Great Ocean Road Adventure - Ch. 1

Exhausted. Just returned from the best weekend since I arrived in Oz. Suffering from inevitable post-trip malaise and general feelings of hatred toward real life. Figure the best way to cheer self up is to relive the memories here on the old blog. Pictures are forthcoming (but you’ll have to be patient – snapfish says there are 128 of them! I’ll definitely do some editing, no worries), but I may insert a couple of teasers if I can get the damn things to load in less than an hour.

Friday, September 1, 2006 – Melbourne, Australia
Wake up feeling like ass. Accidentally drank too much again. Should really work on not doing that. Must get up, though. Need to figure out where I’m going to stay when I get to Lorne. Have decided this is the weekend to start my travels in Australia – if no one else can come with me, so be it.

Luckily, my flatmate, Julie, wakes up when I’m organizing my trip and decides to hustle to get ready and come along for the ride. Destination: Lorne, Victoria, Australia. I’ve read that it’s beautiful – it’s along the Great Ocean Road and it’s far enough down not to be too touristy. There is also potential for surfing lessons, too. This is my main goal in going down there, though, I’m also excited because there are national parks just outside of the city and I can go on “bushwalks” to waterfalls should the surfing thing not work out. Make booking at the Lorne YHA Youth Hostel which seems pretty rad and away we go!

View from bus on the way down - yeah, the bus ride sure did suck.

When we arrive in Lorne, Julie and I head immediately toward the beach. It’s a beautiful day, though a bit chilly for swimming. Still, we sit outside a café and eat pizza while taking in the view. After lunch, we head to the beach to get a taste of the water. I have never in my life felt water so icy cold in all my life! Not deterred, we sit on the beach and just listen to the surf. This plan is interrupted, however, when we discover a spider trapped in a deep footprint. It keeps trying to climb up the highest part of the heel indention and keeps falling backwards on itself. We occupy ourselves with watching the spider and giving him new obstacles for almost an hour. (Fret not Ben – we didn’t leave him to his own devices. We eventually helped him out and placed him toward the land, going away from the water.) Yes, we are easily amused, but it’s honestly pretty funny.

Back at the hostel it’s dinner time and we’ve eaten ourselves into tortellini misery. Probably we shouldn’t have eaten the entire container. Just as we’re about to clean up two guys come in and offer some beer. Despite food coma and stomach nearing explosion we accept. Little did we know at the time but these guys – Duncan and Guy (both South Africans working in Melbourne) – are soon to become our new best friends for the next 48 hours.

They are on a weekend excursion down the Great Ocean Road and have planned to go on a forest canopy walk, a fishing expedition, and a sightseeing mission to the Twelve Apostles. This sounds far more exciting than the 6-7 hour hike to a waterfall we’d planned for the following day. Also, I’d seen a postcard of the Twelve Apostles (rock formations along the coast, see below) and was positively dying to go there but didn’t know how to do it without a car. Generously they invite us along for the ride in their car and even wait for our other friend, Eliot, to meet up with us the next day before heading out.