The Great Ocean Road

I think I have just driven the best road in the world, admittedly not in a Ferrari but a crappy old van painted like Scooby Doo's Mystery Machine. One of the main reasons I wanted to come to Australia was to visit the road and the Twelve Apostles and I'm so glad we did it. The weather hasn't been great, but occasionally the sun has broken through to give a dramatic sky for some photos so I'm happy.

We started off by going straight from our Sydney to Melbourne overnight Greyhound to pick up our camper van from Wicked Campers just outside the city. Although, I might look into taking a different route back to the city centre on our return because the area was an absolute hole! Some douche called me a cocksucker because the lift door closed before he got to it in the train station, what a ghetto. We went with Wicked Campers because they were the only place that didn't require 24 hours' notice before collecting the van and they were pretty cheap, although I can see why they are so cheap because the van is quite tatty and under equipped. Still we've had a lot of fun in it, especially because of its paint job.

We stopped quite regularly on our first day, at Bell's Beach and Split Point Lighthouse, but the weather was really grey and the photos were pretty dull. Our first night we stayed in a really nice campsite near Kennet River which had koalas in the trees above our van, and the next morning we were lucky enough to have bright blue skies!

After travelling west from Kennet River for another hour or so, we headed north on a little detour to visit Triplet Falls. I picked up a leaflet in a tourist information about the waterfalls, because apparently they are 'the most spectacular', and the good thing about having our camper van, we can go wherever we like! The road leading up to the falls was a little scary in our front wheel drive banger as it was 25kms of uneven terrain and it was now raining. The waterfall was impressive, although the view wasn't great for photography. I did try to get down the side of the steep hill to the bottom of the waterfall, but it was wet mud and overgrown bush and I if I had gotten down there I wouldn't have gotten out. Not to mention I would hate to think what creepy crawlies were hiding in the undergrowth. The walk from the car park alone was worth it though!

Another hour or so along the road was the Twelve Apostles. The Apostles are huge juts of land that the sea has eroded around and left standing in the sea. I really wanted to come here because the rocks looks like a more magnificent version of Bedruthen Steps, one of my favourite places in Cornwall.

Annoyingly the stove that came with our camper van was so crap we couldn't even boil water with it, and even more annoyingly everywhere in Australia closes at 6pm so we needed to move on to the nearest town to find some dinner! Port Campbell was the closest town and only a 20 minute drive further west, and it's actually one of the bigger towns with more then one shop and more then one take away. Screw paying for a campsite every night when you're in a camper van, so we parked up for the night inbetween a 'No Camping' sign and another camper van. Every road in the town had signs saying no camping, but we asked a few locals and they said the police don't care as long as you don't litter.

Today we're heading back up towards Melbourne so we haven't got such a long drive in the morning to return the camper, we've already covered about 500kms so far. Cross your fingers for some sunny weather in Melbourne on Sunday too, as we're off to the Melbourne F1 race.