Relatively short – couple of hours – drive from Melbourne to Torquay, the eastern end of the Great Ocean Road, along the south coast of Victoria. Torquay nice little place, seems like retirement spot, judging by the crowds at the bowls club we passed on our way to lunch. Perhaps the old folk from Melbourne are taken here after being rounded up and processed. Spent a happy afternoon wandering along the miles of beach, then back for a shower and dinner.

The Great Ocean Road runs from Torquay, to Warrnambool, 300km of winding road. Sometimes the road wanders inland a bit, but mostly it hugs the coastline, offering spectacular views of craggy rocks and sandy coves. This part of the world is known as the Surf Coast, by estate agents anyway, and it certainly seemed that every usable beach had a few surfers on it. We did a detour to have a look at the Erskine Falls, in the Great Otway National Park. As well as the waterfall, we found a big black snake having a bit of a nap on the rocks. We considered waking him up, but decided not to.

Lunch at Apollo Bay, then pressing on the Port Campbell, where the interest lies in the 12 Apostles, a number of sandstone monoliths just off the shore. There may well be twelve, but it’s impossible to find a spot from where you can see more than a few at once. Pic above shows some of them.

We’re staying overnight at Port Fairy, just past Warrnambool. This is a preserved 1850s fishing village, very quaint, and with an air of the wild west of cowboy films about it. Two-storey wooden buildings with verandahs line a broad main street, and you can park right outside wherever you decide to go.

It was St. Patrick’s, and we saw a group of eight or so people dressed as leprechauns (well, dressed in green anyway) carrying instruments, touting themselves from restaurant to restaurant, trying to find someone who would like them to play. We saw them rejected from several joints, and the last we saw of them they were huddled disconsolately in the street, where it had just started to drizzle. How we laughed!

Our next overnight was Hall’s Gap, in the Grampians National Park. On the way we stopped at a little place called Dunkeld, a nice little town, to look for a petrol station. We popped in at the Tourist Information office, which was manned by two old guys, volunteers, who were both retired farmers. They couldn’t have been more helpful. I think they just wanted someone to talk to – they even offered us coffee – and one of them told us that when he was in his twenties he had been to England, and done a few things he wouldn’t have wanted his mum to hear about. Then he went back to Oz and became a model citizen. Many Aussies in their 60s tell the same story.

They had a stats sheet on the desk, showing the numbers of visitors in 2009, by nationality. Lots of Brits, of course, but Germany was the clear winner.

Fire is an ever-present worry here – there are warning signs everywhere – and in 1944 Dunkeld was pretty much burnt to the ground. The Tourist Information place stands on the site where the old town hotel was. A lot of the trees along the side of the road look distinctly singed.

Also, we saw our first kangaroo today – it hopped across the road in front of the car, just as they’re supposed to.

When we got to Hall’s Gap and checked in, we were given a pin and asked to stick it in a map of the world, as near as possible to where we lived. There had been so many
Dutch visitors that he had had to find a bigger Holland and paste it over the real one, just to accommodate all the pins. They must all be sitting in Eindhoven, or wherever, saying “I know, why don’t we go to Hall’s Gap, Victoria, I hear it’s really neat”. Only, in Dutch, of course.

In the afternoon we set off to have a look at Mackenzie Falls, but it was ridiculously hot, well over 30 degrees, and very muggy, and the falls weren’t that great either. Anyway, off to Ballarat in the morning.