPM level to also maintain a good speed. But thankfully we had that diesel engine to give us a little extra low-end torque to get up the hill. I was not looking forward to going back down in the morning and back up the next night. The place was cute. Nothing special at night.
The next day we headed out to Otway NP. I had looked into this area and there were lots of waterfalls and nice hikes in this NP so that sounded like a great day for us. We first headed to Hopetoun Falls. It was a nice little hike down to the base of the falls. It was a bit muddy, but otherwise just a nice short hike.
Next, we drove over to an area called The Redwoods. This was a section of California redwoods that had been planted over a hundred years ago to see if they would grow in Australia and to use them for lumber. Well, they found they would grow, but that the wood was terrible for lumber. So, there is just this small section of Redwoods in the middle of the forest. At that stop I was able to help out some people from India who had a flat tire. I missed helping them change the tire but helped them with figuring out a city to go to that would allow them to hopefully get the tire fixed. After that we headed to Triplet Waterfall. This was a longer walk mostly on boardwalks/stairs due to the sloped nature of the area and the potential for washed out trails (I think). When we got to the first lookout I was incredibly disappointed. I mean look at this picture:
There were trees blocking the entire view of the waterfall, and lots of signs telling you not to leave the path (clearly lots of others had left the path). “B” was like, let’s keep going and see if it gets better. The next lookout…not much better. I was again disheartened. Kept going and the final lookout was…better. See it here:
It still wasn’t great, and by this point you could only see part of the falls and not the entire “triple” nature of the falls, but at least the view was better here. That brought my spirits up some. I really like waterfalls. After that we decided as a family to spend more time in the car by not backtracking where we had driven so far that day and to instead go out the other way and drive the section of the great ocean road that we didn’t get to see in the daytime the night before. So, we did that. Still not many cars on the road, and the road was very pretty. For dinner we stopped at a grocery store, got some seafood, and cooked it up. The girls wanted to do s’mores since there was a small fire pit at our place, but the wind was blowing so hard that “B” couldn’t get the fire to start. But there was a small wood burning stove inside as well so they made the s’mores on it. I had a lot less trouble with the driveway this evening since I knew what to expect. Basically I started the driveway with A LOT more initial speed so I could lose more on the way up without loosing too much.