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So off on the Great Ocean Road we went, with our first destination a campsite in Cape Otway. After exiting the ferry it wasn't long before Linz's map reading skills and my expert driving got us on the famous road. At the start of the road there is a little sign that tell you all about why and how the road was made. It was made in the early 1920's and was a government initiative for returning soldiers to have a employment after the first world war. These soldiers were given good pay rates and were allowed to take loads of holiday. So theres your history lesson for the day.
The beginning part of the ocean road is through pretty hilly terrain and at no point is the road ever straight. It wiggles itself in and out of hills and towns and runs pretty much right along the coast. At times you are literally driving with a huge cliff drop just to the side although there are barrier everywhere so its not as hairy as say other countries. We did this part of the drive at a pretty leisurely rate stoping every now and then to take in some of the breathtaking views or for Linz to take another 300 hundred photos!!! As you can see from our pictures we have decided to try and collect as many yellow ozzie wildlife signs as we can, the hunt is on... We also stopped off at a couple of the little towns on the way, Lorne and Torquay. These places were really cute, especially Lorne which really reminded us of maybe a little Alpine village. We would have loved to have stayed a day or two and explore but the open road was calling and now we were roadies no town was gonna tame us!
We eventually arrived at our campsite about 8 in the evening, just after sunset. When checking in the lady at reception said that above our caravan would be koalas, but to be honest we didn't expect much as we heard that most ozzie people never see a wild one in their lives. The van itself was a strange little place, as it was a small caravan which had a porch built on the front and inside was painted red and yellow. We loved it and decided we were gonna stay another night and explore the surrounding area. The first night sleep was pretty good although throughout the night we woken to this really loud growling noise. We had been told to expect it as this is the noise koalas make but if we didn't know this you could have been mistaken to think you were surrounded by warewolfs!
I was woken in the morning by Linz who looked like a kid on Xmas day. She dragged me outside to point out about 5 koalas in the trees just above our caravan! These were the little blighters who had kept us awake but once we saw them we had no hard feelings. It was so cool seeing them in the wild and we had no worries that they would be wandering off as they sleep around 20 hours a day and don't do much moving, bloody sloths.
That day we explored the surrounding Otway national park. This involved driving the car on roads which were pretty much only designed for logging trucks and not for our nissan tilda. These roads were just gravel and pretty tricky to manoeuvre on, espeically as all I could think off was the fact we had a $2,750 excess on the car and it would cost a big chunk of our trip if I took a chunk out of the car! After some very skilful driving, we managed to see some amazing waterfalls and the surrounding area. We also stopped off at this little beach called blanket bay, where no one else was, slightly different to about a week ago when we were on Bondi beach with 20,000 others! The evening was spent whipping up a pasta storm in our little caravan and koala watching. One of the koalas even came down so low from the trees that I managed to break a branch off and feed him the leaves. I tell ya what, this fella could learn some manners as he was pulling in the branch the whole time I had it and eventually snatched it off me, how rude!
The next day we packed up and said our goodbyes to the koalas, who at that point were even wandering around on the floor, really cool. Our next destination would be Port Fairy via more of the Great Ocean Road and the 12 Apostles.
Grant
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