Melbourne, November 12: 12 Apostles Tour

When Don suggested we go on the Great Ocean Road tour to the 12 Apostles, I knew it was the perfect solution. I had booked a similar trip last year, only I went for the leave before dawn and head to the 12 Apostles for sunrise tour before the other tourists arrive. 

This wasn't that. This was still leaving early. But not before sunrise.

We booked the tour through Viator. The night before we walked to where the bus would pick us up, in front of the Marriott barely 600 meters away from our room, and across the street from a grocery store so we could grab a cheap breakfast.

Don scored the perfect spot on the bus as he could stretch out his leg and not be in anyone's way. We were near the driver, which gave us some fun conversations.

The Great Ocean Road is one of the top places you should see when you go to Australia. It is up there with the Great Barrier Reef and the Sydney Opera House. Without the bus trip, we would not have seen it. We are still apprehensive about renting a car and driving on the other side of the road.

John, our guide, cheerfully filled us with trivia. As I had my notebook with me, I took notes. The drive out of the CBD took us on the West Gate Freeway past the Avalon Airport, Melbourne's other airport only has domestic flights. Half of Australia's population lives in either Sydney (5.5 million) or Melbourne (6 million). Canberra, located between them, is the capital. It is a planned city. The West Gate Bridge is the tallest bridge in Australia, at 5.2 kilometers it is also very long.

John said we were heading first to Angelsea, along the coastal road, for a tea break. We take a fair number of tours, this was the sweetest break. John set out some nibbles, tea, and coffee. It wasn't a lot, but since we started before having a real breakfast, it was nice to get caffeinated. There were restrooms nearby. It felt good to stretch our legs.

Tranquil

When we started, John asked us if anyone had to be back by a certain time (theater tickets, etc.). If not, we can take our time. I've read the Great Ocean Road can take 4.5 hours. It is a curvy road with many places to get distracted. Our tour was to last over 13 hours, but if someone needed to come back sooner, we could skip some of the stops.

Back in the bus, John told us about Moonlit Sanctuary and their tour to Phillip Island to see penguins. A tour we went on last year. Yes, we would recommend that tour, or a similar one.

No one objected (at least until later when one couple realized their hotel restaurant would close before they got back, as they were a block away from Chinatown, which was open later, we didn't have much sympathy for their plight). We had many stops along the way. At each stop, I relaxed into the outing. I could keep my phone off since John was in charge of directions and decisions. I was there to enjoy it.

Bells Beach was our next stop. It has the best surfing in Australia during the winter. Since 1930 you can drive to the beach. Before that, you had to take a boat. Bells Beach is located in Torquay, a beach town populated mostly by First Nations people for over 25,000 years. Australia is home to over 420 different Aboriginal countries.

The Great Ocean Road was created thanks to William Calder as a project for soldiers returning from World War I. He based the idea off of America's Pacific Coast Highway that stretches from Los Angeles to San Francisco. Construction was started in 1919 as a mental health project for the soldiers. Three thousand soldiers built the road, initially as a dirt road hugging the rocky coast. It took 13 years to build the 243 kilometers (151 miles) road using pick axes, shovels, and dynamite at a pace of two kilometers a week.

As we drove, John pointed to the holiday homes along the road. Expensive places used in the summer, and infrequently throughout the year. It is beautiful, but very isolated. During the off-season only 6,000 people live in Torquay.

In 2011, the Great Ocean Road has been recognized by UNESCO as the largest war memorial in the world because it was built by soldiers. We stopped at a marker near the famous archway, Memorial Arch located at Fairhaven Beach. This is the third arch to be built in this spot. The first one was destroyed in the 1983 bushfire, and the second was knocked over by a truck. This one is larger than the others. This is a popular place to pause and take pictures. Among the cars is a purple jeep that looks like fun to drive. There is also another tour operator from the same organization. He and John compare notes about their passengers.

We were told to keep an eye open for kangaroos since sometimes he sees them there. We were not so lucky.

