Week 2: The Great Ocean Road & Beyond

Hello! Mitchell here...

The Great Ocean Road (GOR) for us began with some shopping in Torquay, namely for some surfing gear. This time of year, the conditions aren’t spectacular and though I was keen to catch some waves, we decided to put some road behind us.



We made only a handful of stops for pics along the first section of the scenic GOR, but more or less headed to our first free campsite to make sure we managed to lock down a spot for dinner. These sites are first come, first served, and being our first night on our own in the camper, we didn’t want to risk it.  We got one of the last two spots as we rolled in just before 5pm; however, even though there are a (suggested) number of spots, by the time morning had rolled around, that number had seemingly tripled.



We quickly made habit of getting up early for breakfast before trying to beat the busy crowds to the tourist hotspots. First stop on day two was just across the highway from our camp spot and a nice short stair walk to Eskrine Falls.  






Next, we drove to Teddy’s lookout before taking some frighteningly, steep streets to and through Lorne on our way to the first surf stop of Wye River.  A short drive from there was our first opportunity to see a koala bear with our own eyes! Very exciting, yet somewhat anti climatic, as this was a very docile animal, perhaps akin to a lazy furball in a shaded tree. Regardless, it was a nice treat to check that one off the unique Australian wildlife list.





A brief stop at the gorgeous beach in Apollo Bay (aka paradise by be sea) ensued, before checking out our next inland camping at Aires Crossing in the Glenaire area, which was more quaint and much more of a trek than we had anticipated. Upon arriving, we decided to make quick tracks in the morning to check out the shipwreck coast.

First up was Gibson’s steps, then the Twelve Apostles and then Loch Ard Gorge, all before 9am! We did backtrack to get a photo op with Mr. PG and have some breakfast in the car park of the Twelve Apostles, but were well on our way to Warrnambool. 











This night was a “splurge” night at a low cost campground so we could power up, grab some showers and do some laundry, but before that we walked around Tower Hill to get some more glimpses at Australian wildlife and inadvertently drive Bryn’s blood pressure up (snake warning signs everywhere!)



We took another two days to head back to Geelong for Australia Day with the Trenery’s with stops at Forrest (brewery), Stevenson Falls (camping), Lorne (surfing) and Bells Beach (napping).  Sara and Tim took us out to the Valley club/pub and Little Creatures brewery, where we enjoyed local tastes of beer, cider wine and food (mussels, kangaroo skewers etc.).









Based on our next day hangovers, some might say we “did it propa’,” but it was still a long, hard day of driving. Line of order was showers and coffees, then a nice greasy brunch, which ended up being gluten-free fish and chips!  We took a delightful ferry from Queenscliff to Sorrento and then made our way to Dumbalk for park side dinner before finding a nice spot to camp and Franklin River. Since this spot was just north of Wilson’s Promontory, we were able to head there today for a quick, yet stunning hike, check out a couple of beaches and then set up camp on Lake Wellington.









Tomorrow we will try to get the board wet again on the east cost, at Pambula Beach.  Seems like it’ll be a big(ger) day of driving, so good night!

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Irish Goodbye

Image
We didn’t really intend to “ghost” on the blog, but as this method of taking off without warning is also known as an Irish Goodbye, it turned out to be quite fitting.  This blog has taken far TOO LONG to complete; it may read as such. Mitch here... and though we’ve been back in Canada for one full year , our adventure has not ended.  I may get into that later, but for now we want to recap the Northern Ireland and Republic of Ireland stint of our global tour.  We've been holding out for the Clam Chowder blog by the Mom's but that seems even less likely to come to fruition... So here goes our latest blog: We arrived in rainy Belfast from Edinburgh by air and took the bus to city centre.  We ran from central station to our AirBnB in the rain but strangely enough, this was the only day it rained during our two weeks on the little island in the northeast Atlantic.  We were greeted with hugs and Guinness' from our moms and proceeded to catch up over a nice pas...
Read more

Surfboards, Sydney, Sharks and still no Snakes!

Image
Hello again, Bryn here. The procrastination to write this has been real. I mean, with such a busy life and all it’s hard to keep up (see an average day’s itinerary below). Since you heard from us last we have been slowly making our way up the east coast, taking time to see friends. Before we could reach them, though, we thought we should mix things up a little and accidentally drive over Mitch’s surfboard 🤦🏼‍♀️🤦🏼‍♂️. How did this happen you ask? Mitchell was super excited to catch some waves, and I wasn’t quite fully awake yet (it was early after a night sleeping by the highway). The board sleeps under the van at night to stay out of the way and the sun. I realized the mistake 3 seconds too late, translating into 3 days of looking for a new board or repair options. Thankfully we found someone in Ulladulla that could do it fairly quickly and at a decent price. His ‘workshop’ was more of a whiskey bottle recycling ground but we didn’t care, it needed to be done and he did a wonderful...
Read more

Extreme Northern Loop

Image
Hello! Bryn here. Well, I have received the hard job (or honour) of writing our last blog of Vietnam, including one of the most amazing things we have done on this trip, if not in our lives. Prepare for a long one. Before I try and describe this adventure, I will start with where we left you last, in Hue... It was Reunification Day and Labour Day in the same weekend, and a large festival was occurring in the city. Translation: we couldn’t leave the night we wanted to as all trains were booked. Not normally a problem, however, this also meant there were no hotel rooms left. Mitchell went up and down the streets looking for accommodation, and finally came across a “homestay” with a room. I would like to think I have become less of a princess on this trip, but my goodness this place was horrible. We were led to a room upstairs in a family’s restaurant/home, with two rock hard bunk beds, no window, and a fan that worked about as well as waving a soggy Walmart flyer in your face. Not...
Read more