Day 6: Thursday, Feb 14, Great Ocean Road

We got up early this morning and drove the Great Ocean Road. It connects Geelong with Warrnambool, weaving its way along the coast. It’s about 300km long I would guess, though I don’t remember exactly. It really was spectacular. The landscape changed a number of times along the way. Some places we drove right on the cliff in between the ocean crashing below and trees up on cliffs to our right. The interesting thing was that at water level there were tables of rocks jutting out. Think of the angular rock strata you see when a road is cut into a hill, but they were jutting out from the water. They were probably covered at high tide. This appeared for a long way along the ocean – not one uniform rock formation, but separate tables. It was if a mountain had fallen into the sea and eroded to this. We also came across lots of little estuaries connected to the ocean at high tide. At one point we deviated about 10km inland into a rainforest and stopped at a tall waterfall. It would have been a lot better in the spring as the winter rains flowed down it, but it was still great.

John and I conquer Erskine Falls.

The Australian philosophy on nature is interesting. Their nature sights are frequently unmanned – no rangers telling you what to do and what not to do. There are viewing platforms a lot of times, but in the case of the waterfall (Erskine Falls) for example, there were some stairs down to the rocks in the stream with a sign telling you to be careful. You could climb up to the very base of the waterfall, and you just assumed the risks and responsibilities. In the U.S. it would have been carefully roped off. There are signs telling you to take your “rubbish” with you and virtually no trash cans (because they are unmanned and hence no one is there to clean out garbage cans) but there is virtually no litter. The Australians are very environmentally conscious – lots of ads promoting companies as green, signs everywhere about recycling, etc., things in the news about this or that environmental issue, displays at the parks about global warming or endangered species – but at the same time they leave their natural wonders out there and assume people will be respectful and responsible. Judging from what we’ve seen, it’s a safe bet. I really like it, and it’s a breath of fresh air from the overly-controlling rules-oriented policy it seems that Americans are sometimes prone to. I thought it was particularly interesting because I don’t think the Australian government is very laissez-faire in other areas.

Several of the 12 Apostles.

After the windy cliff-hugging roads the path cut overland for a bit. First it went through hairpin turns in the forest that were on par with the scenic roads through the Great Smokeys, then it became more rounded and rolling roads through backcountry milk farms. The scenery here looked like hilly Midwestern America in a way, but the hills were different in a way I can’t quite describe. We then got into drier country with vegetation that reminded me of the Texas hill country. We ended up back by the coast on pretty straight roads along a flat plain elevated above the ocean. While the previous Oceanside had seemed to be very windy and unpredictable, this Oceanside cliff was pretty straight except for coves that had been worn away into the Cliffside. The rock at the beginning had been dark and hard, the rock here seemed sedimentary with a hard base of something else. While I personally thought the whole drive was one of the three most beautiful I’ve ever seen, this later part is what most people come to see. There are lots of formations of rock just off the coast in the ocean that have been left behind by erosion. One formation is called the 12 Apostles, though there are no longer twelve due to the collapse of a couple. They line the coast, stretching out over a km I would guess. They reminded me of Phi Phi and the surrounding islands off Thailand. Time and water have made most of them narrower at the base than the top, so I would expect more of them to disappear in the next couple of decades. The drop off from the cliff to the sea was probably about 30-40m (about 100+ ft). The vegetation here and for the rest of the Road was almost tundra-like. No trees, only small, rounded bushes with narrow leaves, some vines, some moss, and little wildlife besides flies and the occasional small lizard or bird. Other formations include London Bridge, which used to be a small rock bridge to one of the islands off the coast until it collapsed in 1990. I don’t know if it was named London Bridge before or after the collapse. There is also the Grotto, a series of stair-stepped coves where weak acid ate away at the stone and now it looks like volcanic landscape with little pools. There were a lot of other great spots – and some of the grandeur is simply the fact that this type of landscape can continue for miles on end. We were aided some by the weather, which was slightly cold, very windy, and cloudy, lending a bleak atmosphere that suited the landscape.

The Grotto.

After the Apostles the tourist crowds rapidly died off, which made everything a lot better. We ran into one couple that had been on our flight from the U.S. We also followed some people we dubbed the Nutri-Grain People, because we didn’t know who they were but we kept seeing their van with a box of Nutri-Grain cereal in the back window. We also saw a lot of little old Mitsubishi vans with interesting paint jobs. It turns out that you can rent them and they’re basically tiny campers – two seats with two beds and a sink in the back. This was my second day driving, and after quickly knocking the rust off in the morning I drove the entire road simply because I enjoyed it. I enjoy driving anyway, and threading my way through the roller coaster-like road at the beginning with every peak yielding a new stunning view was great, even if I was playing Mario Andretti in a minivan. I still like big parking places and I turned my windshield wipers on a couple of times, but otherwise my driving is becoming subconscious again.

The Australians obviously know their driving is counterintuitive, because there are lots of sings long the road that say “DRIVE ON LEFT in Australia” with a diagram.

Signs for dumb tourists like me.

Aussie lingo of the day: Happy as Larry=happy as a clam. I was talking with a guy about something he got at the Chinese New Year’s celebration in Sydney that occurred while we were there and he said that he it made him “happy as Larry.”