I had heard from a friend I met in the hostel that you could get free internet in Peter Pans, the travel agents down the road. So, Matt and I headed down there. We ended up talking to one of the agents and came out with a Bunyip tour along The Great Ocean Road and to The Grampians. We set off on Tuesday 27th March for three days.
The first day of the tour was spent driving along the Great Ocean Road with our guide Matt and twelve other backpackers from all around the world. We stopped at a few coastal towns along the way. Torquay (home of Ripcurl), Lorne and Apollo Bay. They all had really nice views of the ocean but certainly nowhere near as much character as the coastal towns on the north east coast of England. Give me Robin Hoods Bay any day!!! We also stopped for lunch at Cape Otway Lighthouse which apparently is mainland Australia's oldest surviving lighthouse. Matt was pretty excited when he found out we could go inside and to the top as he had never been in one before.
The next thing we did was by far the highlight of the tour for me. We drove through a eucalypt forest. In every tree there were at least two or more Koalas sleeping on the branches. We were also lucky enough to catch one awake and quite close to the ground munching on some eucalyptus leaves. One thing I did learn from this experience was to never trust a sleeping koala. Sean, one of the men on our tour, learnt this the hard way. He was just casually walking underneath the sleeping koala when suddenly he felt something dripping on his head. That's right, he got peed on! Luckily he was wearing a hat.
Our sleeping spot that night was in a place called Princetown. It is the tiniest little town, if you can even call it that. It has a hostel, a shop, a couple houses and most importantly a bar, which is where we spent most of our night. This was after we were lucky enough to see the most spectacular sunset I have ever seen in my life. We went down to the beach at Gibson Steps where you can see The 12 Apostles (the big rock formations sticking out of the ocean). You know how normally when you see a sunset it is very pretty but seems to be way off in the distance near the horizon. Well this one just seemed to set the entire sky on fire. When you looked in the opposite direction to the sun, the view was still pretty amazing. Matt is feeling pretty pleased with himself as he uploaded a photo of it onto his Flickr account and it has had about 4,000 views so far!
The second day we spent the morning driving a little further along the coast and seeing some more rock formations in the sea such as London Bridge and the Bay of Isles. We also went to Tower Hill which is a big dormant volcano. We could see a few emus wandering around down in the bottom which was cool too.
From there we headed inland into The Grampians National Park or Gariwerd which is the aboriginal name for it. It is such an amazing place. On the way to Reed's Lookout, where we watched the sunset, we saw so many kangaroos hoping around, they were literally everywhere. It was amazing watching the sunset too. It wasn't as spectacular as the one the night before but sitting on the top of a hill looking out across the valley and not hearing a sound except nature and a few clicks of the camera was very nice.
That night we stayed at the Asses Ears Lodge, and after a terrible night sleeping in the tent the previous night we decided to upgrade to a dorm room. It was lovely, and so much nicer and cheaper than the hostels in the middle of Melbourne, I wish they were all like that one. Oh, I have to mention about the guy who owned the place, Steve. He had the most gigantic hands I have ever seen. I ordered a beer at the bar and his hand was almost as big as the bottle. Unbelievable!
The next day we went for a short walk down to, Mackenzie falls. It was very refreshing standing in the spray from them. Then we went on a bigger walk to the top of the Pinnacle which had stunning views across the national park. We managed to take some really good shots of us standing on the edge of the cliffs, think they look worse than they really were.
Our trip ended with a stop off at a small town that seemed to be full of amazing ice cream shops. We all got massive ice creams (mine and Matt's second of the day) and sat outside in the sun before heading back to the city.
