Great Ocean Road
13.02.2009
My first day in Melbourne was spent on a tour of the Great Ocean Road. It was a long, but beautiful day riding around on a bus. It was one of the most breathtaking things I've seen. A great intro to Australia! I get on the bus and I'm the only non-Asian passenger (besides our Aussie driver). Our very manly driver, Jeff, was not only playing ABBA's Mama Mia music...but singing along to it as well. Luckily (after countless cheesy songs) four Germans hopped on, an Israeli woman and an American. The American was Emily from Minnesota. She graduated from school in the US and has been living in Sydney with her aunt for a couple of months. It was great that she was there because chatted and hung out together the whole time. The German couple was also very sweet. The girl (about my age) was asking us all sorts of questions about Obama and politics. After everyone told me how obsessed Aussies are with Obama I was surprised she was the only one that mentioned him. I did, however, see a Chrysler commercial with a fake Obama voice chanting "Yes we can!" after each question followed by cheering at the end. That was pretty funny.
Our first stop on the tour was at the Aboriginal Center. They showed us different boomerangs (Emu, Kangaroo, and Wallaby) and shields. The most interesting part was when a man (Norm or Norman?) came in and played the dijerdoo for us. I had no idea you could make so many sounds with those! All the sounds actually come from the vibrations of your lips and breathing patterns. You have to use circular breathing (out through your mouth while breathing in and out through your nose) which is nearly impossible! He played for a good 20 minutes and the music was so complex—it was really interesting. Once we left here Emily moved up to the front seat and we talked almost the whole rest of the trip—apparently her brother is going into the NFL draft. One of his potential teams is the Hurricanes (how funny).
The first stop of the Great Ocean Road was Bells Beach. It's a famous surfing beach, although there were no surfers due to the lack of waves. It's a partially black sand beach. I thought it was so beautiful...then I saw so many grander things along the way. Next we stopped at the official Great Ocean Road sign. A couple of years ago a trucker (I think) ran into it and somehow the sign was saved. They rebuild the structure and replaced the sign. There was also a road sign that read Drive on the left in Australia. I found it pretty amusing! Apparently though there have been a number of accidents because tourists forget and drift right. They’re posted all along the road in that area. From there we drove for a while on the windy forest covered roads until we reached a little town called Apollo Bay. There we had about 1.5 hours to eat lunch and chill. Emily and I went to Nautigals (suggested by Jeff) and somehow were able to grab a great outdoor table. It was beautiful…perfectly sunny and breezy. Unfortunately after we sat down we realized the sniped the table from two Brit boys that had been waiting. We apologized and they replied that we could make it up to them by sharing. We agreed that this was far. Neither was remotely attractive (one extremely British looking and about as pal as Robert Pattinson in Twilight and the other very goofy looking with ratty dreads everywhere). As soon as they sat down they mentioned that their tour was full of all American boys (there were 20-some guys and 1 girl on their tour) and were about to diss on Americans until we opened our mouths. They told us they’d refrain in our presence (yikes!). We made small talk with them for a bit and then headed to the grocery to grab snacks for the rest of the trip. It’s interesting how many people I met that day (all from Europe) that just graduated high school and came to Australia for as long as their money would last before college. No plans, no return flights, just winging it as long as possible. That seems like something that is highly frowned upon in America. After boarding the bus we drove through more small towns, but mostly just gorgeous ocean views until we reached a small neighborhood known for it’s abundance of koalas. We hopped out of the bus and walked about half a mile to spot some for ourselves. We saw eight (two of which I spotted)!! They were adorable. They were all curled up and passed out in the fork of the eucalyptus trees. There was one that was very low to the ground that let us get extremely close. This one was awake and just slowly blinking and looking around. We all hopped back on the bus and along the highway (in the trees) I spotted two more. They really are everywhere; you just have to look for them. Next we did a fairly short walk through a temperate rainforest. Australia has all four types of rainforest—this one is a bit more dry and cooler than the tropical rainforest. We saw a 700 year old tree, which looked only a couple years old. It was very thin and tall. I think he said it was a Myrtle Beech (which made me laugh). It may have been another tree that was the Myrtle Beech though. We saw a huge tree hollowed out at the base and Jeff told us about a time when he was a child and hid in the trunk. He came out completely covered in leeches. He asked the two ways to remove leeches and somehow I pulled out the two correct answers of fire and salt. I have no clue where that came from.
The final part of our journey was the Shipwreck Coast. This is where you see the Twelve Apostles, Loch Ard Gorge, The Razorback (not really a big deal and part of the Gorge area) and London Bridge. Of the three heavy hitters I actually think London Bridge might have been my favorite. I don’t know—they were all beautiful. Each one was breathtaking for different reasons. London Bridge actually fell a couple years back with a man and woman (each married to someone else) left stranded on the bridge. Apparently they had been filming a BMW commercial earlier that day and had all their cars lined along the first part of the bridge. Later when the man and woman walked to the second part (back then you could walk on them) the weight from the BMW’s caused a crack that gave way. It took hours and hours to get them because there were no helicopters nearby, except for the news reporters who were not allowed to rescue them. Apparently they had both skipped work and had to explain to their spouses what they were doing together on the London Bridge. Now you have to observe it from a far away, elevated site. On the other side of the lookout we saw Little Penguin prints all over the beach! That was pretty cool as well. After this we headed home, stopping at Subway along the way (where I learned fresh=not toasted and salad=lettuce, tomatoes, etc). They also provided us with PSPs loaded with movie for the ride home…I watched Toy Story. After a long, but amazing day I fell asleep right when I got home (about 10:30 pm).
Interesting fact: It is a rumor that koalas are so sleepy because they’re high from eating eucalyptus. The truth is that they are so sleepy because eucalyptus provides very little nutritional value—it’s mostly just water and oils. They just don’t get enough energy so they much conserve it well. They can move very quickly if they need to.
Some Aussie terms I learned:
-Overtaking=passing (ie. Stay left unless overtaking)
-Give way=yield
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