Great Ocean Road

Australia's Great Ocean Road. 

The ocean has carved out huge limestone portions of the cliffs - named the twelve apostles though only eight still stand. 

We've done a number of exciting things already - a walk through the "bush", a side trip to Melbourne to pick up packages, a visit to the Bendigo Botonical Garden, a Christmas party at Tyler and April's home, and shopping. We'll deal with all that later in a follow up blog.

Apollo Bay and Marengo Bay from Mariner's Lookout.

The Great Ocean Road was built by Australian veterans of World War I. The road formally starts at Torquay west of Melbourne and runs along the coastline of the Southern Ocean.  We spent three nights at Marengo Bay just next to Apollo Bay about midpoint in the trip. The highlight of this scenic drive are the dramatic rock formations in the ocean. 

The Gorge

The Razorback

The Twins

At one one end of Gibson's Steps

At the tail end of our trip we ran into some fierce squalls. For example, April was in a pleasant touristy mood... 

                and about a minute later this is what transpired.
.

World famous surfing beach - Bells Beach

Surfer at Bells Beach

Non-surfers at Bells Beach

View from lighthouse

Beach at Gibson's Steps

Fun on the beach

Oh to be this young!

Aussie wannabes, Preston and Lincoln with Louisa

Building castles, moats and deep holes

It wasn't all beaches and vistas - we found some neat rain forest hikes, waterfalls, lighthouses and of course, koalas. And some quite tame parrots in the wild.

Those cute little marsupials did this. Tree deforestation in the Otway National Park, Victoria, Australia

Otway Lighthouse

This area becomes a rain forest in the Australian winter

Erskine Falls

Tyler and April at Erskine Falls

A beach literally filled with rock towers - Darlene is helping out

This tower must have been twelve feet high. It is a Stonehenge type mystery on how it was built.

Tyler ends this blog with an Aussie hat, a babe in arms, a bird in hand, three other parrots posing with a koala. How Aussie can you get! But where is the kangaroo?