Adelaide to Melbourne via Great Ocean Road

Day 1: Adelaide – Seppeltsfield – Robe

Day 2: Robe – Mt.Gambier – Coonawarra – Naracoorte – Halls Gap

Day 3: Halls Gap – Port Fairy

Day 4: Port Fairy

Day 5: Port Fairy – Great Ocean Road – Cape Otway – Apollo Bay

Day 6: Apollo Bay – Great Ocean Road via Lorne, Torquay – Melbourne

Total: about 1500km

Day 1

To start off the trip from Adelaide to Melbourne I picked up Johann and Stefania and headed 100km the opposite direction. It was not the GPS error, although it did freeze a couple of times, but I wanted to spend some money and try out the 100-year-old tawny portwine at Seppeltsfield. Long story short – it was well worth the 30aud I spent on it! And despite the offer consists of 2 tastings – one as a benchmark, a 10yo tawny and then 100yo, we were fortunate enough to get 4 tastings – additionally 21yo and 25yo. If you get a chance – go and try it!!

Next stop – some unexpected pink coloured saltlakes enroute in the middle of nowhere.

Robe was a nice small coastal town with a nice manorhouse serving as YHA hostel. Robe also offered a beautiful sunset on it’s rocky waterfront and a great chat with an aussie who just packed up his bus on day in Brisbane and took 6 months off to visit all the wine regions in Australia, meanwhile just surfing. Good man! J The beautiful coastline, sometimes rocky, is formed on limestone ground. Hence the name Limestone Coast, streching from Murray River mouth at Coorong to South Australia – Victoria boarder.

Day 2

Mt.Gambier was a town just as any other, except it had 3 lakes within, of volcanic nature. One of them acts as a water reservoir for the neighbourhood, yet is picturesque because of its turquoise blue colour. As it turns out, it only turns blue some time in November and stays this bright up to March, the rest of the year you’ll see it just greyish. So far they have not yet discovered why...

In addition to beautiful coastline, Limestone Coast plains have a good soil for agriculture (well, due to water draining as otherwise it would just be a huge swamp). Coonawarra, Limestome Coast wine region is a rare and dryer area within swamplands, a wellknown region for its terra rossa soil and Cabernet Savignon wines. It covers  a small area of 15x2km, perfect for growing vines. On our way throught Coonawarra we popped into Katnook Estate – aboriginal for „fat land“, refering to the rich red soil. Among others, tasted their Limited Release Shiraz and Cab-Sav – got to love a good red wine my friends! J

Naracoorte caves were the next planned stop which honestly was a big dissapointment to me. I was hoping to see something as natural as the caves in Czech Republic (well that was a loooong time ago since I was there), but instead it was a very touristy place, had to pay usless amount of money for an interactive show of extinct animals and one cave. Other caves were not accessable as they were tourguided only but each one of them only had 1-2 tours a day.

Halls Gap, located on the edge of the Grampians National Park on the other hand is a place worth visiting and if possible, staying for a couple of days. The Grampians (also Gariwerd) is a national park featuring a striking series of sandstone mountain ranges. It covers about 1672km2 and is a mountainrange just in the middle of plains. Our way there was a bit enduring as we encountered a few detours due the landslides earlier this year. According to locals they encountered severe rain which had not been seen for years already. And as everything takes time down under, well it sure will take some time to rebuild some roads. J Upon arrival we were hit by the first great sight – about 20-25 kangaroos just eating grass or boxing at the back of the hostel, not really caring much about crazy tourists flashing their cameras 1-2m away.

Day 3-4

Off to the Pinnacle, about a 5h walk, at least  according to the hostel reception, in total about 6km. The hike offered great views, a good workout, impressive emotions about how this place was formed thousands of years ago. As we decided to take a longer trail we did not exactly finish where we intended to, so at the end of the day covered almost 14km in 4h 20min with 1230m ascent! It sure was an effort but well worth it! The Pinnacle itself was about 730m above sealevel.

Next stop Port Fairy (named Belfast from 1854-1887) with a very pleasant homely and cosy hostel, again YHA. A good place to stick around and take a day off for a quick look around and just enjoying the sun and the beach. Port Fairy hosts a small national park on nearby Griffiths Island and it holds a breeding colony of the Short-tailed Shearwater or Australian Muttonbird with plenty of other wildlife. I happened to spot a wallaby - small kangaroo. They are a lot smaller than I anticipated!

Day 5

The Great Ocean Road (GOR) is a 243km stretch of road along the southern coast of Victoria between Torquay and Warrnambool. The road was built by returned soldiers between 1919 and 1932 and is the world's largest war memorial dedicated to casualties of World War I. What makes the GOR so great is the natural beauty throughout the coastline. It’s really impressive what water has done to the cliffs and where the road itself has been built along the coast. As it later turned out, the best time to go visit al lthe sights along GOR is before 1-2pm, before the buses packed with tourists arrive from Melbourne. We were fairly lucky, just at the 12 Apostels we encountered hundreds of people desperate to get a nice shot of the singlestanding rocks. But let the photos speak for themselves.

Cape Otway is the southern point on the GOR, much of which is enclosed in the Otway National Park. On 1846 a lighthouse was built on Cape Otway, being the second lighthouse completed on mainland Australia and still remains the oldest surviving lighthouse in mainland Australia. The road to the lighthouse went through a thick gumtree forest, but with no koalas at sight. Then all of a sudden some people were standing on the road all looking at branches of a gumtree – 3 koalas just waking up from their beautysleep and about to carry on doing the second most favourite thing – eating eucalyptus leaves. Despite the lightshouse being already closed for visitors, the detour towards Cape Otway was well worth it, seeing those drowsy animals in wild is just how you should see them. Later that evening I found out that from about 2000 different gumtree varieties, koalas only eat the leaves from 12, being very picky about what they put into their mouth. The reason is that eucalyptus leaves are very toxic and and those 12 are just less toxic than others. No wonder parts of the forest enroute were full of green gumtrees while elsewhere only blank trunks were left behind by koalas. After a mighty meal they seemingly fall asleep, partly because the leaves are toxic and intoxicating, partly because they are very hard to digest. This is also why only koalas eat those leaves.

Day 6

Apollo Bay during a rainy day is pretty bloody boring! Just as most of the other coastal towns where the majority of businesses deal with either accomodation, catering or surfing and other watersports along with respective retails. Despite the eagerness of going to surf the rainy and cold weather worked against it. So the best thing to do in Apollo Bay was to visit a cellar door of Bay of Apostles – actually a Coonawarra region winery, but part of their business originating from Apollo Bay region. J

A  bottle of 2008 Shiraz is what made my visit worth while and off we drove towards... somewhere. Initial ideas was to spend another night either in Lorne, Torquay, both popular surftowns or Queenscliff, but unfortunately we could not foresee all the hostel would be fully booked. Too bad for those who were looking for a nice sunny weekend on the beach, you just got rain! Melbourne, here we come!

Additional photos available on Picasa.