I'm going to change my blog a little bit for this entry because I wanted to include so many pictures. I've found the formatting on Blogger to be especially difficult with my pictures never going where I hope them to go and the format changing depending on which device you are using. This time I've uploaded all of my pictures to Flikr and embedded them. What this means is that I have to spend less time fiddling with the formatting and more time on writing. I also have a Facebook page which I link all of my blog posts to using IFTTT which simultaneously posts my text from my blog to that page. I'm thinking it would be easy to link my Flikr account to that page as well so that more people will actually see the pictures and not think that my Facebook page is all that there is.
The Grampians and Pink Lake
I knew one of our trips to Australia was going to be the Great Ocean road. It is iconic even outside of Australia, and people have been asking me if I am going to do it since I got here. Other than the 12 Apostles and Melbourne, I wasn't overly familiar with Victoria any more than I knew that Adelaide was a city in Australia. One of the other exchange teachers turned me on to the Grampians as a great getaway and I figured I might as well as it was on the way to Melbourne.
Our first stop on the journey was an actual pink lake this time. With the winter months just behind us it was actually full of water and not a dried up wasteland. It was very unique standing on salt instead of sand and feeling the mushy salt in my hands. The boys got all dirty of course and Henry started screaming because he had a cut.
I decided to mix up the camping with the inside stays to keep costs down and this was our first camping trip. We stayed just south of Halls Gap in the Borough Huts campground and were surrounded by gum trees, kangaroos, kookaburras, deer and possums. During the days it was quite hot (20ish degrees Celsius), but at night it got close to 0. The hikes in the Grampians were spectacular and I felt that some of the scenery could easily stand in for an alien planet on Star Trek.
Driving out of the Grampians was like driving through a pastoral picture book as it was green fields, cows, sheep and trees overhanging the road all the way south. I couldn't get over how beautiful it was.
Port Fairy and Warrnambool
Our first Airbnb was a stop in Port Fairy at the local angling club cottage. It was walking distance to the beach and to Griffiths island. Griffith's island was a spectacular walk with an amazing diversity of landscapes from beach to scrub to greenery to lava rocks. It had a beautiful lighthouse and a lot of bird life. We saw several tracks on our way that looked a bit like koala tracks.
Warrnambool was the bigger city next door to Port Fairy, but it had an amazing beach that stretched out forever and a whale watching platform. Unfortunately we weren't there long, but it seemed like it would be a great place to come back to in the summer.
We also came across Tower Hill, which is an extinct volcano that has become a hugely diverse area for flora and fauna. There were a ton of emus as well as evidence of echidnas everywhere. We spent a lot of time looking at all of the flowers and Henry and Miles were particularly interested in all of the emu poo everywhere.
The Great Ocean Road
After Warrnambool we were officially on the Great Ocean Road, but it was not what I had expected. I expected to be able to drive along the ocean as I had seen in pictures. This doesn't really happen until after you get past Otway National Park. What we did do was pull over at every stop along the way to take pictures of the huge limestone cliffs and eroded pillars, rocks and small islands along the way.
Our first stop was at Childer's Cove which was definitely out of the way, but worth going to see for the huge sea cave and that it is one of the few stops that you can go to along this way that lets you walk all the way down to the beach.
We then stopped at the Bay of Islands, The Grotto, London Bridge, The Arch, The Razorback, Loch Ard Gorge, The Twelve Apostles and Gibson's Steps. Each one of these was more remarkable than the last. Unfortunately it was a windy and very cold day so we didn't stay long at most of these spots, but the vistas were amazing and the pictures don't do justice to how immense these natural features are.
Our next stop was in Blanket Bay in Great Otway National Park. Our GPS died around this point as my cigarette lighter stopped working (don't worry it was just a fuse and I fixed it when I got home) so we stopped in to all of the tourist information centres along the way to get new maps and tips. The staff are all really amazing and helpful and you can definitely do the Great Ocean road the old fashioned way. Some of the stuff they told us were things we would have never have done otherwise.
At our campsite it was very cold and a bit rainy so we decided to sleep in our car for the first night to stay warm. The second night was Friday so we actually got some neighbours who just happened to be expats from Vancouver in Canada! We found a Koala and her baby hanging out in the trees right by our campsite and by the morning they were right over our table.
I took the family to the Otway Fly treetop and drove up the a very windy rain forest road. We loved the Otway trees, but Miles has inherited his dad's fear of heights and couldn't go up to the top.
Our next stop took us by Airey's Inlet for another lighthouse and a beautiful shot of small limestone island. This was a perfect day and the weather was amazing. We stayed that night in a cabin in Anglesea and the kids went swimming in the outdoor pool, bounced on the bouncy pillow and played mini-golf. On our way to Melbourne we stopped at the Great Ocean Road chocolaterie for some free samples and ended up buying some delectable chocolates and ice cream.
Melbourne and Phillip Island
For Melbourne I had to use my phone as a GPS and hope it didn't die. (Setting the destination and then putting it on airplane mode helps a lot with battery life) Driving into Melbourne was not as bad as I expected as the highway was very wide and leisurely. I guess after driving the Deerfoot in Calgary everything else seems easy.
We stayed in the Docklands area right by the Melbourne Star which is like a small version of the London Eye. The area was again beautiful and everything seemed very relaxed with no one really rushing around. We had dinner by the Docks and watched the birds. The only annoying part of our stay was that I didn't have a parking spot, but I managed to find $10/day parking nearby.
There was a free old-fashioned wood tram that makes a trip around the whole of the Melbourne CBD right from our apartment. We got on-board and stopped by Federation Square. Melbourne is a very walkable city and the weather was Canadian summer hot at about 28 degrees so we took a lot of breaks.
There was so much to see in so little time, but we did see some of the famous graffitti alleyways, coffee shops, the Melbourne Gaol, Chinatown and the State Library. I really enjoyed walking down every alley to see cafes and restaurants everywhere. You could go to a new one everyday for a whole year! Hmmm maybe next exchange. :)
At the Melbourne Gaol we got arrested (as part of the admission) and put in a cell and shown how criminals were treated. We also got a lot of information about the various hangings and saw the creepy facemasks of criminals that were executed.
On our last day in Melbourne, Henry became ill and threw up most of the morning. We thought we might stay in all day as it was cold and rainy again. However by noon he seemed better and we decided to make a trip to Phillip Island as we had heard about the Little Penguin parade.
Little Penguins are their actual name and they come up out of the ocean to breed on Phillip Island which was about two hours from where we were staying. We drove and Henry only threw up two more times on the drive. We found another chocolate factory here, but it wasn't nearly as fun as the one by Anglesea. We stopped at a Koala Conservation area and drove to the Nobbies which were spectacular. I could kind of make out the fur seals on seal island through the binoculars, but mostly saw the sea birds nesting.
At around 8pm the little penguins came up the beach in groups and then into the greenery. We followed them and watched them waddle around until the found a mate. It was surreal and felt like something out of National Geographic.
Seacroft and Mount Gambier
On our way home we stopped at a restored monastery right on the Great Ocean Road. It had spectacular views despite being really windy. The kids really enjoyed the trampoline and all of the toys at this location. We had a small room to ourselves and then there was a giant common room with a big wood burning heater. We spent the night talking to another Canadian couple, this time from Toronto who had just quit their jobs to travel.
We then drove to Mount Gambier for the last night back in South Australia and visited the famous Umpherston sinkhole and crater lake. Possums come out at twilight at the sinkhole and the boys had fun feeding them some fruit. The boys named one of the possums Mr. Munchers.
