The Great Ocean Road

The Great Ocean Road is a stretch of stunning sandstone coastline that runs between Melbourne and Adelaide, and doing a 3 day tour between the two cities is a good way to move between them and see things along the way.

Our first stop was another of those Airwalk things where you get to walk on a metal gantry overlooking the rainforest canopy. If you've read my post on the one at Tahune in Tasmania you'll know I found it a truly miserable experience and a bit of a waste of time, but this one is really rather good. I can't put my finger on why - maybe the rain was slightly less drenching or the wind a little less breezy, but the views over the treetops were nothing short of spectacular.

I was entertained to find out that it's run by the same company that owns the one in Tahune, and the same lack of business acumen exists in Victoria as we found in Tasmania. In Tassie you can walk around without tickets because there is no-one anywhere to collect them. In Victoria you walk past an attendant who doesn't ínspect tickets but just clicks off the numbers on his little clicker machine (so the bosses can see how many people have sneaked in without paying and how much money they've lost at the end of each day). Genius.
And there is also the brave commercial decision to turn off the hot drinks machines for cleaning at 4pm, just before 25 very cold and wet people (the only people at the attraction) come in wanting to spend lots of money on tea and coffee. It's nice that ruthless capitalism and profit maximisation hasn't touched Australian tourism yet.

After stopping off to see some Koalas in the wild (you get sick of em you know!) we travelled to the coast to see sandstone caves, stacks and arches like the ones you remember from diagrams in geography textbooks at school. They all have great names like The Twelve Apostles, The Bay of Martyrs, London Bridge, and The Bay of Islands, and they're all standing majestically in the middle of wild foaming white waves that threaten to wash them away into the ocean at any moment. About a year ago one of the largest of the Twelve Apostles copped it and collapsed and disintegrated into a small pile of sand, much to the annoyance of postcard makers and photographers who had to begin revising their products.
(http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/asia-pacific/4647857.stm)
My favourite collapsing story happened at London Bridge which originally had two arches joining it to the mainland and tourists were allowed to walk across the rocks to the end of the formation. One day in 1990 the first arch fell into the sea leaving a male and female tourist stranded and unable to walk back to safety. A helicopter rescue was mounted attracting national publicity. When the press sent out their helicopters to get photos of the unfolding drama it became apparent that the male tourist kept hiding his face from view and wasn't keen on getting his picture in the paper. Eventually the newshounds got a snap of the man's face it Australia discovered why he didn't want to be seen. He was a local politician and the woman he was on the rocks with was his mistress!

After 2 days on the Great Ocean Road we went North to the Grampian mountains.