The Great Ocean Road

After our experience with the flooding in Melbourne, we have come to find out that it was a cyclone and a “once in a lifetime storm for Melbourne”. We were able to get out and walk around the next day for an hour or so before the rain started again. Many businesses remained closed due to flooding and we saw a few cars completely submerged in underground parkades. The city reeked of sewage and the damage was more apparent. We weren’t too disappointed that we were getting up the next morning to drive the Great Ocean Road.

While we were at the hostel in Melbourne we had come across a much cheaper deal for the rental car and on top of that would get 10% off because we are YHA members. We thought about cancelling our other reservation, but decided that it wouldn’t be worth it with cancellation fees, etc. So, we checked our rental car agreement that I booked in January which told us to take Tram #59 to the “Airport West” stop and then call them and they would pick us up. When we arrived at that stop, we felt as though we were in the middle of nowhere and of course there was no phone. I had mentioned to Clement on the tram that I had a funny feeling about this car rental. After walking around for a bit we finally found a payphone and called them to get us…only for them to tell us that we didn’t have a reservation! (We had the confirmation in our hands). Even though they couldn’t find it, they said they would be there to pick us up in 10 minutes. Forty-five minutes later this man pulls up in a minivan and asked if we had a rental car reserved and of course we said we did and hopped in. Well, this man wasn’t from the company we had booked with but had received a phone call from them telling him to pick us up and to basically rent us a car. This was fine with us, although it was a bit of a gong show. We ended up having to pay more than our original quote and had to wait almost another hour before this one man show got his shit together. We were slightly frustrated, especially seeing as we had found the better deal and were worried about cancelling! It wasn’t worth our while to get back into the city and arrange for it, so we stuck it out and three hours later were on the road to the Great Ocean Road in “Blue Bell”.

We have renamed the “Great Ocean Road” to the “Great Dried Up Farm Road”. We’re not sure if we had overly high expectations, but this certainly wasn’t what we were hoping for. We don’t mean to sound so negative, but it just wasn’t what we thought it was going to be. After spending 4 months driving through the beautiful NZ countryside and coastline, the Great Ocean Road didn’t appear so “great”. Besides, only about 1/3 of the road is actually along the ocean with the majority of it being through dried up farmland! Once again, the weather didn’t help as it continued to poor rain.

Ok, so it wasn’t all bad…we were cruising along and saw a koala sitting in a tree! He was so cute and looked so cuddly. After this random sighting, we were once again happy as things were looking up. We continued along to a place called Apollo Bay, which is about the halfway mark of the Great Ocean Road. We wanted to stay here because the YHA was right on the beach and was built entirely as an eco-friendly hostel. When we checked in the host Gilbert, kindly took the liberty of putting us in a room by ourselves with a double bed!! We were so excited to have our own room, let alone a double bed! This hostel is like no other and I could write a book about it…it’s that good (best one I’ve seen in Europe, NZ, and Oz). It felt as though we were at someone’s luxury home, but without the uncomfortable feeling of being in someone else’s home. It opened in 2005 and is designed completely with the environment in mind. I’ll outline some of its features, which will hardly do it justice:

• Windows are all facing the north to take advantage of the sunlight
• Solar panels on the roof to heat the water system
• Rain water reserves
• Worm farm to help with the compost
• Herb garden for everyone’s usage
• Low wattage lights
• Waterless urinals

These are just a few of the many features. It is such an amazing hostel, with lots of areas to chill including a big, beautiful sitting area with a fireplace. We only stayed on night, because we wanted to get out and see more of the Great Ocean Road, specifically the “Twelve Apostles”. We continued on with our next destination being Port Fairy, a small town about 170 km from Apollo Bay. We got to see the Twelve Apostles which were cool and also stopped at other viewpoints. We couldn’t get over the size of the waves. Because there is nothing to break the wind between Antarctica and the south coast of Australia, this area is known for its swell. We passed a small town called Torquay along the way, which is Australia’s surf capital. The Rip Curl World Championships are being held there in two weeks. They say that at times, the waves can be 30 meters high!

After driving through more farmland we arrived in Port Fairy, which was a really small town with not much to see or do. We check into the hostel which was an old farmhouse, to find out that our room was in the hayloft. In the hayloft, it was! We were crammed into the roof of this old barn and of course my biggest fear was spiders. We quickly discovered that this shouldn’t have been my biggest fear, as the other guests were the weirdest, creepiest, dirtiest people we had seen in a while. There was one old man (in his 70’s) with one eyeball who talked and laughed to himself and did everything as if he was in a rush. He and this old woman (who didn’t know each other) fought over what to watch on the communal TV, while everyone else sat back and listened to them bicker. We could go on about this short-lived experience as all we did was sleep and get the hell out of there as soon as we could the next morning. It wasn’t without seeing a spider though. As I was preparing for my shower, I set my towel down and closed the door to find a big black spider staring at me in the eyes. It was a good job I hadn’t yet undressed, because there would have been a screaming, naked girl running around the farm! After making Clement come in the women’s bathroom to see it, I went to another shower. This time I felt like I was in a comedy movie, only I wasn’t acting. As I was bending down to shampoo my hair (the shower head only reached halfway up my chest), I noticed a HUGE black, furry spider hanging in the ceiling above me. I tried to quickly get the soap out of my hair, knocked everything in sight over, almost slipped on the “slip proof” bath mat and finally made it to safety dripping wet in my towel that was barely covering what it should have been. I’m sure someone thought I was beating myself up in there, but I survived and lived to tell.

We did have a great evening in Port Fairy when we visited this park, which is an old volcano that last erupted 7000 years ago about 14km away. We were told that you could see different wildlife in there in the evenings. We only met one other person in the park and saw tons of kangaroos (mamas and their babies), wallabies, and emu. We really enjoyed this and even watched one wallaby eat an apple from 2 feet away. We liked it so much that we went back the next morning to see if we could see anything else. We saw a couple of more kangas, but it was pretty quiet. So, having been out of the city in Australia for 24 hours, we had already seen koalas, kangaroos, wallabies, emu and the dreadful spiders! We were really happy with this and could spend hours just watching the animals in their natural habitat.
With not much to see further west of Port Fairy, we decided that we had a lot of time to kill before returning the car in Melbourne on Sunday (the Great Ocean Road is only 263 km long). We returned to Apollo Bay and opted to stay at the beautiful hostel for two nights. We stopped at a grocery store on our way and picked up all we needed for a hearty home-cooked meal (not the usual oatmeal, soup, and our own famous sandwich rotation). We checked into the hostel to find that Gilbert had once again given us a room to ourselves with a double bed for the price of a 4 person dorm! We sit here now, reading and blogging in the lounge in front of the woodstove full from the chicken souvlaki we made for supper! We are so happy that we decided to come back here and have made this our home away from home. It feels like a resort, so we are looking forward to chilling here for the next couple of days. Also, the weather is forecasting sun so things are REALLY looking up! We may even head to the beach and make it look like we’ve been in Australasia for 4.5 months…but not before enjoying our cozy sleep in our double bed, with maybe even a sleep-in 