My general style of travelling involves a level of advanced planning that is, essentially speaking, non-existent. True to that form, I arrived back down in Melbourne from Mooroopna on Wednesday with the vague plan of filling in the 4 free days I had before Christmas with a trip over the Bass Strait to Tasmania. Come Saturday, when I decided it was high time to book said sojourn, I discovered that the combination of leaving it to 24 hours before departure to make a booking and timing it with the big end-of-school holiday rush meant that Tasmania was both very expensive, and wholly unworkable time-wise in order to be back in Melbourne for Christmas.
The Tasmania plan itself had been a plan B - my original thoughts had been to head inland to Ayer's Rock - but that got shelved a couple of weeks back when it became apparent that getting there by any non-airborne means would take days each way, and airborne means would set me back close to A$500. Pre-Christmas plans, therefore, weren't in great shape... until along came Plan C (at the suggestion of my cousin David) - and more or less 24 hours after sitting down to book flights to Tasmania I was heading west on the M1 Freeway in a brand spanking new set of wheels that I'd picked up that morning (Sunday) from the local Hertz Car Rental. Compared to the Little Beast back in England - my 998cc VW Polo - the 1.8L Nissan Tiida I've got hold of is a veritable beast (and is basically identical to the white one pictured on the linked website). The only downside is that it's an automatic transmission - like the Americans, Australians don't seem to like driving cars properly - but it certainly packs a useful punch, albeit with dark magic taking place in the gearbox.
So my new plan was to take a 4 day trip down the Great Ocean Road - a winding 250km road carved along the coast to the south-west of Melbourne, taking in a succession of beautiful seaside towns and some of the most spectacular scenery anywhere on the planet, causing it to be variously described as "one of the top 10 trips of a lifetime" and "one of the top 10 drives in the world" by various travel magazines (that may or may not have conducted fully exhaustive studies on the matter). However, with the upcoming weather looking great and the real busy season only starting on Boxing Day, it was a good time to be heading for the coast - naturally with no bookings for accommodation, or indeed any sort of plan of action or information of any kind aside from my trusty Lonely Planet Guide. Incidentally, I only got hold of this particular Australia LPG by luck, thanks to the generosity of a fellow backpacker who was staying in the Prince of Wales hostel in Singapore - she'd just come from Australia and was heading westward back to the UK so wanted to offload a couple of kilos (it's a hefty volume)!
As the whole Ocean Road trip involves a lot of stuff (plus, when I get round to it, a lot of spectacular photos), and because my lack of a diary means that if I don't detail it here I won't detail it at all, there's gonna have to be a separate blog for each day... starting here!
DAY 1:
About 120km west of Melbourne along the Port Phillip Bay coast, I arrived at the city of Geelong (pronounced Jer-long), which is basically the gateway to the Great Ocean Road, which begins about 40km down the road. It was a pretty uneventful drive - the highlight was taking the "Citylink" Toll Road and paying $12.50 for the privilege of going on a half-mile long tunnel under Melbourne. The fact that I had unlimited use for 24 hours was a fat lot of good for me...
Geelong is, apparently, the second largest city in Victoria with a population approaching a quarter of a million, but its city centre really doesn't give an impression of its size. Approaching the town from the north allows you to take a scenic route off the highway and sweep into the town from the top of a hill to the north-west, offering a beautiful view of the town centre, pier and renovated sea front that symbolises the focal point for the community (see above). All streets lead up from the sea front, including Moorabool Street, home of the National Hotel Backpackers (or "The Nash" to those down with the lingo), where I checked in for the night. After wandering around a few sights of the town, including a pretty cool art gallery that featured an excellent exhibition of works by Adrian Feint, I befriended a couple of Scottish girls from the Nash who were getting their own rented car the next morning. As they had nothing to do in the evening, they joined me for a drive around the Bellarine Peninsula, which stretches out eastward from Geelong right across the Port Phillip Bay, almost-but-not-quite enclosing it (as will make sense if you look at a map). The peninsula's coastal road takes you through the towns of Portarlington, with its eerie views of Melbourne's skyscrapers in the distances, seemingly floating on the water like hazy shadows; St Leonards, which is an infinitely nicer place than the East Sussex town for which it is presumably named; and Queenscliffe. The latter is on a tiny little peninsula of its own, and its little High Street boasts a grand old hotel with a rooftop bar offering panoramic views from the highest point anywhere on the Bellarine - a view that was begging for an arty sepia-toned photo like the one below! It was up there, surrounded by water in every direction and enjoying the warm evening sunshine, that our conversation turned to just how crazy it was to have Christmas in the summer... but there'll be more on that in later blogs!
A couple more stops on our evening drive took us to Point Lonsdale - the Bellarine's closest point to its sister Mornington Peninsula on the other side of the bay - and, as the sun set, to the wonderful 10km stretch of golden beach at Ocean Grove. Then it was back to the Nash, sampling some of their LPG-recommended noodles for dinner (they aren't lying when describing portions as "very generous"), and time to get some good shut-eye before the assault on the Great Ocean Road proper early the next morning.
P.S. A lack of editorial process may have resulted in my last blog featuring something along the lines of "BLAH, BLAH geometry BLAH". I was supposed to go back and fill in the blahs but apparently forgot to do so... but rest assured it has now been corrected.
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