We got up fairly early and dropped off the keys for the hotel. We mapped out a few different ways to get to our final destination (Twelve Apostles), and obviously picked the shortest route. Turns out, like Scotland, that the shortest route meant getting on a ferry. OF COURSE.
The ferry ride lasted over a half hour, and gave us enough time to have dessert of the day. (But not enough time to have beer, because Australia is super judgy and wouldn't serve me since it wasn't 11:00 am - like 8:30 isn't close enough? haha)
We began our drive along the Great Ocean Road -- with no plans other than to jump out of the car every time we saw something interesting.
Our first stop was a trail system near Foreshore Reserve. Early on, I realized that the signage in Australia was going to be a source of entertainment for me.
After a brief walk and a bunch of pictures, we ended up in one of the "larger" towns on our drive, Torquay. We wandered around for a bit and did some shopping (Patagonia is just as, if not more, expensive in Australia, btw). Just outside town we found some more beach access - Angelsea, which of course meant more pictures!
Next order of business was going to be finding somewhere to have a "beer of the day" and get some food. We saw a sign for a brewery, and as we were turning around to go there, we saw a turn off for Split Point lighthouse, so we stopped there first.
We then headed back to Salt Brewing - where I was actually able to get a dark beer! Unfortunately, there was no food at the brewery, so we would have to find something else later.
We felt a tad bamboozled when we got to the "Memorial Arch" - I don't know what we were expecting, but it wasn't this. Still a cool sign.
We were hoping to find our way to the Redwoods (yes, there are Redwoods in Australia), but we couldn't seem to find them, and searching on Lisa's map didn't get us where we needed to be. Instead, we went for a hike at Erskine Falls (one of the "highest rated" waterfalls in the area).
Pretty crazy to go from the beach/wide open to an incredibly lush rain forest-y area. Really beautiful. We kept driving, looking for something to eat and got out of the car at Gibson Steps. Unfortunately, the steps are closed (or were closed?). We thought it might be because it had been raining on and off, but possibly just closed because of the penguin access. Either way, really pretty.
We hadn't realized that the hotel I had booked was literally AT the Twelve Apostles. We opted to check in and change clothes before finding food. Cute little cabins, although we could NOT get the WiFi to work, so that was frustrating.
Princetown is barely even a town. There was only one place that had food, so that's where we went. It wasn't great, but it was something.
We asked one of the people working where we could find the "boardwalk" - because apparently that is where you can see kangaroos at dusk! Once we figured out where we were going we decided to drive out a bit further and found a gem - Loch Ard Gorge. We got a ton of cool pictures here.
Since we weren't sure how busy the "mob o' roos" viewing would be, we decided to head over to the boardwalk.
We wandered around for nearly an hour without seeing anything before we finally asked someone where we could find them - and it turns out it was down the road a bit. Barely got to see them before it got too dark, but it was really cool to see. Unfortunately, other than a few short videos, all we really got was a ton of mosquito bites!
We stopped at the visitor center on the way to the hotel to steal some WiFi so I could text Ben - and had our first dingo sighting! He was not afraid of me at all.
I love the dingo <3
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