Completing the half loop

A bit of a delay since the last travel blog post: at the time of writing we are halfway through our Japan trip and it turns out if you pack in lots of amazing things to do you don’t have much time to write it all down! (especially if most of your trip planning occurs on the trains).

This post rounds off our trip on the Great Ocean Road, as well as bringing our east-coast half loop, Melbourne to Melbourne, to a close.

Friday 9th May: Portland to Apollo Bay

A busy schedule today as we pencilled in visiting some epic coastal scenery before heading into the Otway forest. Our morning was spent exploring the Loch Ard gorge - the site of a substantial fatal shipwreck. We saw the gorge itself, the cemetery, and the two eroded sections known as Muttonbird island and Razorback.

No journey to the Great Ocean Road is complete without seeing the 12 apostles (of which 8 still remain!). Unfortunately these cool cliffs also attract hundreds of other tourists and so they weren’t our favourite to see! With the coastal features out of the way we headed inland to Otway Fly Treetop Adventures to experience their treetop walk and zip line (thanks Hannah and Uncle Dave!).

The treetop walk was an impressive sight: steel walkways ranging from 25 to 49m above ground in amongst the massive Eucalyptus trees. The experience was… heightened… by the swaying of the 49m spiral tower and the cantilever sections as the wind picked up!! Fortunately the walkway proved to be great prep before the canopy zip line.

The zip line experience took you on several zip lines, rope bridges, and cloud platforms in the treetops, some of which were over 35m high and over 100m long! It was a cracking experience throwing shapes, shouting aloud, and whizzing through the trees - and boy did you feel a rush when you just fell short of the landing platform and needed hoicking in!

After an exhilarating afternoon we headed to Apollo Bay for the evening, had a great feed at the Apollo Bay Fisherman’s Coop, and retired to our campsite for some R&R.

Saturday 10th: Apollo Bay to Colac

We had a lazy morning exploring Apollo Bay and the shops on the beach we headed up to Stevenson falls. This was a lovely 5km walk through a redwood forest to the falls. They were very pretty but there wasn’t a huge amount of rainfall coming over the top. A highlight was seeing a little yabbie in the water on the walk back, it had huge orange claws but a black body to help it hide on the logs/sticks in the water.

Our next stop was Forrest Brewing, we were recommended this by the information centre in Apollo Bay and it didn’t disappoint. Mike got a tasting tray of beers and Chloe had a hot chocolate to warm up! The taster had 9 beers, the standard 4 and 5 seasonal beers, the Strawberry sour and the imperial stout were delicious but we only walked away with one as there’s not too many days left in the van now.

Our next stop was a town called Colac where we went to the botanic gardens on the water front. The lake is the biggest freshwater lake in Victoria and it was beautiful with heaps of Pelicans on it and people fishing. The botanical gardens were nothing to write home about, but it was a nice walk through them and back along the water’s edge to the van. Our free camp for the night was at the other end of the lake and it was stunning. We had a beautiful sunset over the lake and there were lots of campfires around as well. We snuggled down early as the clear sky meant the temperature dropped so it went quiet nice and early…

Sunday 11th: Colac to Lorne

…Well… everyone went to bed early except the group who turned up in the middle of the night playing music and laughing at 3:30am. The last laugh was had by the rest of the campsite in the morning, and it turns out the noisy bunch had parked their chavvy Mercedes on sand and were hilariously stuck for over an hour before the received help!

We drove back down through the Otways to continue our journey along the Great Ocean Road and onwards to Lorne for the day. The drive was beautiful and winding, and before we knew it, we arrived in Lorne. We wandered around the shops and laughed at the brazen sulphur-crested cockatoos loitering everywhere with food.

We looked at hiring surfboards for the afternoon but the shop that also rented wetsuits was closing too soon, so we settled for a swim on the beach instead. Boy were we glad we didn’t hire without wetsuits because maaaan that was chilly! Post-swim we went for real-fruit obligatory ice creams in the sunshine.

To finish off the day we drove out to Erskine falls and climbed down the 200 steps to see it from the bottom. We also got real close to some kookaburra at the Lorne lookout. Our free camp for the evening was just up the wiggly road and was a lovely site in the middle of the woods. We spent the evening chatting by the fire with an older couple, spotted a feral cat and kitten, and were serenaded by the jams of a group of dirt bikers and the croaking of frogs.

