Great Ocean Road

Wow, we have had an amazing week driving along the Great Ocean Road!
After all the beauty in New South Wales, our long drives were rewarded with more stunning scenery.
In Mallacoota we went on a small powerboat in the beautiful waters of the Croajingolong National Park. Here even the girls could try their hand on the steering of the boat. Finally we had blue skies, no rain and for three hours we cruised the estuaries.









On our way to Melbourne We visited small seaside towns like Metung and Paynesville, from where we took a quick ferry to Raymond Island. Here we wandered around looking for the koalas who are to be found all over the island. We spotted 10 of them high up in the trees!



Big city Melbourne was next on our list. Here we spend a wonderful, albeit an overcast, day walking around, eating take-away Japanese food on the steps of the State Library and staying in a ramshackle camping in historic Williamstown.



Then the most scenic drive so far started as we made our way from Torquay on the Victorian coast via Aireys Inlet (where we visited a beautiful lighthouse (I love lighthouses), Lorne, Apollo Bay (with a nice rainforest Boardwalk) to the Gibson Steps and the famous Twelve Apostles (which are actually seven or eleven stacks of rock at the most) in Port Campbell National Park.



Although it was getting late we managed to visit the Lord Ard Gorge, where two young survivors of a wrecked ship washed ashore in 1878. We had to watch for the tide as the girls where almost washed away as well! 😉






This day along the Great Ocean Road had been amazing but the next day we were treated to more fantastic views when we saw the so called London Bridge and the Grotto!












On tiny Griffiths Island (Port Fairy) we spotted a few kangaroos while walking towards another remote lighthouse.



Unfortunately Australia doesn't have a 'freedom camping' policy as New Zealand does, so most of the time we are 'forced' to stay in a holiday park. As we arrive between five and six pm and leave after breakfast we don't use many of their facilities. So we were very happy to discover that there are a few places where you can free camp in a self-contained vehicle (aka campervan) for a limited period of time (often 24 to 48 hours).
We had this opportunity in the Coonawarea Wine Region and this was the perfect stopover, so the next day we could visit Naracoorte Caves National Park, the only World Heritage-listed site in South Australia. The girls loved the Wonambi Fossil Centre here with impressive megafauna display of all the long-extinct animals like the marsupial ion and the Dioprotodon australis (koala meets grizzly bear).
The Wet Cave was accessible with a self-guided tour and it was great to be able to view this impressive cave without a guide.
Luckily we had already booked our spot at one of the campsites in the Coorong National Park (a complex series of soaks and salt pans) (you can only stay when you book online, so we had done that the previous day) as it was busy at the campsite.....with kangaroos!
There were only 7 camping spots, but we were the only guests besides a large group of kangaroos.
We had a great time watching them and even had time to go for a walk to the beach and be blown away (literally) by the winds.



After a nice drive via the amazing autumn colours of the trees in the Adelaide Hills we arrived yesterday in Adelaide itself where we are spending two nights before heading off to Kangaroo Island (more kangaroos?) tomorrow.






After being in the state of South Australia for more than 24 hours we realised that we crossed into a different time zone. Although we thought we were quite prepared for this trip, we were a bit surprised that the time difference with the zone we just left was only half an hour! So the time difference with New Zealand is now 2.5hours and with the Netherlands only 7.5 hours.