The Great Ocean Road

An acquaintance from uni who is on my Facebook friends list asked this week for recommendations for the Great Ocean Road, and I instantly wanted to suggest the caravan park Beccy and I stayed at; but then I had a bit of trouble finding the name of it. I realised that I got too busy to blog about Australia in glorious detail, satisfying myself with a couple of quickie "Here's what I've been doing" posts and a more detailed account of my trip to Uluru.

This is a tragedy! There were some amazing experiences that made up that trip. I did blog about our road trip a very little bit here, when it formed my very first "Today I wish I was..." post, but there are some even better pictures so I thought I would share them.

As is my wont, I have done a little map of the places I remember staying/visiting. It currently just has the GOR places on it - the red pins. Having done a few road trips since then including the meticulously planned Italian adventure this summer, I am somewhat horrified to find no itinerary or calendar or detailed map of where we went and where. I started to wonder how I coped with that but perhaps I was a bit less of a control freak in 2011.

I was so lucky to have a few days to spend with Beccy. We hadn't spent anything like that amount of time together since we were at school: 4 days and 3 nights in a car, in a hotel room, or wandering a beach, and amazingly we didn't run out of things to talk about. I didn't tire of pointing out exotic-to-me roadkill and she didn't tire of giggling when I switched on the windscreen wipers instead of the indicator.

The stay at Marengo Holiday Park in Apollo Bay is what sticks in my mind the most, though. I hadn't stayed in a fixed-site caravan park like this since we were kids going to the Isle of Wight and was amazed at the value-for-money, and the amazing location - the beach was across the road. Plus, the chalet was toasty warm and had two bedrooms and a kitchenette. This was the view when we arrived that evening -

We did a little shopping - the night before we had talked so late that we hadn't eaten, which wasn't a situation we wanted to repeat -

We did not buy this, though...

The next morning we took a walk on the beach before going off to a local cafe for breakfast. The views were just amazing.

The pictures are huge. Sorry, not sorry. Like some music has to be played loud, these just have to be viewed big.

I know most people probably go to the GOR to see the Apostles and they are really spectacular (maybe a future blog post pending on those) but they were also busy and quite grand. We didn't find a way down to the beach when we got there. This beach was deserted; fresh from a night of being bashed by the waves; just for us. Later, when we were eating at Cafe Nautigals and taking a brief break from chattering to take advantage of the free wifi, we heard rumours that there were migrating whales in the bay. It was that lovely, I can see why they called in.