Monday 12th: Lorne to Geelong

A breakfast surrounded by the quiet of nature, watching the yellow robins and fairy wrens searching for bugs. We hit the road to finish up our drive along the Great Ocean Road. Again, a stunning coastal drive and we finally drove under the great ocean road archway. We called in at Split Point Lookout, Aireys inlet, to stretch our legs and take a walk around the lighthouse from the children’s TV show classic: “Round the Twist”!

The weather was great, and the location just right, so we decided to rent some surfboards and wetsuits for the afternoon at Anglesea. We had a blast on the beginner friendly beach and even caught a few decent waves! Thoroughly exhausted from the afternoon workout we visited the Great Ocean Road Chocolaterie for a strawberry malt milkshake, a delicious hot chocolate, and a massive scone with jam and cream. We even got some tasty rocky road pieces to eat later!

We rounded off our afternoon by taking a stroll at the point Addis lookout, before heading over to Bells Beach (super famous surf competition beach) to watch the sunset surfers catch their waves - definitely some impressive surfers out there! A blast up the road took us to our final campsite of the trip in the centre of Geelong - our base for the next 2 evenings.

Tuesday 13th: Geelong

With the surfing bug well and truly caught, we headed down to Torquay for the morning and hired some more boards and wetsuits. Alas the boards were a bit smaller, waves a bit bigger, beach a bit less friendly, and so we got a bit more of a working!! Oh well - “some cliche saying about waves and surfing”! We spent a bit more time exploring a few of the shops near the beach front and made some tasty salami cheese toasties for lunch.

Our next stop was Barwon Heads where we had casual stroll around the lookout walk to see more of the great ocean! We then headed into ocean grove to have a drink to warm up and wake up - surfing is exhausting! We also went for a little walk around the shop where we found a cute little lolly shop and also an incredible bottle shop with all the tasty beers, shame we are flying in 2 days so couldn’t buy many. We did get a mixed berry sour and a coconut and raspberry ice cream IPA along with an apple and raspberry RTD to toast our last night in the van!

Our next stop was Queenscliff to see the only black lighthouse in the southern hemisphere and also the white lighthouse which was just around the corner. The sun was stating to set but another lovely beachfront stroll was up for grabs so that’s exactly what we did before heading to St Leonard’s Pier to view the moon rising and the sun setting. Victoria has really put on a show for the last few days and neither our camera or phones could take a picture that did them justice. The sky was glowing deep orange/red and the moon was just as beautiful.

Our last night in the van was a night of luxury in a free ensuite site due to having earned points through the g’day rewards system and we enjoyed some time reminiscing about our 3 months around the east coast and down the middle. Memories for a life time!

Wednesday 14th: Geelong to Melbourne

The last day in our van! We spent the morning packing cleaning/emptying the van before heading on our last little adventure. We started at the Geelong waterfront where we went for a nice stroll in the sun and entertained ourselves with the statue things that are dotted across the front.

Our next stop was Paddock Bakery for brunch, I had a toad in the hole, a delicious egg in the bread with the most generous helping of avo and bacon! Mike had eggs benny with bacon, it was delicious but I definitely had the better brekky!

Our next stop, and final final stop, before dropping the van off was You Yang National Park where we walked to the top of Flinders peak. Just a small amount of 450 steps up but some beautiful views across Victoria. An awesome way to finish our time on the half loop.

We headed back and dropped the van back to Let’s Go before spending the evening with some special friends in Melbourne. Georgina and Greg and of Course Arthur! We had a fabulous evening catching up, eating yummy pizza and playing with their beautiful puppy.

Our time in the campervan is complete! In total we travelled close to 20,000km across the two vans, drove through almost every state, made it through two separate extreme weather events, saw almost every animal on our bucket lists, and even ran out of audio book hours during our drive through the middle. An amazing road trip.

But just because we’re out of the van doesn’t mean our journeys are finished! Next up, we fly to Perth, our final unvisited state in Australia, for a week before we fly over to Japan. Plenty of posts and photos still to come. Mā te wā!