Australia #12 - The Great Ocean Road and the Twelve Apostles, Victoria

After Uluru (https://steemit.com/travel/@brightongreg/australia-7-the-red-centre-uluru-northern-territory)
and the Sydney Opera House (https://steemit.com/travel/@brightongreg/australia-2-sydney-opera-house-new-south-wales-australia)
the Great Ocean Road and Twelve Apostles was our next 'must-see' destination in Oz.

About 240 kilometers long, winding almost its entire length right along the coast, the Great Ocean Road was built in the 1920s to provide work for Australian veterans of the Great War. The road is actually a war memorial, part of the National Heritage List of outstanding natural, historic and Indigenous places.

We get away early from Warrnambool, and it's only a short drive to the start of The Great Ocean Road. It takes about a half hour to reach the sea, and initially we're unimpressed as the first two views we look in on are unsigned, with small parking areas, and one requires a long walk in to the lookout. But then we arrive at Loch Ard Gorge, named after a ship that foundered there many years ago with only two survivors, who were swept into the gorge and then somehow scaled these cliffs to find help. Stunning sandstone cliffs enclose small coves, with the surf breaking at the entrances. There is lots of parking, well-constructed paths and stairways, and lots of signing explaining the site.

After spending some time there we go on to The Twelve Apostles, the centre-piece of this stretch of coast. Like Loch Ard there is more parking and information, including a very nice Visitors' Centre, even toilets and a small café, with helicopters departing every 15 minutes or so for an aerial view. Also like Loch Ard there are well-developed paths leading to railed viewing walks and outlooks where you can see the magnificent Apostles, the tallest being 45 meters high, from various perspectives. A truly awesome place! Unfortunately the sea continues to erode the limestone stacks that form the Apostles - actually only eight remain - and over time they may all disappear!

Mid-20s Celsius, and windy enough off the Southern Ocean for brightonbonnie to wear a light jacket!

Looking to the east there a couple more limestone stacks. You can see the erosion at the base of the one on the right -

From the Twelve Apostles we travel through rolling hills that remind us of our time in the Schwarzwald, in Germany, except they are less wooded, and only see the Southern Ocean a few times.

At Apollo Bay we enter yet another different part of the road, right along the water, very twisty with some elevation changes. The traffic opposite coming from Melbourne is very heavy, but in our direction most of the time there are only a few vehicles, so driving is relatively easy though sometimes we get stuck behind a caravan before they pull over at one of the frequent slow vehicle turnouts.

Eventually we reach our new caravan park at Anglesea, where I discover I've made my first booking mistake: we are staying two nights, including a chill/laundry day, so I booked an upscale unit, the door on the right, unlike our Jayco boxes very modern and stylish. Except it's designed for folks coming out from Melbourne who don't want to self-cater, and there's no cooking facilities except a microwave. Reception finds us an electric fry-pan and we make do! We also get some DVDs, watch The Rabbit-Proof Fence and try to watch Australia; the first is very good and we can relate to it given our brief trip into the Red Centre, but the second we think is a bit over-done and we both fall asleep before it ends.

Typical caravan park communal kitchen, where we could have cooked our meals if necessary!

Walking on the nearby beach, watching surfing classes before we chill for the day and do our laundry.

In the evening brightongreg, a huge basketball fan, watches the Australian National Basketball League Grand Final, game 3 of a best of 3 between Perth Wildcats and New Zealand Breakers, which Perth wins decisively. As the game ends a beautiful white cockatoo comes to the back patio, sitting on the crossbar right beside our screen window, and responds to our voices and whistles. A nice way to end our chill day in Anglesea!

Please join me for my next post - we avoid Melbourne due to our no-city rule and head further east to Lakes Entrance.

PS - if you've enjoyed this post please check out the previous 11 posts in this series, and the 3 before that as we started our 90-day roadtrip in Tahiti! Probably 20 posts to go in Oz as we head further east and then north to the Gold Coast and Cairns, then on to a month in New Zealand!

Thanks to @benfenson for watching over my Oz posts!

read me!

!steemitworldmap -38.663324 lat 143.103657 long Great Ocean Road Australia d3scr