memelaina | The Great Ocean Road

The Great Ocean Road

Arriving at the Melbourne airport from Alice Springs, we met Don Timm (Kent's housemate from law school) and picked up our luggage to head out to the rental car lot. Being a "Preferred" customer for Avis pays off when you can walk directly to your car and (after working out the jigsaw puzzle of packing the suitcases in the trunk) drive straight out. Our driving directions took us by freeway to Geelong south of Melbourne and then offered the choice of driving down the coast through Torquay and Lorne to our destination at Apollo Bay or taking the inland highway. Don didn't see how driving the hypotenuse of the triangle (the coast road) could take longer than going along both adjoining sides - so we took the coast road.

We ALMOST made it to Apollo Bay by nightfall. Not quite, of course, but almost. The coast road (The Great Ocean Road) is very much like California's Pacific Coast Highway. If you've never driven that, let me just give you a few words of description - cliffs, hills, hairpin turns, and nearly wide enough for two cars.

In Apollo Bay we found our hotel, the Seaview, and checked in. The pleasant manager, when asked to recommend a restaurant, let us know that mostly things were closed by that time of night, but we could get a good meal at "the pub". Never adverse to a pub meal, I asked for the name of this establishment. "Dah Polar Bahr 'otel" was the reply. "The Polar Bear?" I enquired a little surprised. "Law no! Dah 'Polo Bahy!"

The Polar Bear Hotel was only about three blocks away. Intent on my dinner, I wanted to go right in, but Don and Kent wisely advised that since the local grocery store (same block) was now open we should procure food for breakfast as it was unlikely to be open by the time our meal was over. We purchased snags (sausages), eggs, crumpets, butter, milk, and oatmeal and then headed in to the Polar Bear. I suppose it says something about the establishments to whom we have been awarding our custom, but like most places we've been eating in Australia, you take a menu, find a seat, and then send someone to the bar to order. Kent, the traditionalist, had fish and chips, and - very daring - Don and I both had the pasta special which was chicken, mushrooms, spinach, and various other bits and pieces in a red wine cream sauce. Odd, yes. But absolutely delicious along with a glass of Aussie Reisling (me) and a couple tankards of local beer (Don). Oh, and don't forget the "Urban Cheese Bread" that the hostess recommended. I'll leave that as an exercise for the reader.

Friday morning we headed out down the Great Ocean Road for Port Campbell 102 klicks away. Rather than hugging the coast the first part of the trip headed through the hills (equally curving but fewer cliffs). About an hour out we came to a sudden stop behind two cars (likely more cars than we had seen all morning). The road was blocked by a tree that had fallen across the road. It wasn't terribly big in circumference, but then it wasn't just a single trunk - there were at least four or five "trunks" all with bushes of branches, and still hanging 15 feet overhead was yet another trunk still waiting to fall. The trees grow on slopes going fairly steeply up from the road, and the rain of the past several days had weakened the hold of the roots on the bank.

So whatcha think? What's the density of Aussie guys in cars that has to build up before you achieve a hatchet, a saw, a tow chain, and (eventually) a small chain saw? Took about half an hour. Then another half an hour to clear the fall. And then we all went trundling through the single cleared lane and on towards Port Campbell. I wonder, would it be a different dynamic in America? Or perhaps different in different areas?

The road headed back down to the coast and we pulled off at the car park for The Twelve Apostles. I was disturbed because the car park was to the north of the road and the coast was to the south of the road. Yep, we walked a fair piece - under the highway - and then onto walkways and boardwalks along the top of the cliffs to view the standing rock formations that make up the apostles. Of course, since they were named a hundred years ago three or four have been worn away by wind and water, leaving the eight and a half or so apostles for the modern viewer. The cliff is a sheer vertical drop to rough rocks below. The sea was also very rough, and it was clear from the way the waves broke and reformed and broke again that there were many more rocks out there than the ones we could see. Despite a huge Japanese tourist group complete with cameras, grandmothers, and several small children, we managed to both view the rocks, and to take each other's pictures viewing the rocks.

From the Eight or So Apostles to Port Campbell wasn't a long drive and we arrived at another summer resort town (much like Apollo Bay) where we ate a pleasant but expensive lunch overlooking the storm tossed water. Kent had wanted to stop at the Cape Otway lighthouse on the way back, but due to our delays on the road we headed straight back to Apollo Bay and left the lighthouse for Saturday.

Stores were still open (just) so we bought some beef and mushrooms and noodles and an envelope of Maggi's Beef Stroganoff seasoning, along with a nice bottle of Aussie merlot. We drank some of the merlot, used more in the stroganoff, Kent watched yet another Aussie Rules game on TV, and thus did we pass the evening. Saturday morning was much like Friday morning - right down to a morning rainbow in the same place right outside the kitchen window. Sausage, eggs, crumpets and we were off down the Great Ocean Road by about 10am. Have I mentioned, at any point, that Kent does not drive cars in foreign countries? Ever? All of the up, down, curve, down, bump, curve, up, zoom driving was done by yours truly. Kent maintains that if it were up to him he would take a bus. Since I refuse to ride in buses, the driving is up to me. I love him very much.

The road to Great Otway Lighthouse is a very narrow track (although not excessively curvy) that leads through the eucalyptus rain forest. I commented as we drove in that there were likely koalas all around us at any given point if we just stopped to look. We didn't however, but drove straight through to the car park and entrance building (and shop...) before walking on to the Telegraph House situated, naturally, at the top of a cliff over the water.

The Aussie government spent five years attempting to run a telegraph cable from Otway to Tasmania. They finally succeeded in 1855 and built a moderate rectangular stone house for the Sounder (telegrapher) and his assistant. While everyone was busy reading about the details of running cables under the ocean, I fixated on the brief quotation from a mid-century letter from the Sounder to his management complaining how small and inconvenient the house was for himself and his family and his assistant and how impossible it would be if his assistant married since there was only one kitchen.

A short walk further and there was the light keeper's house (neither as large nor as sturdy) and the assistant light keepers' house (narrow stone barrack divided into two long rooms, one for each assistant and his family). The Point Otway light was built in 1848 and the men who manned it lived entirely retired from society, supplied only by boat every six to ten months. I think of the four men, some with wives and children, who lived here for twenty and thirty years at a time seeing no one but each other and the occasional shipwrecked sailor or the crew of a supply ship.

The light itself was tall and picturesque. Kent and Don ascended and took photos. I walked back to the cafe/shop (of COURSE there was a cafe!) and drank hot tea until the gentlemen returned, damp and puffing slightly, to eat big bowls of chickpea and lentil soup with lovely homebaked toasted bread. The sun was now out, so we walked back to the car and headed back through the eucalyptus towards the main road. About halfway along there was a cluster of cars pulled over (only there really wasn't any "over") on both sides of the road with their occupants standing about and looking overhead. Just as I had said driving in, there was as swarm of koalas in the trees. We saw at least a dozen, took a fair number of photos, and then moved on - Mem attempting to concentrate on the road while her eyes were caught be each knob and burl of eucalyptus sure that it was another koala.

I drove the guys to the Mait's Walk (3km) and sat quietly in the car and read while Don and Kent walked down to view the giant fern forest on the coast. Then back to the apartment in time for Kent to do a few hours worth of laundry (his forte) in the single washer and dryer of the hotel's guest laundry. I wrote postcards and then fixed dinner. Now it's time to post my story of the Great Ocean Road and off to bed. Tomorrow we head back to Melbourne, NOT by the coast road.