Day 15 - The Great Ocean Road

Today's adventure was a trip out to "The Great Ocean Road", a scenic road that runs along the coastline south of Melbourne. Overall verdict was "glad we did it" (as we witnessed more amazing scenery) but boy were we happy to get out of that van at the end of the day. The trip was from 8am to 7pm ......which was a lot, and a little too touristy for us.

This is the official start of the scenic part of the trip with some great coastline shots!

We had a some more interesting wildlife encounters, more kangaroos (again on the edge of a golf course). It seems like kangaroos have figured out where the nice green grass is.

We saw lots of cool birds too with the Kookaburra here and the amazing Sulphur Crested Cockatoo. We learned that the Kookaburra can be pretty vicious with its prey (slapping it against a tree to make sure it's dead) and the Cockatoos will gather in numbers if there is any sign of a BBQ they can potentially ravage.

Next stop was a visit to a temperate rain forest area with very cool flora including lots of the prehistoric looking fern trees and the enormous Mountain Ash, a type of Eucalyptus tree that is second only to Redwoods in height. The trip had been advertised as "close encounters" with Koalas. However, you can see from the pic below we did see them, (kinda), but it turns out they're almost always asleep and high up in the tree - a little bit of a letdown to be honest, oh well.

Our final stop, and the highlight of the whole day, was a sculpted coastline with rock pillars (or stacks) referred to as "The 12 Apostles". It was very dramatic and impressive, and the weather once again was beautiful! Check out the people in the middle pic below to get a sense of scale! Not shown in the pics, the whole scene was a bit of a zoo, with lots of tour buses and crowds. We're definitely getting whiplash from the peace and quiet from NZ.

Just along from The Apostles (which, by the way, are now 7 not 12, old ones are falling down, and new ones are being created from collapsed arches) there was some more super interesting coastal features.

Today we got to see amazing scenery and we're definitely glad we got to see The 12 Apostles but for sure it was not our favorite day so far.

Differences between NZ and Aus (answer to Alison's question): So far, the main things we have noticed are :

• More dramatic scenery in NZ

• Food is better and more creative in Aus

• We are encountering a much younger crowds in Melbourne (lots of 20s & 30s)

• People are bit more down to earth in NZ but Aussies are very nice too

• Big swing in fashion as mentioned earlier

• Value for the dollar pretty much the same (both approx half the price of US dollar)

We can keep the list going!

Keep the question coming!