Great Ocean Road

In order to catch this blog up in as fast a fashion as I possibly can before this study abroad is over I’m going to have to change to elaborated bullet points of the major points to a trip and leave your creative little minds to fill in the gaps. This blogs filler should be a big ol’ bucket of bus-van, 21 person seater.

DAY ONE:
• The trip was through Melbourne Uni, the Outdoors club. For a small price they were offering trip along the great ocean road for Melbourne Uni students.
• The great ocean road is a winding road east of Melbourne along the cliffs of the coast built by returning war vets who had no jobs.
• Starting on Saturday fairly early in the morning with a two hour drive to our first destination
• 2 hour surfing lesson, I stood up almost at first but progressed fairly quickly backwards after that.
• The beginning of the great ocean road is marked by a log ‘entrance way’
• Second stop, huge waterfall (and so cold!)
• The windey part of the road began then, in and our along the headlands. Great views and sights.
• Third stop, wild koalas. Truly wild, not like the Phillip Island conservatory. And a joey fairly fresh out of his mothers pouch climbing amount the leaves.
• There were numerous stops along the way to get out and see some of the best sights from the great ocean road.
• At the waterfall the tour leader, ‘Azza’ (as he proposed to be called) filled the bus-van with sticks.
• That night at a backpackers in Apollo Bay, Azza lit a bonfire with said sticks and we sat around that for the last bit of the night.

DAY TWO:
• The next morning we headed into the rainforest first where Azza gave us a history/biology lesson of sorts about the massively huge and tall trees there.
• Heading back to the coast and the great ocean road we stopped at a few more beaches and overlooks for the views.
• The 12 apostles (or the ‘sow and piglets’ as they may have previously been referred to) were the next stop. What used to be 12 stumps of un-eroded rock separated from the mainland (now something like 8).
• Gorge Beach, where a ship had shipwrecked and the only two survivors washed ashore. We stayed here for a while. The water was absolutely freezing (I did go in), and learned a bit more about aussy footy (like how to kick and handball). Randomly ran into some of Barrys friends who I met in Brisbane.
• London Bridge—it did in fact fall down. A peninsular of sorts out into the sea that used to be like a bridge till the middle fell out. As bill Bryson (and Azza tell), two people were stuck out there when the bridge fell, they were cheating on their respective counterparts.
• Finally there was lunch, and the trip back to Melbourne.

It was good and enjoyable trip, definitively worth the money. The views and sights from the road were pretty spectacular, even the road itself. I would highly recommend it especially for study abroad students at Melbourne Uni who don’t have access to transport out there (and even if you do).

2 Things, Possibly 3

Just wanted to 1) say I’m back from another trip. This one I didn’t actually advertise I was going on but it was up the Great Ocean Road which is west of Melbourne. I went with the Melbourne Uni Outdoors trip, and it was really great. Really nice weather, awesome people and lots of spectacular sights. 3) I’ll blog about it after I’ve finished with Aus Tour which I’m about 5 days into—the next one is Port Macquarie.
Finally 2) this is the first night in Melbourne where I’ve actually been able to keep my door to the balcony open. It’s incredibly nice out still with temperatures still hovering in around 23 degrees (73). There’s a light breeze but most importantly it’s a warm breeze. It was super ‘fine’ today (probably one of the nicest Melb days I’ve had here) and I could definitely get used to this warm evenings thing I’ve been missing for the past few months.
Im going to close it now and go to bed though because I’m so tired from this weekend.