The day started early for both Sally and myself. She was coming from Sydney on a flight departing at 6am to arrive at Avalon Airport (about 30 mins to an hour from Melbourne) near Geelong at about 7.30am (it must be love) and myself driving from Melbourne to collect her to continue on our way to The Great Ocean Road.
After a scheduled stop due to a previous work commitment and the mandatory getting lost in a foreign city (I was TRYING to get ON TO a toll road, which in the end I managed to avoid as far as I’m aware) I was able to meet her at 9.30am (a time I had previously said I would be there by) and we were on our way.
First stop was south west of Melbourne at Geelong to their Tourist Information office (you can’t miss the bright yellow “I”… kind of like Idea!!) to get some maps and advice for the trip.
The three staff members were very helpful, and gave us some travel advice based on the time constraints we had, as we needed to be back in Sydney by Friday night.
The route we would take would see us head south via Torquay, Lorne, Apollo Bay, through Port Campbell to Wanambool, up to Halls Gap in the Grampians via Dunkeld, across to Ararat, on to Ballarat and then up to Sydney via Bendigo. Lets see how we go…
First stop was Torquay, a smallish surf town that has more surf shops than people. If your hunting for the brand names this is the place to be.
Building on that surf-culture theme they have a surf museum, Surfworld (click here), located in the Surf City plaza just off The Great Ocean Road, which shows a history of Australian surfing. They have various displays including surfboard art, a surfing hall of fame, an interactive paddling display to test your fitness (not for the over 35’s or it may kill you… true story!!), a rreplica surfboard-shaping bay and a mini theatre to watch movies. The movie that was showing when we were there was of Teahupoo (pronounced chi-poo), found in Tahiti, one of the heaviest waves in the world. The footage was amazing and a must see when your there.
From there we went Jan Juc, a small town just before the world famous Bells Beach. We booked in to the Jan Juc caravan park for the night and then got some fish and chips to eat at Bells.
I’d love to be able to say that Bells was 8 to 10 foot and perfect and being ripped apart by some of the best wave riders in the world but… to quote a famous line from the famous surf movie The Endless Summer “I should have been here yesterday”.
The surf wasn’t great but there were a couple of guys out and even in bad surf you can see how well it could break on a good day. It is more a surf spot than a beach as the beach is nearly non-existent. They had a very cool aboriginal artwork decorating the toilet block, which depicted a snake, which protects the area.
From here we found Point Addis and was to see our first of many amazing parts of this coastline.
