I'M AT: Port Campbell YHA, a nice gaff with big rooms, good beds, barbeque area plagued with hungry flies.
The Great Ocean Road is pretty famous, I guess, one of the best drives in the world. Lacking transport, I had to decide which of the many tours I wanted to book onto. Many of them take you to Adelaide, which was where I wanted to go next, so this would have made sense. But there was something about Todd's brochure that intrigued me.
Ride Tours take you to the far end of the Great Ocean Road and drive back along it, over two days. This is unique, and to the group's smug satisfaction meant that we had most of the viewpoints, beaches and sights to ourselves, uncluttered by all the other tour groups, who start at the Melbourne end.
It's a great trip. Todd was brilliant, efficient and funny, relaxed, a brilliant bloke. Got to wish him all the best. www.ridetours.com.au And we saw loads of stuff - koalas sleeping in the trees; kangaroos bouncing across a manicured golf course; kangaroos again, in the bush; a sleeping emu - and this was all before we started on the actual road.
The Great Ocean Road was built by returning soldiers, much of it hacked out of the cliffs, as dynamite was impractical. It twists its way past limestone stacks, the most famous (although not the most beautiful) are the Twelve Apostles, and we had a really truly spectacular sunset whilst we were there. There are many other stacks and rock formations - London Bridge, Loch Ard Gorge, the Bay of Martyrs (were we swam in the cool blue ocean) and the Bay of Islands. It's a beautiful and relaxing trip, all the better for having an entertaining and knowledgeable bloke leading the tour. And we even, somehow, managed to do something very unusual for groups of backpackers - got truly hammered at a small pub in Port Campbell, from where I made a drunken phone call.
Great trip. I couldn't meet up with Kenny and Leonie and Liz and the rest of the group at the free Twenty20 game the following Sunday, though. Tasmania beckoned.
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