Great Ocean Road - Day One

So here we are, start of a long weekend or Bank Holiday. Bizzarely for a Country that really wants to become a Republic, this Long Weekend is in honour of the Queens birthday - which even Britain doesn't have a holiday for. Any excuse I suppose to find a break, and I'm not complaining.

We've decided to take a trip down that iconic road trip: the Great Ocean Road. Starting about 100k west of Melbourne and running (sort of) along the coast for the next 200 plus kilometres.

We leave Melbourne through the main toll roads, with me getting a little nervous again about whether I've registered properly. We then drive past the industrial super complex of Geelong - home to the all conquering footie team, the Geelong Cats. Any team that has won 53 out of its last 55 games is just to boring to be a fan of. Finally we arrive at Torquay (yup honest), official start of the road.

The warning here is to recognise the best is yet to come, and not stop off at every single beach you see . However you can see why this area is the surfing capital of Australia: from Torquay to Angelsea, Bells Beach etc we stop off at one beach after another, with endless Ocean rollers coming in. They're probably not huge, but they're just so predicatable. You can see these blue creases in the Ocean for hundreds of metres out, metronomically crashing into the beach one after another, with perfectly curling breaks on them.

After lunch we then take the trip through to Lorne and finishing off at Apollo Bay. The trip to Lorne is meant to be iconic Coast road, and certainly delivered. The beaches have disappeared, to be replaced by vertiginous green covered hillsides plunging to the sea, with the road weaving in and out and around, about 50 metres above the waves.

Being the driver is a nightmare, as you continually get ready to slap a cliff face or plunge off an edge as you're distracted by the scenery. Thrown into this is the Hollywood set of those houses on stilts. I've never driven the Big Sur in California, but from what I've read and seen in movies, this is redolent of that road. Huge holiday homes perched on the slopes above us held up by massive struts as they jut out into the sky - view must be amazing.

As we rolled though Lorne, with the sun setting, you could see what looked like a heavy mist hanging in the trees around a town that hung on to the slopes. It was all very atmospheric, but only closer inspection revealed what turned out to be vast amounts of smoke from people's chimney's hanging in the air. They're a mad Country: they worry about their water and then let all the rain water wash away, and have no desire to have water treatment plants. They're also such a green country but they're powered by brown coal, some of the dirtiest CO2 polluters in the world, and of course along the coast have no sense of smoke pollution.

It was nearly dark when we arrived at Apollo Bay. The final stop off was 6k short, where we weaved up into the hills to look at a recommended restaurant. High in the hills, looking over the bay, floor to ceiling windows. I felt a little like the Little Matchgirl peering through the window, but confirmed that a damask napkin service and what looked like 3 wine glasses per place meant with young children we'd have to pass.

We ended up in Apollo Bay in our surpisingly good, split level motel room having beers and pizza from the local Italian restaurant. Apollo Bay itself was a little "kiss me quickly" hats but the view ad general atmosphere fought through.