The Great Ocean Road

Now that we are settled in our house, we took the chance to go on our first weekend long outing. I had been mentioning that I wanted to get out of the city so Mel organized a trip to Lorne which is a small town along the Great Ocean Road.

For those who didn't read the previous post, the Great Ocean Road is a costal highway in Southern Australia about an hour from Melbourne. It was built after WWI by returning soldiers as a monument to those who didn't return. It took almost 30 years to complete.

The drive out of Melbourne is quick and as you cross the large bridge that spans the commercial shipping channel you get a great view of the city skyline.

Once out of the city the highway is pretty much what you would expect. Several lanes in each direction for about an hour at which point you reach Geelong. It's pretty industrial and a lot of people who work in Melbourne are moving out there and communting on trains to get affordable housing.

Once you leave Geelong you leave the main highway on a two lane road. It remains pretty straight but the scenery changes to forests and hills as you head towards the coastal town of Tourquay.
tourquay is one of the surfing capitals of the world. There are some top notch competitions at Bell's beach including some Big Wave stuff. I hope to return here to watch that when it happens next. All the big surf gear companies have massive stores here.

From Tourquay you get on to the B100 which is the Great Ocean Road.


The curves, twists, ups, downs, and scenic views start almost immediately. From Tourquay to Lorne we were pretty much speechless and the kids were all asleep...except Maddy who seemed to be crying about something....

It took us about 45 minutes to get from Tourquay to Lorne and we decided to stop there for lunch and to check in to our hotel as Maddy would not stop crying....just as we parked she let us know why she was crying as she processed to puke several times all over everything within a 2 foot radius. Mel and I spent the next half hour washing clothes in a near by creek and cleaning puke out of the car seat while Julia and Zak took the kids to a nearby park.

We checking in, got some nice rooms and then headed to a cafe across the street for some lunch. Lorne is really a one street village with the beach and some parks on one side of the main street and shops and cafes on the other side of the street. We had lunch at Cafe Kaos and then went to the "trampoline park". Pictures will explain it better than I can.








After lunch and play time, we packed up the kids and hit the road again to see how much more of the Great Ocean Road we could see in the remaining daylight without making the kids sick. We got almost to Apollo Bay before turning around. We decided to go back to where we had seen some Koala's in the trees and spend a bit of time there instead of trying to rush more of the road in the dusk.





That evening Mel and I went out to dinner at BaBaLo a local restaurant and made friends with the Owner. He gave us his card and told us that he has lots of friends in the area who rent out their places to families for weekends. We will look into that as it would be a great place to go for weekends.


On Sunday we had breakfast in Lorne then headed back to Tourqay. We checked out some surf shops and then spent a few hours in the massive park they have over looking the beach. After a quick lunch we drove back to town to end our first weekend trip. All in all it was great fun and the reason we have come all this way. We're looking forward to our next adventure. If you want to see more of the pics check them out at our flickr site.

p.s. Our internet connection at our new house is up and running so I've uploaded a lot of new pictures to flickr. Sorry for the mass upload but the pics were really staring to pile up on me.