Mishna 'Not until we are lost do we begin to understand ourselves' Henry David Thoreau

After working in a call centre for the past 2 months!!! The prospect of going on a road trip for a whole 2 days was incredibly exciting!!! We hired a car which didn't work out as cheaply as I would have expected but it did mean we had more freedom than on an organised trip and a lot of the organised trips didn't visit all of the sights. Lucy did the driving (I'll be doing the majority of it in the U.S) the only scary part was driving through Melbourne!! Due to the tram lines motorists have to do some really crazy manouvers at junctions!! The company we hired the car from kindly drew us a route to the freeway which avoided most of the tram lines. After driving over the Westgate Bridge, it really didn't take us long to get to Geelong and then onto "The Great Ocean Road". Our first stop was at the largest Surf Museum in the world which was actually quite interesting as well as slightly amusing!! We continued onto Bells Beach where they hold the famous surfing competition every Easter. Our next stop was at the Split Point lighthouse were the kids TV show "round the twist" was filmed. We had a hot chocolate at the tearooms there, even though it's currently summer it was incredibly windy and cold!!! Driving along the "Great Ocean Road" is a very scenic drine on the most windy roads (I'm so glad I grew out of the motion sickness I used to suffer from), the scenary really isn't too unlike that at home unfortunately here they are missing the quirky B & Bs and country pubs!! Some of the buildings they have built along this road are the most hideous things you'll ever see!! We came across a few walks along the way, one advertised as a 40 minute walk through the rainforest actually took us 15 minutes! Weirdly enough it was so real, it actually felt pretty fake! like something out of a Rainforest cafe or Disney World (I've really spent way too long working for that company!!) Another took us to a waterfall. We decided to stay in Apollo Bay for the night, we booked in at a motel and unfortunately didn't notice the kooky eco YHA round the back until we were leaving. The motel was a nice bit of luxury for us, though! We ate at The Great Ocean Hotel on the corner and they did the most amazing food in enormous portions!!! I definitely recommend them to everyone!! The next day we drove to Port Cambell and stopped off at the 12 apostles along the way which are incredibly photogenic!! We broke up the 5 hour drive home by stopping for food in Lorne, we went to the Salty Dog fish and chip shop and I got the best loaded jacket potato!! (fish and chip shops sell everything here...) It takes so long to upload photos onto this site so instead I've put them on facebook, please click on the link to view!! http://www.facebook.com/photo.php?pid=2133366&l=5b5cf&id=724065102