The Great Ocean Road!!!!

One of our main objectives when we decided to get a campervan was to drive The Great Ocean Road. The road was constructed to provide work for returning soldiers and dedicated as a Mermorial to those killed in the First World War. It is an amazingly scenic road that officially runs between Torquay and Allansford with a length of 241 kilometers. When you read this, your Canadian-highway-driving minds will probably be whirling away doing calculations; "241 km at 100 km/hr means it should only take 2.4 hours give or take 10 minutes." Now, consider that we took 7 days to drive it. That, and the posted pictures, should give you an idea of how beautiful this stretch of road is. At the beginning, we decided to pull off at every viewing point turn-off but that was quickly ditched after we had only progressed 2 km in 4 hours. One of the great pulls of the drive is the close proximity to the ocean; we only lost sight of it for an hour on the whole drive. It would take pages to describe the beauty of this drive so I figure I'll just post extra photos so you can take a peak yourself.

Our rainy day was the day we arrived at the famous stretch of limestone formations, the most famous of these being the Twelve Apostles. It's amazing how many pictures you can take of rock formations. We had 2 photo shoots at the Twelve Apostles (the first day was massively windy and rainy) and I can safely assume we have every possible angle of the rocks captured on camera PLUS a couple videos. Afterwards, we moved on in our trip to view other famous limestone erosion displays. It was v. interesting because we saw all the stages of the erosion of the limestone. The waves slam against the limestone walls and erode it bit by bit; first it becomes a cave which will become a tunnel and then a bridge.... eventually the bridge will collapse and then you will be left with a singular stand just like the 'apostles' which in turn will eventually collapse completely just like one of the front 'apostles' did in 2005. Not all of the collapses include stories as amusing as the London Arch, formally known as London Bridge. The arch finally collapsed in 1990, leaving 2 tourists stranded on the outer part of the bridge who had to be rescued by helicopter. This alone would have been exciting but, add the fact that the pair were actually married to other people and their once private affair was no longer that once they were thrust into the media spotlight, and you have a fantastic scandal... Ha ha...

The next stop was a quaint lil town, Portland, and it was a quick 10 minute stop, just long enough to see the lighthouse and it was the cutest lil one yet! It was miniature that it was barely taller than a two-storey house that was beside it, but Dan read that it was visible for 26 km so that is pretty decent right? Something I love about our group is the silly lil things that we find so amusing. We're such a happy group, always laughing and joking and finding the lighter side of things. Our quick stop to the lighthouse turned into a fantastic photo shoot.. One of my favorites thus far! I decided to get a cartwheel pic which led to Jodie getting a "sideways jumping" photo which turned out to be quite literal. Props to her for not ending up in a face plant. We got such a laugh from that, that Dan decided to do a monkey pose (aka head stand) and then Brit did a splits jump... but the real genius was when we got a lucky passerby to take a photo of all our specialty poses at once... The end result was fantastic! Utter chaos really... I love it.

This small stretch of highway was a huge part of our trip that provided us with so many amazing photos and memories. It is sad to think that after this stretch all we have left is Mt Gambier and then we arrive in Adelaide, our final destination in our camper-van.