Back in the car. John was great about letting us known how long we have, and his pacing was spot on. The rest of the group kept to the schedule, which always helps. John is from New Zealand. He has only been a guide about a year. Prior to that he was a locksmith and a stay-at-home dad.

Continuing on...there are 25-30 lighthouses on The Great Ocean Road, but only one we will see. In 1858 the Splitpoint Lighthouse was built in Airey's Inlet. We did not stop close enough to take a picture, but did see it from the bus window. There have been 620 shipwrecks along the coast, but only 200 have been found. The area was struck by bushfires in 2014, destroying much of the area. One of the only structures that survived was the Pole House. It is currently undergoing a $6-8 million renovation ($4-5.5 million US). 

We learned Australia has no active volcanos. The irony of our trip being impacted because of an active volcano (albeit in Bali) was not lost on me when I heard that tidbit.

We made a stop at a pullout with a view of the beach at an area he referred to as a lava walk. The purple jeep is here, too, along with a couple of group tours. Australia does have dormant volcanoes, just not active ones. In the United States we thought the same thing about Mount St. Helens in Oregon before it erupted from 2004-2008. Here we had a view of Mount Defiance and a memorial to Howard Hitchcock, the philanthropist who paid for the Great Ocean Road to happen. Sadly he died just before it was finished. His family became the second people, behind the premier of Victoria, to ride the road.

John taking pictures

We took the stairs to the beach

Memorial

Back in the bus...we drove to the big town of Lorne. At 12,000 people, it is the largest town along the Great Ocean Road. During the holidays, the population explodes to 40-50,000 people. John filled us in on little nuggets about each small town along the way. Lorne's claim to fame is a pier to pub race that includes a swim, a beer, and a 1.6k foot race. It started as a race between friends and since has taking on a life of its own. The area also has hikes and waterfalls. The other end of Lorne was mostly decimated in the 1983 fire. A theater. A common area. A church. Much rebuilding is still being done.

Dead trees are still visible from the 2014 bushfire. There are patches of dead trees, and patches of thriving gum (eucalyptus) trees.

We stopped for lunch in Apollo Bay. Home to an IGA grocery store and several restaurants. We went with the closest one, a crepe place, but wished we had walked to the end where we saw a brew pub that claims to the the southern most brewpub in all of Australia. If you are reading this before your trip, aim for the brewpub and let us know how it is. After lunch we walked on the beach. The sand was soft, and the water was azure blue. We could see mountains surrounding the cove.

John was in storyteller mode after lunch. He is a natural conversationalist. 

Koalas, he tells us, are lazy. They hang out in trees, get all their nutrients from the eucalyptus (gum) tree. There are over 800 varieties of gum trees, but only 150 of them support koalas. Throughout their lives, they only live in five to eight different trees. When they decimate one, they move onto another. They spend their entire lives in a tiny geographic area.

Breeding season ended two months ago. The gestation period for koalas is abut 35 days. When the baby is born it is only the size of a jellybean. It spends its first six months living inside the mother's pouch. About that point it sticks its head outside and notices mom eating leaves. Koalas are born with bacteria in their stomachs that makes it impossible for them to digest the leaves. In order to be able to process the leaves, they eat their mother's poop for a couple of weeks. After this point, they can digest the leaves.

John tells the story much better than I can, complete with little voices for the baby koalas.

As he finishes this story he pulls over to the side of the road. There are a couple of other tour groups and a few cars, including the purple jeep we keep piggy backing with. Up high in a tree is a sleeping koala. Seems he has not moved in days, possibly weeks, making it easy to find him. They are pretty sure he is a male. He has six mates who roam an area about a kilometer.

The closest relative of the koala is a wombat.

Our next stop is Melba Gully, a national park. Here John and the other driver entertain each other with stories about us, or at least that's what I assume they are talking about. The scenery shouldn't change much from day to day. He did say they were talking about trying out some new routes this week, which is throwing off their pacing. Made me wonder what changed and if what we are seeing is better or worse or simply different.

