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Friday February 22, 2010
Greetings from The Great Ocean Road,
After arriving in Melbourne - Australia's 2nd largest city with a population of 3.9 million, we spent a busy day exploring the city by foot and tram. Melbourne has a wonderful public transit system in the form of trams or street cars. Because of its wide roads the trams have remained and now form the backbone of the transit system. They seem to blend well with the car and they even have a unique turn for the auto such that when making a right turn (they drive on the left in Australia) it is executed from the extreme left lane so as not to block the passage of the tram (take note Toronto). This manouver is referred to as the "Melbourne hook turn" and is a little unnerving for the uninitiated.
The next day we set off to explore the Great Ocean Road the start of which is situated about 100 Km SW of Melbourne. This road is considered one of the world's greatest ocean drives similar to US Hwy 1 between San Francisco and LA. The Great Ocean Road was built by Australian military personnel returning after WW1 as a make- work project and was certainly a great achievement. The road begins in the coastal town of Torquay and runs about 250 Km to Warrnambool. We drove almost the entire length to visit the most famous spot - the 12 Apostles, which are basically a series of limestone monoliths left behind by erosion of the land. This was definitely a worthwhile trip as the views along the coast were spectacular and the 12 Apostles themselves incredible (see pics).
During our trip along the Great Ocean Road we were also able to view two things we had on our wish list - Kangaroos and Koalas, both in their natural habitat. We had stopped at a roadside information centre and were given two locations where sighting could be ensured. Well, we weren't disappointed; the Kangaroos were on a golf course and we found a Koala dozing in a tree (see pics).
Fortunately our journey back to Melbourne did not require us to go back over the same road as Barbra was beginning to feel the effects of the winding roads. We headed inland to rolling plains and fairly flat country and made it back in a couple of hours - an end to a great day
Tomorrow (Wednesday) we fly to Hobart Tasmania to begin a 1 week tour of the island - stay tuned!
David and Barbra
