Great Ocean Road

So today, the big outing is about 600KM round trip from Melbourne, or as the locals now call it, New Melhi, and the first stop is Bells Beach. This is the home of the Rip_Curl Surfing Classic but also a surfer movie site, some movie with Patrick Swayze was made here, I never saw it, apparently they came to the surfer town by train and there's no train for many, many miles..

 The land in the far south of Australia is dry! The fire in Melb from yesterday was deliberate they say, they caught a 45 year old who set the fire... Wild Kangaroos are meant to be out here but we didn't see any, too hot they say, they hide in trees and sleep in heat.

 This is the official start of the Great Ocean Road, it is said to be one of the world's most scenic drives...

 The rugged countryside is  easy on the eye :)

 And in some of the beach towns there's the King Parrot!

 And the Rosalia (think I got that right!)

 And lots and lots of wild koalas... They didn't want anyone feeding the birds as itmakes them dependant on the food - there was maybe a dozen people here in the 30 mins I was there - and some of them were feeding them... Kinda sad. But I did get a good look.

 I wish I had those hanging in local trees - to the locals they are no bother whatsoever.

 With the sun shining the sea takes on a nice colour. From here due south you would pass Tasmania and get the Antarctic - indeed that's what makes much of the fishing grounds so rich here.

 Here though are of one of Aussielands most famous sights... On either side of me are the 12 Apostles.

 This photo is placed wrong courtesy Blogger, but there is a rainforest area along the coast where these giant ferns are really trees!

 As the sky clouds over the sea colour dulls a bit :(

 Back to the Apostles.

 There's numerous penguin colonies over here, a small Australia only species. But there was many shipwrecks over the years.

 This bay had one of the most famous, only one young man and a woman survived.

 The rocks are magnificent and slowly crumbling away..

 But they bays are just lovely!

 Here is 'London Bridge' in the distance...

 There was an arch of rock connecting this bridge to the land but a few years ago it crumbled suddenly, leaving 2 tourists. The sad part of the story is that the news channel helicopters got there long before search and rescue and the man was their with his girlfriend...but he was married...and they had both called in sick at work that day. Double whammy of bad luck!

 It is nice countryside but it would have been complete with soome roos!

After dinner in a small town RedRooster (a poor imitation of Swiss Chalet - I am not going back) it was back to Melb - a 14 hour trip to see all of that ! Long day!