Great Ocean Road

As I mentioned in my previous post, the Great Ocean Road from Melbourne to Adelaide is a stunning drive for motorcyclists, and pretty darn good for cars. It winds along the coast for several hundred miles, in and out of small coastal villages, along beachs, around steep cliffs, and always with a stunning view of the ocean.


We rode the ferry from Sorento to Queenscliff, bypassing Melbourne on our way to the Great Ocean Road.




A flat tire did not slow us down much.



We stayed in a nice bed and breakfast owned by this nice German lady named Charlotte who lived in Ocean Grove.



We wanted to stay in Queenscliff and go on a "Jazz Train". This is where they have an old steam engine locomotive pulling 4 cars of people, about 200 people. They serve you a nice meal first at the station, then they have a different jazz band in each railroad car. The train stops periodically and you swap cars to hear another band. You get a night of great food, drinking and listening to music while traveling on an old steam train. We thought that would be totally cool. So did everyone else - it was sold out for 3 weeks in advance! This would be a great idea for some place like Guthrie, Oklahoma.

The next day we made it to Lorne, a wonderful small town along the Great Ocean Road with a protected beach, cool shops and a good hotel room. We ended up spending 3 nights in Lorne just hanging on the beach, working on my suntan, hiking in the woods, strolling along the beach, and just having fun.

We worked on our tans in Lorne. Kay was able to find us matching swimsuits that looked like the Australian flag. As you can see, my suntan is a work in progress.



We stopped to hang out at a beach in Anglesea, where I fed some seagulls



Kay was able to attract way cooler birds than I was. She fed about a dozen cockatiels from our hotel room in Lorne.



There were seafood shops in every little town and village along the coast, most with open doors and windows.



You could just walk in and buy fresh seafood and have them cook it for you while you wait.



Thank goodness for McDonalds or we might have had even LESS access to the Internet. I was quite amazed at how hard it was to find Internet access of any kind in Australia.



The vehicles in Australia are much smaller than in America. We saw lots of Toyota Land Cruisers like this. Even the work trucks and delivery trucks were small to fit on the tight roads.



We saw literally dozens of these small campers from a company called www.wickedcampers.com. It seemed young families or young adults could rent these used, brightly colored vehicles fairly cheap and go on an extended vacation.