Yesterday, Sarah-Mae found a coupon for a brekky restaurant called “Pancake Parlor,” which I continued to call Pancake Palace. Since Australia has no natural maple trees, it does not have any natural maple syrup either. The result is that Aussies put a number of different toppings on their pancakes in substitution for maple syrup. One common topping is vanilla ice cream! How could we pass up a chance to eat pancakes and ice cream!?!?
After a delicious breakfast, we headed up to the car rental agency. We were scheduled to spend the day driving the Great Ocean Road. After picking up our car, we settled into our seats, with me on the wrong side as the driver, and Sarah as the chief navigator. With Sarah’s help, I managed to get out of the city center and onto the motorway, without driving on the wrong side of the road, or hitting any one or thing! Driving on the left side of the road was not as difficult as I thought it might be, but being on the wrong side of the car was the real challenge. It’s much harder to keep the car appropriately spaced in the lanes when you are on the wrong side! And, the blinker and windshield wiper levers are reversed. So everytime I went to change lanes or make a turn, I flipped the wipers on. It was actually pretty funny.
The Great Ocean Road is a ways out of Melbourne, so we didn’t actually see the ocean for a while. But, once we made it to Torquay, we were officially on the GOR! We stopped at the Information Center, and got some advice from the woman working there. She mentioned that just the other day she saw a whale off the coast of Wye River, and that if we stopped at Kennet River, we might see koalas in the trees. Armed with a few new maps and suggestions from the Information worker, we headed out! Almost as soon as we could see the ocean, we stopped to take pictures. The view was beautiful, and of course, reminded me of California… except instead of Hawaii being somewhere off in the distance, Antarctica was out there!
view from the Great Ocean Road
As soon as the road curved close to the beach (and there was a turnout in which to park our car), we pulled over to dip our toes in the Southern Ocean. It was cold, as expected… it is practically Antarctica! We enjoyed some time on the beach and “enjoying” the water, then hopped back in the car to continue down the road. I didn’t have too hard a time remembering to stay on the correct side of the road, but I guess foreign drivers cause a lot of problems on the GOR, because there were a number of signs gently reminding people that, in Australia, cars belong on the left.
After a while of driving, we took a quick break at Wye River to grab a snack. We kept a close eye on the water while we ate our sandwiches, but unlike the woman at the Torquay information center, we didn’t see any whales. So, we got back in the car and kept driving. BUT, we were just a few minutes down the road when Sarah shouted, “I see a whale!” For our good fortune, there was a quick pull-over spot on the side of the road just a few meters past, and I quickly parked the car. She pointed out the spot where she had seen the pouf of whale blown water and we watched for a few seconds. The whale popped it’s giant head out of the water and looked around for a few seconds before sinking back into the water!!! I could not believe it!
After waiting a few more minutes to see if it would make another appearance, we celebrated our whale sighting and continued down the road. We pulled off of the road in Kennet River, where the Torquay information center woman had told us there might be koalas. But, we didn’t really see any, and we couldn’t identify any visible eucalyptus trees in which the koalas might have been sitting. We decided to just keep driving and keep an eye out for possible koala zones. We only got about five minutes down the road when we saw two cars and a number of people pulled on the sides of the road. There were two koalas in the trees hanging over the road!
After taking about a million pictures (and nearly falling into the middle of the road – a story I will have to tell in person), we continued our journey down the GOR. We stopped again to put our feet in the Southern Ocean, and enjoy the beach.
It was a long drive, but eventually we made it to the 12 apostles – one of the primary highlights of the GOR. The 12 apostles were (and some still are) a set of sandstone pillars just off the Australian coast; although there were once 12, they have dwindled down to fewer as the pillars have collapsed over time. Regardless, they were a beautiful sight. It was freezing cold and rainy while we walked out to the viewpoints, but as we were taking pictures, the rain cleared, the sun shone (if only for a few minutes), and we even spotted a rainbow down the coast. It was incredibly beautiful!
After fully enjoying the beauty of the apostles, we headed back to Melbourne. It was a long day of driving, but we had an unbelievable day: seeing the Southern Ocean, a whale, wild koalas, the beautiful coast… I felt truly blessed!
No comments:
Post a Comment