The national park has a path through a forest down to a waterfall called Anne's Cascade. The trees and ferns have been around for about 25,000 years. It is very lush. It is a quick 8-10 minute walk to the viewing deck. There are also stairs, but that's considered the long way. I saw some recently fallen trees that were cut to keep the path clear.

The stroll takes us under large gum trees and ferns trees the same vivid green as Don's coat. Up above us, though, the dark clouds that are gathering look ominous. They weren't there a few minutes earlier when we were looking at the koala in the tree.

As it was drizzling on and off, and the road was narrow, John took the switchbacks cautiously, at times letting the zippier cars pass us. I suspect the purple jeep was one of those cars, but they might have already been ahead of us by now. We seemed to be alone with the other tour bus at the Gully. By this point in the journey, most people with their own vehicles were pressing on to the grand finale: the 12 Apostles. 

We made it to Loch Isle Gorge where we would spend the next 40-50 minutes before heading back in the car to take the inland road back to Melbourne. The inland road cuts at least 60-90 minutes off the return trip, plus on the way back we'll only make one stop.

In addition to the 12 Apostles sandstone formations in the water is the site of a famous 1878 shipwreck that only had two survivors out of 48 passengers: working class sailor Tom Pierce age 18, and upper class Eva Carmel, also 18. Alas, despite a write in campaign in the Melbourne newspaper, the two did not get married and live happily ever after. They did keep in touch for the rest of their lives. He stayed in Australia, she returned to England.

We had a couple of different options here. If we had driven ourselves, we could have done all of the options, but with Don's leg, we opted for the easy two.

The first one is walking 10-15 minutes out the new viewing platform. At only a couple of months old, it did not exist when we would have come in 2023. I felt better that we delayed the Great Ocean Road trip.

The second was a walk down to the site of the shipwreck. This proved disappointing as we didn't see any signs of the wreck, but we had been warned we wouldn't. 

The other walk is called Gibsons Steps. They were originally carved into the cliffs by the local Aboriginal trip. This path takes you down to the water so you look up on the rock formations, which sounds cool. The downside is you see less of them from that angle.

Back in 1990 perhaps the most famous rock formation called London Bridge collapsed. They are made out of sandstone and are fragile. When they were first named the "12 apostles" in an effort to boost tourism around 1890, there were only nine. Today two have eroded leaving seven. Prior to being called 12 apostles, they were named Sow and Piglets. I guess they felt it needed a better name.

Some pictures:

Water droplets on my lens

London Bridge

The rain held out for the most part, only drizzling at the 12 Apostles and a couple of times while we were driving. I thanked our driver for telling the rain to hold off for us.

It took us nine hours (from 7 am to 4 pm) to get to the furthest point. It will only take three hours for the return trip, including a stop at a servi for a bathroom break and to get snacks. At the end, we were amazed we never once had to refuel. Don picked up a bag of ice for his knee since we'd be sitting still awhile.

We took one other slight detour to a school yard where kangaroos have been seen lately. Unfortunately, they were not out for us. It was nice of John to try.

We drove through Colac, home to Bulla ice cream. Much to my disappointment (and John's, too) the shop is always closed when he drives through that town. I noticed a gun shop, which seemed out of place in Australia since people are not allowed to own guns.

As we entered Melbourne, John told us construction on the West End Tunnel began in 1960. It is expected to be finished next year and should help ease traffic. Melbourne is a fast growing city. A third of the buildings went up in the past 15 years constantly altering its skyline.

I picked his brain for things to do the next day since it was supposed to rain.  We took him up on his advice.

We returned to the Chinese restaurant for some vegetables to supplement our leftovers and ate them at the table in front of our room. There just isn't space to eat in our room, and it was charming to dine on our balcony. From our perch, we watched a couple moving furniture between rooms on different floors. I wish I knew the backstory!