Days 146-148: Alice Springs can wait, let's go to the Great Ocean Road

We woke up early on Saturday and headed to the airport for our 7:30 flight to Alice Springs. Since it was a domestic flight, we were told we only needed to be there an hour ahead of time. What we weren't told, was that there are two Melbourne airports and the second one is 40 miles away and not actually in Melbourne. Which explains why when we asked the hotel for a cab to the airport, no one asked, "Which one?" The Tiger Airways representative told us that we probably wouldn't be able to get there in time to make our flight but that they would put us on the next flight, so we headed to the Melbourne-Avalon airport. When we reached the Avalon airport we saw our plane on the tarmac getting ready to take off without us. We went in to speak with a Tiger Airways employee about getting on the next flight but there was no one from the airline to be found. The next Tiger flight was not until 12:30 and the workers go home between flights. After waiting for three hours, we were finally able to speak with someone. They put us on the next flight, but the next flight wasn't until Tuesday. We didn't want to go back to Melbourne for three more days so we rented a car, grabbed a tourist brochure to use for a map, and headed for The Great Ocean Road.

 We started driving and decided we would head for the 12 Apostles rock formations. It was cloudy and a little rainy but still a beautiful drive. After driving for a while we saw a sign for the Cape Otway lighthouse so we turned off to check it out. The lighthouse was a little out of our budget, but on the way back to the main road we noticed that the eucalyptus trees lining the road were full of koalas. Most of them were sleeping but we did see one run up a tree.

Next we continued on to the 12 Apostles. The coastline was really beautiful and the rock formations were fabulous even on the cloudy day.

A few of the apostles.

Selfie with the apostles.

Some of the fatter apostles.

We continued driving, looking for a place to stay for the night. The next "big" town on the map was Port Campbell so we thought we'd try there. Port Campbell had about four streets, but all the streets were full of hotels, hostels and restaurants. We found a hostel with an open room and then headed out to walk around the streets. There was a small beach with people swimming and a pier with people fishing. As we walked out onto the pier, we saw a guy catch a squid, which he was going to use for bait. Before touching it, he let it lay on the pier to squirt out the ink.

The next morning, we were about to head out of town when we realized there was a large crowd at the beach. There was a race getting ready to take place so we stopped to watch for a bit.

Next we continued down the Great Ocean Road until we came to the Bay of Martyrs. We did a little hiking along the cliffs, walked down to the beach, and had a nice picnic lunch in Peterborough, which is even smaller than Port Campbell.

View from the hike.

Another view from the hike.

Bay of Martyrs

The water here was freezing! After a few minutes, my feet were numb.

Next we headed towards Allansford, home of Cheese World. The brochure said they had a free museum and free cheese tastings, so we thought we should check it out. The museum was mostly artifacts from a Swiss family that had started the local dairy. Some of it pertained to cheese but not all.

After Cheese World we headed to Tower Hill Nature Reserve. This park has hiking trails in an area where there were volcanoes 30,000 years ago. As we were driving into the park we spotted a kangaroo jumping across the road. We saw a couple other kangaroos while we were traveling around the area but they don't like to stick around for photos.

View of a crater lake from the top of Tower Hill.

As we were walking down one of the trails, this thing popped out of the bushes. We both jumped. The emu didn't seem very interested in us but we didn't want to get too close to him so we waited patiently until he decided to move off the path.

View of the nature reserve from the top of one of the volcanoes.

Koalas love eucalyptus and many times they will eat all of the leaves, causing the tree to die. Many of the trees in the reserve had a plastic shield wrapped near the bottom so the koalas couldn't climb it.

When we got back to the parking lot there were a few emus hanging out looking for food left behind.

After our hike we headed to a town called Camperdown to spend the night. We picked the town based on the fact that there was an information symbol on the map. We thought this meant it was a bigger town. We were wrong. There was nothing in Camperdown and being a Sunday everything was closed. There were a couple of buildings that said they were hotels but they were all deserted. So we drove to the next big town on the map, Colac. Colac is the Carrollton of Australia. We had dinner at a little pizza place, slept in a less than clean hotel and headed out early the next morning.

Clock tower in Camperdown.

Our last day on the Great Ocean Road we headed to some hiking trails in the Beech Forest. The Beech Forest is a rain forest and has lots of interesting plants and waterfalls. There are also supposed to be platypus, but we didn't spot any.

Lots of giant ferns.

Usually the waterfall doesn't have much water during the summertime but due to all of the rain that Australia has gotten recently, there was lots of water.

The second waterfall we hiked to.

There was an area of California Redwoods that had been planted in the 30s.

After hiking in the Beech Forest we headed back to the Ocean Road. We stopped at the town of Aireys Inlet for a walk of the cliff top trail. We walked to a lighthouse and watched some surfers on the beach below.

View of Aireys Inlet.

The lighthouse

Another view of the beautiful coast.

This guy was hanging out on the path and I nearly stepped on him.

For our final night we stayed in the town of Geelong, because it was pretty close to the airport and we didn't want to miss our flight a second time. It was the biggest town we had seen in days. There was some sort of big sailing event going on, so the promenade was full of vendors and live music.

Lots of sailboats in Geelong.

After our three day adventure on the Great Ocean Road, we are both glad that we missed our flight. This has definitely been our favorite part of Australia. Next, we'll attempt to make it to Alice Springs and Uluru.