Tuesday, October 7, 2008

Great Ocean Road

G'day again. I am really sorry for the time span within my entries but it is not that easy to keep up an activity such as writing when you are sooo relaxed.

I am currently in Adelaide but how I got here and my adventures on the way you will find hereunder:

Short stay in Melbourne:

Arriving from Hobart, I went directly to the hostal booked for the next 2 nights. I realized very quickly that due to the high volume of noise coming from the bar there would't be much sleep for the next nights. Unfortunately that was the case, as the windows here are not very well isolated and the people drinking in the bar and the inner court did not really try to keep the volume down. Thats life at a backpackers.

The next morning I did some shopping at the Victoria market and then had the best breakfast ever in Carlton park: Sitting on the grass, watching the clouds pass by and eating fresh walnut bread and Tasmanian Brie with a georgious Cafe latte. What is there more to life than this. After this delightful breakfast, the clouds got thicker that is why I decided to make it a museums day. I entered the Melbourne museum at around 11:20 and did not leave until after 4.30. It is a really amazing place with so much to see and experience. The best was to start with a guided tour with volunteer tourguide Harry (about 80 years old but still does bush walking, they are quite tough over here). I learned a lot about the state of Victoria during this tour, and was also in the company of a nice local family. The Melbourne museum is a kind of interactive, modern museum, with different sections such as animals (local animals, bugs, marine life), body and soul (explaining for example how dreams work), Aboriginal life (art and culture) etc.

Then I tried to avoid another sleepless night through drinking some beer, but I reckon it wasn't enough.


The Great Ocean Road:

Early the next morning, I started my trip with Wildlife tours along the Great Ocean road that streches for 350 km from Geelong towards Adelaide. We were 11 on board including Kurt the tour guide. The trip was really amazing, starting with the astonishing coastline scenery and finishing with all the nice people in the group. Our first stop was the Bells Beach (where Patrick Swazy committed suicide in the surfer movie Point Break). A lot of surf competitions are celebrated there, when we arrived there was also something going on.

And then I finally saw my first wildlife Koala. First we spottet some high up in the tree and of course I made a lot of pictures seing in them only a dark dot in the distance, but then we were lucky and one of the Koalas was sitting on a really low branch. Only after being poked to much by some spectators he got fed up and moved up. Here is the picture of the cute, but very lazy animal.

In the afternoon we finally arrived to see the 12 Apostles, stone formation in the sea. Although the name is very poetic, there never really were 12 rocks but only 10 and of those 3 have already collabsed into the sea. Anyhow, still very amazing, especially from the sky out of the window of a helicopter. Yes, I had my first ever heliflight and it was fantastic.



Next we went to see the London Bridge, were one of the arks collabsed in 1990 while a couple was on the bridge, rumours say they were having an affair and due to this incident got caught in flagranti, but it is not confirmed.

Our last sight seeing stop was only some km away from the bridge and the 12 apostles but with less known because the tour buses normally don't stop there. It is a nice beach with rocks similar to the 12 apostles in the sea. Unfortunately I forgot the name.

For dinner we had kanguru and we also spotted them around the hostal in Halls Gap, Grampions national park. The same happened again, made a lot of pictures of Kangurus in the dark, but the next day I could see them at daylight and up close. They are not the cleverest of animals as they don't really run away, but let you get very close.

Grampions:

The next morning we drove up to the Grampions to get the beautiful view over the mountains and the park including the "jaws of death" . Some even climed up, but I would never do this :-)


We finally woke up when putting our feet into the ice cold water at the McKenzie falls. Fortunately it was still to cold to go swimming, if not, probably Kurt would have proposed to do so to get the real wildlife experience. After Lunch I had to leave the group as I went on to Adelaide and they returned to Melbourne.















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