The Great Ocean Road

This past weekend I took off by my lonesome to tour the Great Ocean Road that hugs the southern coast of Australia and overlooks the Indian Ocean. The history of the road itself is quite interesting. It is dedicated to the Australian soldiers who were killed in World War I, under a program similar to Roosevelt's Works Progress Association, in effort to employ the surviving soldiers upon their return. It is the world longest war memorial.

It is a beautiful winding road that hugs the coast. So winding I felt car sick much of the time. It has spectacular views of the huge waves and rugged coastline. Over 700 ships are thought to have met a watery grave, taking hundreds of lives with them.

Our first stop was at Bells Beach, home of the world's longest running surfing competition - the Rip Curl Pro Surf & Music Festival. I thought the waves in Hawai'i were big, but not compared to the ones I saw on Saturday. (I know that the waves of the North Shore are enormous during the Winter.)

Further down the road we stopped and took pictures of several koalas who were getting a mid-morning snack. Apparently they get all their water requirements from the leaves they consume as koala literally means "no drink" in several Aboriginal tongues. However, they don't get that much energy from the leaves so they compensate for sleeping about 20 hours a day. Sweet gig. The leaves they eat are also very toxic and they have a unique characteristic that allows them to ingest the toxins. If you really want to know how they are able to do this ask me later.

We stopped at Maits Rest Rainforest, a small section of preserved temperate rainforest. This was truly a spectacular experience. It is a shame that there isn't more of it left. The Australians are only people better at stripping the natural beauty from their land than Americans.

From there we went on to an extremely rugged part of the coast. The part that really gave ships a difficult time. We saw several limestone and sandstone rock formations that have gradually been worn down by time and the sea. Formations called the Loch and Gorge, the Twelve Apostles (The most famous of formation), London Bridge (Which did fall down), and of course the Razorback were on the itinerary.

The overcast day made it difficult to take great pictures and towards the end they may seem a bit dark because I turned the flash off to save my battery. The pictures wouldn't do the scenery justice anyway. Since I was by myself I made conversation with a guy from Portugal and a nice girl from Prague and had dinner with a gentleman from Banglapur. There is an excellent Chinese place in Geelong if anyone ever needs a recomendation.

Oh yeah we drove by Mel Gibson's beach house. It's the house he stayed in while the filmed Mad Max. He liked it so much he decided to buy it.