Sean and I met our Great Ocean Road Tour group "Groovy Grape" at 7 a.m. outside of our hostel in Adelaide. This tour was much smaller than our spring break tour. Our vehicle for the trip was only a 20 seater van, and accordingly only 18 other backpackers on the tour with us. Our tour guide was friendly enough, a bit eccentric perhaps. But our fellow backpackers were absolutely amazing! We had plenty of time to get to know them on our first day of the trip, which was mostly just a day of driving to get out of South Australia and into Victoria, where the Great Ocean Road begins.
Yet we did make a few stops on our way through South Australia that first day. We headed for the Grampians, a mountain range that stretches pretty much across Victoria.
Here we did some relaxed bush walks and hung out at MacKenzie Falls, a beautiful and famous waterfall within the Grampian national park. We also stopped at a lookout called "The Balcony" (but it is more often referred to as "The Jaws of Death").
It was a great lookout spot to see the Grampian range. The weather was not the best while we were there, but we enjoyed ourselves anyway.
Then that night we stayed in heart of the Grampian national park at the Brambuk resort, a hostel that was really more like a traveler's lodge. In looks it resembled a Rockie Mountain ski lodge, complete with stone fireplace and huge wooden deck. The owners of the hostel were awesome, and stayed up with our group that night and told us their amazing travel stories. Al, the owner, is half-Aboriginal and told us a lot of cool stuff about the orginal Aboriginal people that lived in the Grampians. It was an awesome night and we had a great outdoor BBQ on the deck!
Day 3:
We woke up early and headed into the Grampian for a more intense bush walk than we did the day before. The walk was amazing! It couldn't really be classified a 'bush walk' as all we really walked on and over was stone. And it wasn't even really a walk, as much as a clamber. It was really cool and we had some amazing views over the valley!
After our walk we visited the Aboriginal Cultural Centre across from our hostel. The centre celebrated the original Aboriginal people of the Grampians. The centre was really cool, especially because, like most cultural centres, this one had an amazing display of traditional Aboriginal artwork.
After spending some time here we packed up the van and headed to our next destination: the start of the Great Ocean Road! It still took us a while to get to the start of the road, but after a few hours drive we alighted at the first breath-taking look-out of the amazing rock formations that speckle the Southern Australian coastline.
The rocks we saw reminded me so much of those at Arches National Park, which is not surprising really since virtually the same forces of nature were at work to sculpt those as the ones I saw along the Great Ocean Road.
There were many stops to make along the road but we eventually came to our hostel for the night in Port Campbell, a town that really marks the beginning (or end, depending on how you look at it) of the Great Ocean Road. We had decided to unload our things here and get started on dinner preparations before hitting the famous Twevle Apostles, as we wanted to see those at sunset and it was a bit early yet.
So we pulled up to our accomodation and were yet again pleasantly surprised by our abode for the night. The place was a beach-side cabin, consisting of three bedrooms stacked with bunks, a spacious kitchen, a backyard, a living-room complete with fireplace, and a wooden deck overlooking the beach. It was amazing!
We started preparing dinner so that we could eat after getting back from the Twelve Apostles, a short 20 minute drive from our accomodation. So in the boiling pot went the Spagetti. In the simmering pot went the tomato sauce. On the stove went the kangaroo. Wait...what?! Yes, that's right...kangaroo. On tonight's menu: Spaghetti Bolognese with kangaroo mince. More about that later, time to head out to the 12 Apostles for sunset!
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