We had booked a car at an info desk at our hostel and it was supposed to be delivered to us at 9am on Friday morning. But while we were still eating breakfast we got a call from the rental guy asking us to pick it up earlier. So we rushed downstairs, and that´s when I forgot to take my jacket with me. I ended up loosing it for good, even though I called the hostel later that day and checked all the common areas and our rooms after returning from the road trip. I´m still feeling pretty sad since it was rather expensive :( Anyways, we began our journey trying to find our way out of the city centre to the highway. I was driving and managed to get to M1 without making too bad mistakes or getting completely lost. It was the biggest highway I´ve driven on, with 5 lines, and I drove till we got to Torquay, where we got some gas.
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It´d be sad if you didn´t already know this when you hit the road!
Juulia drove to this lighthouse lookout, which was the first one of our many short stops along the road. Then we drove to Lorne to see Teddy´s Lookout, providing a good view over the shoreline and the weindy GOR right next to the water. We also went to see Erskine Falls, and after walking down some stairs we got to admire the long, deep waterfall surrounded by rainforest. The weather was very unpredictable - it kept alternating between sunshine and rain. The wind was really strong during the whole day! We were pretty lucky with the weather, though, since it was dry whenever we stopped to get out of the car to take a look at some places. The only lookout we ended up skipping because of rain was in Apollo Bay, where we had lunch at a cafe with a good view over the shoreline.
Juulia drove to this lighthouse lookout, which was the first one of our many short stops along the road. Then we drove to Lorne to see Teddy´s Lookout, providing a good view over the shoreline and the weindy GOR right next to the water. We also went to see Erskine Falls, and after walking down some stairs we got to admire the long, deep waterfall surrounded by rainforest. The weather was very unpredictable - it kept alternating between sunshine and rain. The wind was really strong during the whole day! We were pretty lucky with the weather, though, since it was dry whenever we stopped to get out of the car to take a look at some places. The only lookout we ended up skipping because of rain was in Apollo Bay, where we had lunch at a cafe with a good view over the shoreline.
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The Great Ocean Road from Teddy´s Lookout
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Erskine Falls
From Torquay to Apollo Bay the road went right along the shoreline providing beautiful views of the turquoise water, high waves and deep cliffs. The road was pretty narrow and full of turns (each turn had a sign so it was easy to reduce speed for them) making driving interesting. It was our favorite part of the GOR :) The next part of the road, to Cape Otway, was mainly in the forest making the landscape completely different. We were kinda undecided about wanting to drive 12 extra kilometres to this lighthouse but decided to go for it, which wasn´t such a great decision. Reading Lonely Planet we had assumed it´d cost $11.50 to climb up to the lighthouse, but in reality that was a fee to go through a gate to the area. Since we had already driven some extra to get there we paid the fee and had to rush to see the lighthouse in just 25min before the place closed. It was incredibly windy up there! We had actually hard time trying to walk around the lighthouse. The views were good, though, and we took some nice pictures.
From Torquay to Apollo Bay the road went right along the shoreline providing beautiful views of the turquoise water, high waves and deep cliffs. The road was pretty narrow and full of turns (each turn had a sign so it was easy to reduce speed for them) making driving interesting. It was our favorite part of the GOR :) The next part of the road, to Cape Otway, was mainly in the forest making the landscape completely different. We were kinda undecided about wanting to drive 12 extra kilometres to this lighthouse but decided to go for it, which wasn´t such a great decision. Reading Lonely Planet we had assumed it´d cost $11.50 to climb up to the lighthouse, but in reality that was a fee to go through a gate to the area. Since we had already driven some extra to get there we paid the fee and had to rush to see the lighthouse in just 25min before the place closed. It was incredibly windy up there! We had actually hard time trying to walk around the lighthouse. The views were good, though, and we took some nice pictures.
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Lighthouse in Cape Otway
We wanted to see the Twelve Apostles, which is one of the main attractions along the GOR, at sunset. But even though we arrived there just in time it was too cloudy to see the sunset. The apostles were impressive anyways and we decided to come back the next day for a better view of them. By the time we hit the road again it was dark already, and we just drove to our destination, Warrnambool. We found a good backpackers place with a big common room and a huge TV. Juulia watched the movie Actually Love with some others while I was writing some notes of our trip. We were lucky to be the only people in our room, where we had a heater and heaps of thick blankets to keep us warm!
The weather wasn´t much better on Sunday: It was still windy and cloudy, but no rain. Before leaving Warrnambool we went to see this lookout, which was nothing special. Then on our way out of the town we noticed a cheese factory and a shop. We went in for some free tastings (delicious) and I bought a small piece of herb cheddar cheese. We stopped at few more lookouts before getting to London Bridge. It had originally been two bridges over the water, but the other one had collapsed leaving just a pole reminding a standing apostle. The Twelve Apostles weren´t far from there, and we went there to see them in proper daylight. Actually the apostles used to be connected to mainland, then they became bridges, and finally just apostles due to erosion. All of these rock formations are dimishing at the erosion speed of 2cm per year. From the apostles we drove to Gibson Steps. There had been natural formations reminding steps there, so they had made real steps down to the beach. From down there you could really see how steep the stone wall is!
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The London Bridge
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The Twelve Apostles
After that bundle of impressive lookouts we drove to Cape Cod, where we stopped at an info cafe to ask for any nearby walking tracks. The man working there told us about waterfalls that we could see along this smaller road. So we left the GOR for a while to drive to the waterfalls. Our first destination were Triplefalls. We walked a 2km-long loop that took us through really green rainforest with huge trees (about 50-60m tall). The name of the falls describes them well, since it really is three waterfalls next to each other. After driving a bit more we came to another waterfall, whose name I cannot remember anymore. This time we walked 3km, first going down a lot to reach this one steep and powerful waterfall, and then going up the same way. Neither of us was feeling cold after climbing up the path! There would´ve been one more waterfall, but because we were getting hungry already we decided to skip it. So we drove some 20km along a very small and windy road, with a maximum speed of around 50km/h. Our little car got pretty dirty on the way lol.
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The Triplefalls
We had lunch again in Apollo Bay, and since we had already seen all the major attractions from there on we just drove straight back to Melbourne. It was my turn to drive the beautiful beach part of the GOR. I´m glad we reached the big highway by the time it got dark, because it would´ve been challenging driving on the narrow and windy coastal road in the dark. When we arrived in Melbourne we had to return our car to this multi level car park and were a bit doubtful about finding our way there. But we did a good job, Juulia driving and I reading the map, and safely parked the car there. Then we walked to our hostel, where we had noodles for dinner and went to bed pretty early.
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