Sunday, after breakfast we started the two days trip back to Melbourne along the Great Ocean Road. The group doing the Great Ocean Road was reduced to 11 as others had to go back to work to keep the world spinning.
The first stop was the Ros McArthur Art Gallery, a local artist with the studio set in her property, a sheep farm in the Victoria Valley. Her paintings include still life and landscape oil paintings depicting the natural surroundings of the Grampians National Park. The lady was very friendly and invited us to have a picnic lunch in her garden and we gladly accepted.
From there we travelled to Hamilton where we visited Hamilton Art Gallery that was supposed to have a painting of Sir Sydney Nolan one of Australia's best-known painters. Unfortunately the painting was out and we ended up in the near coffee shop having coffee and Anzac biscuits.
From Hamilton we travelled to Port Fairy on the coast stopping briefly at Byaduk lookout were we could see and extinct volcano at Mount Napier and some ancient lava flows.
The final stop for the day was Port Fairy a charming fishing village at the western end of the Great Ocean Road. We stayed in the Merrijig Inn, one of the oldest inns in Victoria. We enjoyed another wonderful dinner surrounded by a great group of friends. The wine was good and the company even better.
In the morning before breakfast we went for a stroll along the river and after breakfast we strated our drive along the famous Great Ocean Road.
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The first stop was at Warrnambool a pretty regional town and the largest city of the Great Ocean Road region. A popular legend is that the first Europeans to discover Warrnambool were the Portuguese Captain Cristovão de Mendonça and his crew who surveyed the coastline nearby and were marooned near the site of the present town as early as the 16th century, based on the unverified reports of local whaler's discovery of the wreck of a mahogany ship. The ship's provenance has been attributed to France, China, Spain and Portugal. There is no physical evidence to suggest that the Mahogany Ship existed. The area was frequented by whalers early in the 19th century.
We visited the cheese factory called Cheeseworld and its small musean with very interesting aspects of the farm life from the early 1900’s.
From Warrnambool we started hopping from lookout to lookout enjoying the sights that made the Great Ocean Road one of the most famous attractions of Australia.
We visited the Bay of Islands, London Bridge and Loch Ard Gorge on the way to Port Campbell and the photos are an attempt to show their beauty.
From Port Fairy, Bronwyn put down the top of her convertible and we all took turns at messing up our hair style.
From Port Campbell the road hugs the coast all the way to the end of the National Park. This is the most famous section of the Great Ocean Road.
The next stop was that famous rock formation known as the 12 Apostles which have been carved out of the headlands by the fierce waves of the southern ocean. So fierce is the ocean that only 7 Apostles survive today but nevertheless makes it the highlight of the trip
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After the 12 Apostles we had enough of rock formations and headed for the Melba Gully for a picnic lunch. The gully is one of the wettest places in the state and displays a magnificent collection of blackwood, myrtle and tree-ferns. The place is famous for the glow worms that can be seen at night. We finished all the left overs from the previous days and headed to Cape Otway where we expected to see Koalas in the wild.
Cape Otway did not disappoint us and we were able to photograph lots of koalas.
With all of us already a bit tired we decided to call it the day and headed to Lorne where we stopped for the night.
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We stayed at the Grand Pacific Hotel ,built in 1875 and with superb views of the ocean. In front of the hotel an attractive little restaurant right on the edge of the water caught our eye and we decided to have dinner there. It was a good decision and once more 11 friends spent a terrific night out.
On the last day we drove to Geelong where we organised to meet Owen, Karin’s father, for lunch. Owen lives on a Yacht and it is at the moment moored in Geelong
We had a brief stop at Anglesea golf club to allow our overseas friends to see kangaroos and once again the Australian fauna did not let us down and we had the opportunity to take a few shots of the most famous Australian animal.
In Geelong we met Owen and had lunch together. After lunch we left to Melbourne where we caught the plane to Brisbane finishing one of the best weekends we can remember.
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